Crossing the Spine

I am now down in Coyahique, Chile after traveling across the Andes into Argentina, then south and then crossing these magnificent mountains once again. It is absolutely, amazingly mammoth. It reminds me a bit of the Montana Rockies but at such a greater scale. There are so many lakes - I can not believe the size of them either. They are huge - some of them are 500 - 900 square kilometers in surface area. As we were driving along, I kept expecting this one lake to end at each bend of the road, but no it kept going and going. I am utterly amazed at the extent of naturalness there is down here in Patagonia. I wish I had a better camera for you all and I apologize ahead of time for all the vistas and utter amazement from me. I had a 24 hour bus ride from Puerto Montt to Coyahique and luckily a good portion was during the day. But I must say the stars were also purely spectacular. I think I saw the southern cross. I also love traveling south because the sun is setting much later - 9:30 at night - I love summer!!! It is such a nice change. In Ecuador and Colombia the sun always came up around 6 in the morning and set around 6 or 6:30 at night.
Coyahique is surrounded by peaks - to the north and the west there are lots of peaks with snow on them :-) I love it especially since it is nearing the end of their summer here and there still is a good amount of snow. Enough for me to think about the possibility of skiing down. (Not that I really need all that much)
So as I already stated, we crossed the border twice - once into Argentina and then once back into Chile. It would be really easy for anyone with a tourist visa either in Argentina or Chile to quickly visit one country and then return. Anyway, I went through the police twice but I find it rather amusing that I only received a stamp for leaving Argentina. They did not want to give me a stamp for entering since I was only on a bus ride. It made sense to me but then I was surprised that they gave me an exit stamp. I also was not able to get a picture of the entering Argentina because it came up on one of the passes and I was not expecting it there. The station was at the bottom of the pass so I will try again next time. But I guess I never really entered the country officially anyway so it just makes sense that i do not have a foto.
Off to volunteer starting tomorrow. I have to travel another 6 1/2 hours south - close to Cochrane. I will volunteer with Conservacion Patagonia for 2 weeks (at least that is my plan now) and then continue south. I want to backpack in Torres del Paines and visit Parque Nacional Glaciars before the weather turns too much.