Torres del Paine - Day 6

Waking up to another day of rain and wind, we accepted the fact that witnessing the amazing views a short hike up the valley wasn´t going to happen. We settled for a 10min walk in the morning to catch a glimpse of a nearby glacier and saw some snow cascading off of the mountain. Guess we´ll just have to come back again. Oh darn...

We put on our wet clothes, packed up our damp tent and hiked the first part of the day in a light rain. After a short break at a refugio at 11am, we were soon out of our rain gear and hiking with the wind at our back under a partly cloudy sky. Little did we know what the wind had in store for us. About 5 miles from the end of the trail (or the beginning depending on how you look at it), we were experiencing winds we have never experienced before in our lives. It started with me trying to catch up to Graham on a hill after taking a picture of the scenary. I quickened my step and jogged up the steep hill. Just as I was taking a leap onto a rock, the wind picked me up and threw me on my knees right smack into a rock. I managed to crack open my knee and send blood running down my leg. We quickly bandaged up the wound, not knowing if I´d need stitches or not and carried on. The wind was so strong that on occasions we would be bracing ourselves and with our feet planted firmly on the loose rock and we would be moving over the surface of the rock as if we were on a conveyer belt. It was really weird not knowing how far the wind was going to carry you. One minute we´d be standing at point A and the next we would have the same stance one foot away without having moved a foot. Rocks were flying in the air and the lakes had waves like the ocean. We took advantage of the breaks in the gusts and quickened our steps but would begin bracing ourselves as we heard the wind approach from behind us.

We arrived back where we had started with an hour to spare before the bus would pick us up. Graham retrieved a jar of Nutella out of a trash can that someone didn´t clean out all the way, and polished it up while I layed behind a birm out of the wind in the sun.

While we experienced snow, hail, rain and some of the fierced wind I have experienced in my life, we are both glad we did it and are very glad to be in a warm hostel where plentiful food awaits.

Torres del Paine - Day 5

After having a clear night, I was hopeful that the following day would bring more blue skies and warm hiking. Apparently the weather Gods misinterpreted my request because we had the exact opposite, rain and lots of it. We awoke in the morning to a light mist and wind, but since our tent was the only one perched beneath a tree, we remained dry whereas the other tents were already damp. We packed up quickly to avoid a wet tent, and threw our stuff in the small lean to shelter where we made breakfast. Then it was on with the rain pants and jacket for a hurried day of hiking. We tried to hike fast to stay warm and stay warm we did, but it didn´t help the fact that we were still soaked. I don´t even recall what we saw during the day. I was mostly looking at my feet trying to avoid puddles, rocks and roots.

We stopped at a gigantic resort-like refugio to get out of the rain where a catamaran picks up hikers and walking into a small store at the resort, I stopped in my tracks, eyes wide open when I discovered heaven...PEANUT BUTTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Our savior. Heaven. Period. We ate it by the spoonful.

Arriving at the base of the last leg of the W we needed to complete, we pitched our tent and hoped that the weather could clear so that we could get views of one of the more scenic parts of the trail. Luck was not with us on this evening. We ran into Rok again (I swear he´s stalking us). It poured all night. By 5pm we had a stream of water running under our tent. Thankfully, our tent held up just fine and we stayed dry. The problem was drying our gear and clothing that was already wet. We played a lot of cards this night.

Torres del Paine - Day 4

It was ridiculously windy last night. We were both very thankful to be camping in a stand of trees and not perched on an exposed ridge somewhere. When I removed the ear plugs from my ears and listened for the sound of rain in the morning, I was disappointed to hear that the wind really hadn´t let up. BUT miraculously, the tent was DRY! We packed up in a hurry so as to avoid another wet tent, gorged on some breakfast and hit the trail hoping to get over the pass before conditions worsened. As we often do on mountain adventures, we got extremely lucky. Yes, it was windy but not nearly as windy as we would exerience on the last day of our trek. With a few snow flurries in the sky, we made it over the pass without a hitch and descended the knarly backside. The backside was a series of steep muddy stairs littered with rocks and roots. Yuck.

The reward for making it down the backside? Incredible(!) upclose views of the Grey Glacier. Wow. Seriously. I´ve seen some pretty impressive glaciers in Alaska and this one was definitely up there with some of the best I´ve seen. For the first night on the trail, we had blue skies and a great campsite beside Lake Grey albiet a crowded one with over 50 people. Go figure, it had a refugio (shelter), showers, flush toilets, amazing views, offered cooked meals to those who paid and it was part of the W trail. We were getting back to the touristy side of the park and while Graham loves mingling with people, I itched to get back on the backside where the camps were a lot more intimate and private.

Torres del Paine - Day 3

The third day was definitely the longest day. We trekked over 18 miles from Seron to Los Perros and gained over 4,000ft in elevation overall. We traveled through some really beautiful old growth forests that reminded us of the Pacific Northwest and had an amazing view of a hanging glacier right before camp. While the weather cooperated most of the day, it started raining an hour before reaching camp. Thinking that camp was only a mile or so away, we opted to pick up the pace and not put on rain pants (we already had our rain jackets on), but one mile turned into about three. The map was definitely wrong, as we discovered it would be on a number of occassions making it a little frustrating planning from getting from point A to point B. We arrived at camp soaked and were disappointed to find that most of the sites were basically a mud pit. We ran into Rok, again, who was taking shelter with everyone else in camp in a small shelter filled with wood smoke. We quickly set up our tent and made dinner, hoping that the rain would pass before our climb over the pass the following morning. As I´m starving and thinking about dinner, I notice a slight bulge in Graham´s jacket. The camp had a small store and I knew it contained Snicker´s bars. ¨Did you buy a Snickers?!?!¨ Graham removed the bulge from his jacket and I just about cried. FOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!

Saving our biggest meal for the longest day, pasta with spaghetti sauce, it was not enough. Graham and I were both ravinous, picking through our packs looking for something more to eat that didn´t have a ton of sugar. We both longed for peanut butter - we couldn´t find any at the grocery store when we left town and grew quite jealous of a girl we ran into later on the trail that had found peanut butter in the store. We were eating meals that I would eat by myself on the PCT. I tried sausage but the slimy fat chunks that oozed between my teeth with every bite made me decide I´d rather starve than succomb myself to digestive issues for the remainder of the trip. I had some tuna fish and cheese. I rationed that tuna fish and cheese as if my life depended on it. As we did every night on the trail, we played cards and then hit the sack, this night a little earlier so that we would be well rested for climbing the pass.

Torres del Paine - Day 2

Waking up to more snow and clouds all around us, we decided that it did not make sense to attempt to go back to the towers for a better view in the morning, so we packed up and headed down the mountain to start our anti-clockwise circuit of the Torres. It was a quick decent going down and soon we were hiking through rolling grassy hills with pockets of trees as we started the loop, very reminicent of the hiking we did from Robinhood´s Bay to Saint Bee´s in England. We ended up hiking around 13 miles and gaining only 1,500ft.

We made camp outside of a refigio on the lawn. In the refugio there was a shower and flush toilet as well as an option to pay someone to make your meals if you wanted, much more plush than we were expecting. We were very lucky and were able to come in and make dinner on their stove while learning a new card game from a couple from the Southwestern portion of France. It was funny because they had just learned it from an American girl and were now playing it, (didn´t get the name) but the rules are everyone starts with 3 piles of two cards, one face up and one face down. You also have 3 cards in your hand at all times till the deck is gone. The goal of the play is to get rid of your cards, and the special features of the cards are; the 2 resets the pile, the 3 skips you, the 7 you have to play under, the 8 allows you to go again, and the 10 clears the pile. It´s quite a fun game and we´ll have to play it more when we are home, if anyone knows the name (Keith, Jake, or Louie?) it would be great to know.

After very nice cooking and cards inside we went to eat in the tent as it was time for the host to cook dinners for the people that had paid. One of the qualms of the trek at Torres was the wind -being quite windy again we hunkered down in the tent and ate a very tasty bean soup while playing more cards.

Torres del Paine - Day 1

The bus to Torres del Paine park was scheduled to come at 7:30 in the morning and we over slept the alarm, so there was a bit of a fuss grabbing all our stuff and getting on the bus, but we made it none the less. It was a 1.5 hour bus ride to the park, and to that point we had not completely decided where we were going to start, or which direction we were going to hike once we got there, however on the ride over we finalized that we were not going to take the boat ride to the optional start due to the cost and we were going to hike counter, or as they say here, anti-clockwise on the park loop, the reason for this was if we hiked clockwise we would see all the famous sights first, where as if we hiked anti-clockwise we would save the really nice views for the last two days of the trek. There are two main classification of hikes in the park, people either hike the W, which is a series of three legs of the trail that go up into the Torres, or they hike the O which is the loop that goes all the way around the park. The W is much more popular because it is much shorter and still has the really nice views, we of course opted for the longer O version which incorporated the longer loop and the W.

Once we arrived we decided to hike up the right most leg of the W because it was later in the day and that would give us a casual first day of hiking. As we headed up into the valley the sunny weather turned into gusty hail and snow flurries. We reached camp and right before we went to set up our tent, who do we see coming up the trail but Rok, we laugh and say hello, he still hadn´t gotten his bag and just hiked up the right leg of the W in hopes of seeing the towers, before going back down to get his bag. At this point having run into him 3 random times now rather than saying goodbye, we say see you again and he´s off to the towers and we set up camp and hunker down for some cards in the tent hoping the snow will stop. After Greta winning a couple games of rummy the snow does break and the sun is shinning so we head up to the towers. It takes about 45 minutes to get up to the Torres and when we arrive they are so socked in that only 100 meters away and you can´t see a thing. Some people that are heading down say that it cleared for them and we should wait by the lake and see if we get lucky and sure enough after about 30 minutes at the mountain lake, the clouds clear and we got a nice view up close of the three Torres.

Traveling to Puerto Natalas

We had to catch our flight in the morning and flagged a cab which quickly took us to the airport. We tood two flights to get to Punta Arenas, which is the common place people fly and then take a bus to Puerto Natalas, but Greta managed to find a subsequent flight to Puerto Natalas that was not advertised anywhere which saved us a day waiting for the bus and it was only an extra 50 dollars for the flight vs. the bus. As we were getting off our second flight we grabbed a bag that was a couple seats back in the plane for another traveler, his name was Rock, but you roll the R when you say it and the o is more like an oo, that was dressed for trekking in Patagonia and helped him off the plane. It turns out that Rok was waiting the day for the bus because he had not head of the flight option. The flight was leaving in 30 minutes so after wishing him well on his travels we said good-bye. After fiddling around trying to figure out whether we needed to move our bags to the next plane, low and behold, there was Rok, who had decided it was worth the extra money to save waiting a day for the bus ride. We laughed and boarded the flight together.

Upon landing in Puerto Natalas Rok got cab driver and we waited for our bags, well, this is where things did not work out so well, Roocks bag never showed up and it turns out it did not make it on the plane. After a long drawn out arguement between Rok and the airlines they agreed that they would deliver his bag to the park the following day and he would pick it up there.

The taxi took us to our hostal and as the rooms were full we said our second good-byes to Rok and got settled in at the hostal. After getting settled we had to go out to find bus tickets to and from the park and to our next destination, and to find supplies for the trek. This far south it is light very late and we ended up walking around town till 9 before we were done with the shopping, where we ran into Rok in the grocery and the food available was more limited than imaginable, so much so that it appeared that Greta would have to eat sausage on the hike because there was nothing else available. At that point everything was closed, so we returned to the hostal, and packed our bags for the morning, and fell asleep watching the american classic, My Best Friends Girlfriend.