After I unloaded my bags at the hostel in El Calafate, Argentina, I went out in town in search of a proper haircut. It had been around a month or more since my last trimming and the excess was definitely bugging me. Though my bag is seemingly enormous, I definitely regret not bringing my electric clippers. At the very least, I could have brought the Gillette beard trimmer thing that runs on batteries and used it on my hair as well. The other thing I regret not bringing, as I think I’ve mentioned before, is a GoPro video camera. I had actually bought one and picked out the different accessories I might need for my trip, but nixed it (and returned the camera) in the final round of luggage trimmings.
In the evening, I picked up a rental car – a smallish Volkswagon Gol. It’s sold as a Golf virtually everywhere else, but in futbol-obsessed South America, dropping the “f” and naming it “Gol” is a pretty solid marketing move. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure they forgot to put more than 2-cylinders in the car because it didn’t really like to accelerate very much. I strongly contemplated punching my feet through the floorboards to add some Fred Flintstone power.
I was very happy to be driving again though, and in this part of the country, there’s almost no busy traffic so there shouldn’t be much danger from not understanding local driving customs and the like. But what most got me was the rental guy’s instructions on what to do to avoid accidents – I couldn’t understand his Spanish well, but I got enough from the few words I caught and his gestures to figure out that he was telling me that if a small animal runs out into the road, don’t swerve to try and miss it since I’ll likely lose control of the car. Instead, just run it over. I thought about it and decided that I would just try and be extra alert for small animals.
That evening, I went to the airport about 25km away to pick up my friends that were joining me from the US for the next week or so. Early in my trip, I had sent a message on Facebook that if anyone wanted to join me for a portion of the trip, to let me know and we might be able to make something happen. Well, these three friends did exactly that, and none of them knew each other either. First is Sharon, who I worked with at P&G for 2 years or so at a perfume plant in New Jersey about 7 years ago. Second was Renuka, a DC-based physician and older sister of my friend Aruna who I’ve known for the past 10-12 years, and finally Kishore, an IT-guy in Cincinnati that I’ve known for the past 10-12 years as well.
Apparently, the airline had to cancel a flight from Buenos
Aires to El Calafate from the day before and they bumped Kishore from this
particular plane for some reason. We’re not exactly sure how that happened,
especially since he was there the recommended 2 hours in advance of the flight.
So the airline was putting him up in a hotel in BA for the evening and sending
him the next morning. Renuka and Sharon made the flight though, and I picked
them up at 9pm.
When we got into town, we walked around a little bit looking for somewhere to grab a bite and settled on a parilla (meat-grilling restaurant) that seemed to be full of locals and only had a buffet. But it wasn’t too expensive so we went for it. It was only so-so, unfortunately.
Sunday, February 9th, 2014
Kishore wasn’t due in to the airport until around noon, so
we putzed around a bit this morning. Because we knew we’d be pressed for time
after picking him up, we swung by the grocery store to grab ingredients to make
the bestest sandwiches ever known to man. Then we sat down in a coffee shop
downtown – this coffee shop was kinda neat. It was a combination library &
coffee shop. Except that they sold the books too. So I guess it’s more like a
bookstore that serves coffee. Which I guess all of them do nowadays. Okay,
never mind.
When we got on the highway, we were stopped at the police
checkpoint and asked a series of questions in rapidfire Spanish. My solution to
these potentially tense situations was surprisingly effective – I decided to
pretend my Spanish is worse than it actually is and tell them “Lo siento mucho.
Mi espanol no es bueno.” in a really crappy accent. And then they just wave you
on. Or they reach into the car and turn your headlights on for you as this
particular police dude did. I guess daytime lights are the law or something.
After fetching Kishore from the airport, we sped back the
other way for a few hours to get to the Perito Moreno glacier. This is the only
glacier in the world (or something like that) where the glacier is actually
advancing year over year vs retracting. Beyond that, it was supposed to be spectacular,
and about the only reason to ever come to El Calafate to begin with.
At the national park, we parked the car and walked to a
corner of the lot where a small trail quickly turned into a boardwalk. We
didn’t really know what to expect, so we just followed this boardwalk for about
5 minutes and as we rounded a corner, the largest most spectacular glacier you
could possibly ever expect to see majestically appeared. It was surreal –
particularly because you generally associate glaciers with very cold weather
that would coincide with the coldness of the glacier that is made of ice. But
it wasn’t that cold, just a bit
windy. Of course, that’s why the glacier is melting at the edge but I guess I’d
just expect that to happen somewhere that it was a bit colder, especially for
the size of this thing. Additionally, the trees that we were walking through
were standard issue trees – it looked like the park near my house, not the
evergreen trees you’d expect in the more extreme climates. Ultimately, I guess
this all happens because the weather changes so drastically and quickly from
the peaks of the mountains to the valleys very nearby. Or at least that’s my
theory at the moment.
The boardwalk went on seemingly forever and ever, with us in
disbelief that the next corner/viewing platform could possibly be better than
the previous. We seemed ridiculously close to this 250ft tall glacier. Every few minutes, we heard creaking sounds or
splashing sounds and would whip our heads around hoping to catch something
falling. Usually, the creak/splash was inside the glacier somewhere, or at
least completely out of sight, but every once in a while we witnessed what
seemed to be a tiny ice cube splinter off the side of the glacier and make an
enormous sound.
We walked a few kilometers around the boardwalk trying to
get in all of the possible views before deciding to sit down in a
wind-protected area and make our lunch. We had brought bread, prosciutto,
cheese, and avocados and had us some solidly spectacular sammiches. I seriously
think I could eat that every day for a week and not get tired of it. Maybe
longer.
As we finished up lunch, the weather seemed to start turning
a bit more sour. What had been a cloudless sky was now full of grey and white,
and the wind was whipping around a fair amount too. So we started heading back
to the parking lot. Along the way, we heard a large crashing sound, accompanied
by the small piece of ice in front of us that had calved off. And then, a huge
shelf of ice in the same spot fractured off for us… and with that, our visit
was complete. We hustled back to the car and drove back to El Calafate.
We were a bit short on cash, and the single ATM in town that
was functioning for us foreigners again was completely devoid of bills. So we
had to do some creative financing to figure out what we could pay for using
credit card and what we would use the little cash we had on hand for.
I’ve mentioned before about the blue dollar rate – the
“actual” exchange rate you can get for US cash money vs from the ATMs and banks.
It’s about a 40-50% increase in value. But because it’s so big, we continually
found ourselves trying to figure out how/when we could get cash and spend blue
dollars only. What should have been an enabler was actually making life more
difficult in practice.
We decided to splurge on a nice meal that night – we walked
into a ritzy little place and were easily the most underdressed group in the
place. On top of that, we were also the only ones of any color – you’ll recall
that the Argentinian folk are more or less all white with very little
noticeable native blood. But fortunately, we were served anyway. I wouldn’t
have served us. Riffraff.
The meal was excellent. Sharon and I shared a mixed grill
for two and out came a plate of lots of different cuts of meat excellently
cooked. The beef was exquisite, as was the chorizo and chicken. But we stopped
there. There was also a piece of blood sausage that neither of us dared touch,
as well as some random pieces that appeared to be intestines or veins or some
creepy entrail of some sort. It gives me the heebie-jeebies even thinking about
it.
When I told my friends a few months ago that I had booked a
hostel for our stays, both Renuka and Sharon were a bit worried because the
hostels they stayed in years ago were basically large rooms with scores of dorm
beds side by side. We had two sets of bunks in a private room, albeit with a
shared bath in the hallway. On top of that, the hostel had character and was
cute and homey. But all three of them seemed pretty happy with the
accommodations. In retrospect, for the same money we probably could have booked
a proper room in a hotel, but we definitely wouldn’t have had the interactions
with other travelers that we had over breakfast or in the evening. Those
interactions are part of what makes traveling a special experience, for me at
least. Fortunately, my friends agreed and gave me our hostel a seal of
approval.
Monday, February 10th, 2014
We hopped on a bus this morning to Puerto Natales in Chile.
It is more or less impossible to go to Torres del Paine national park, which is
in Chile, directly from El Calafate, in Argentina. So everyone is pretty much
forced to spend at minimum a day on either end of their visit in Puerto
Natales. This is a shame because Puerto Natales is a bit of a dumpy little
town. While I wasn’t a fan of El Calafate because it was a bit too commercial,
Puerto Natales was the opposite – it looked like they weren’t even trying to
make an effort to look decent for all the visiting tourists.
The ride in was largely uneventful, except that the customs
& immigrations for the two countries weren’t really coordinated and we had
to make two stops. I’m not entirely sure why they wouldn’t simplify for
everyone involved and combine into one building like they’ve done at multiple
other crossings.
When we arrived at Puerto Natales, the weather wasn’t nearly
as nice as it had been in El Calafate. Fortunately though, it wasn’t raining so
we took the long way to our hostel and walked there through the back streets of
the town. I’m fairly certain my friends were wondering why we were in the
middle of nowhere walking on these creepy streets with randomly unfinished
sidewalks and intersections, interspersed with seedy looking nightclubs and a
shipping container that had been turned into a home, with a strange front
sunroom addition.
When we got to the new hostel, Yaganhouse, my friends
quickly gave me the seal of approval on this place too. It was very comfortable
and homey. We had a private 4-bed room though with shared bathrooms again. But
it had a lot of character, as did the hostel mascot, an unbelievably adorable
string-mop lookalike dog named Mimi. She took a liking to me quickly and we
were quickly engaged in a wrestling match as I tried to hog-tie her feet
together and she nipped at my hands to try to get me to let go. I’m looking
forward to doing the same roughhousing with my own dogs pretty soon.
We hadn’t eaten much all day, and it was late afternoon at
this point so we headed to the square to grab a pizza at a restaurant I had
eaten at last time I was in town called Mesita Grande, named as such because
they have very large communal tables. It’s not a very original name, but it’s
even better pizza.
On our way there, we stopped by the bus company to buy our
return tickets to El Calafate for the coing Saturday. When we first went in,
they said they only had 2 seats left. This would put us in a bit of a quandary
since the later bus with a different agency would be cutting it too close for
our connecting flight. So we made a plan to split up and Kishore and Renuka
went back to claim those 2 seats. Then, when they were getting the seats,
Renuka noticed that there were 4 slots available on the passenger log and
pointed that out to the snarky little witch who was behind the counter. She
agreed there were enough seats but refused to hold them for us until we had all
of our documents there for her to look at and all of the money paid up. So
Kishore sat in the office while we ran back to the hostel to get everything.
That little girl – she acted like a power-tripping 15 year old and I was really
angry with her. She had been very snarky with me a month ago too when I was
asking about departure dates and times, but unfortunately theirs was the only
bus leaving at 7am.
A couple of the guys at the hostel helped us figure out what
we needed to pack for the upcoming 4 day/3 night hike. But once we told them
that we were staying at the refugios, they more or less dismissed us. But yeah
– the Torres del Paine national park is probably the best known portion of
Patagonia owing to the staggering rock towers (or “torres”) and stunning
panoramas. The classic backpacker-style way to do this is to carry your own
gear and food for either the smaller 4-5 day W circuit (because the trail in
total looks like a “W” shape) or the 8-9 day full hike which loops around the
less traveled back side of the mountain range completing a full circuit. The
refugios are essentially small hostels scattered across the W circuit that
basically cover your room and board for the astronomical fee of around $100-120
per day per person. Almost every person I had met on my trip to date had
carried their own food and gear, so we were definitely doing the pansy method.
Given that Kishore, Renuka, and Sharon had not been exercising as much as me
(since I’m traipsing around and they are in the office) and at least two of
them had never carried their own packs before, the pansy method really just made
sense for us as a group. And I suppose it gave me a good excuse to pansy-out as
well.
Kishore had also brought me a bag of goodies from my house
that I was eagerly anticipating, most importantly, a small backpack. The
daypack I was using came with my large 90L mega-backpack and was really quite
crappy for anything extended. On top of that, it was falling apart and I had
already had to sew it up a few times. And it was definitely far from being
waterproof. The one he brought to me was a backpack that I had just gotten from
Kickstarter (if you haven’t used this website, it’s awesome). And the pack
ended up being pretty incredible too – Sharon’s already decided that she’s
going to order one. It’s called the Bootlegger and it’s sold by Boreas Gear (http://boreasgear.com/product-cat/bootlegger/).
The reason for its awesomeness is that it somehow manages to feel incredibly
light – I think they designed the pack such that the weight uses your shoulders
as a pivot point to cantilever the weight to just above your butt, versus
pulling down on your shoulders or hips. And it’s just quite incredible.
Given the rapidly changing weather in the region as well as
how crappy the weather had been when I was here a month ago, we packed for the
cold and wet – rain pants, gaiters, rain jacket, spare change of clothes,
gloves, scarf/neck warmer, fleece, a few changes of clothes, toiletries, and a
few snacks.
For dinner tonight, we wandered a bit to try and find
something decent. Ultimately, we ended up picking a place called El Loving (or
something weird like that) which was a vegan café. Kishore was overjoyed since
he’s a vegetarian (and a good Hindu). Actually, the rest of us didn’t seem to
mind it either since the food was pretty good and didn’t taste like cardboard.
Tuesday, February 11th, 2014
It took about 3 hours to drive up to the park. It was a bit
cloudy this morning and the windows were pretty fogged up, but we could clearly
see the park in the distance. Somehow, most of the land approaching the park is
flat and ranchland, so you can see the mountains in the distance. At the park
entrance itself, which was still a good 15 minutes from the mountains, we could
even see the famous towers themselves, though it was a bit obscured by some
clouds and the nearby mountains.
At the entrance, we pay a fee and watch a video and then
load up in a park bus to go to Torres Central, the refugio that we will be
staying at. We finally get there around 11am and check in. The weather was
absolutely gorgeous by this point – beautifully sunny, though quite windy.
After about an hour, we leave a lot of our stuff at the
refugio and combine everything else into two packs, including a boxed lunch
that appears to have been put together rather hastily. The front desk told us
to go to the dining room to get the box lunch, who then pointed us back to the
front desk, who then… it took about 5 exchanges for them to realize that this
wasn’t a error in translation. So they put sandwiches together with whatever
was left in the kitchen. As the designated pack horse, I had eight bags of
trail mix, eight oranges, four bottles of water, and four sandwiches in my
pack.
Finally, we were off, though we weren’t quite sure where the
trailhead actually was. So we headed in the general direction of where we
thought the trail might start and eventually got there, after passing a
campsite and another large building that appeared to be a 4-star hotel.
The beginning of the trail was a slow steady climb up a
hill. Even though we were getting quite a late start, there were still a ton of
other hikers on the trail with us – some with full backpacks, others with
daypacks, and others with nothing. There were a handful of young kids traveling
with their parents as well.
It didn’t take long before I was quite a bit ahead of the
rest, undoubtedly owing to the much higher amounts of hiking practice I had
over the previous weeks and months. I stopped about halfway up the mountain to
wait for the rest, and then started back up again towards the pass. Upon
reaching the pass, the trail was downhill from there, but we were fighting
ungodly amounts of wind – it was almost harder to walk downhill against the
wind instead of the uphill climb we had just completed. But the scenery went
from kinda boring to a stunning river valley with the smaller Refugio Chileno
out ahead of us. We had initially tried to get rooms at Chileno for this
evening, but they were sold out.
We stopped at the refugio to catch our breath after a little
more than 2 hours of hiking and to eat our lunches a little late. The lunches
were not much to write home about – in fact, in retrospect, we definitely
should have bought groceries in Puerto Natales and packed our own, saving a
fairly large bundle in the process.
The next hour of hiking was mostly flat but with some short
uphill spots through a wooded area – we were headed up the valley for an hour
to a spot where we would take a rather abrupt left turn to go straight up the
side of the hill. Up to this transition point, we were mostly together as a
group. But the uphill was a bit strenuous, especially the second half which was
more bouldering than hiking.
I reached the top by 4pm, and as I rounded the last bend, a
large lake appeared in front of me, surrounded in the back with the three
massive iconic Torres: Norte, Central, and Sur. Unfortunately, the towers also
had a backdrop of clouds accompanied with an intermittent spray of light rain
flying in with the very strong wind. I found a nice little spot to nestle in
and soak up the view. Fifteen minutes later, Kishore joined, followed by Renuka
and Sharon within the following 15 minutes.
We sat and stared and took pictures for the next half hour,
all the while hoping that the cloudiness would clear up to give us a crystal
clear view. While we got a few small patches of blue, it wasn’t a whole lot
unfortunately.
Before long, we needed to head back. It was 5pm and we
needed to walk all the way back to where we started. The hike in took roughly 4
hours, so we were looking at a pretty late dinner. While we knew that dinner
starts at 7:30, we weren’t sure when it ended. Additionally, Kishore had a
passport issue that he had to clear up with the refugio, so we needed to get
back sooner than later. Kishore and I more or less ran down the hill back to
Refugio Chileno and then continued at a pretty brisk pace back to the Torres
Central refugio where we started. I didn’t stop the entire way and ended up
getting back around 7:15, and Kishore was only about 20 minutes behind me. I
was a bit worried about Sharon and Renuka though, especially because getting
down the boulders was very time-consuming for them.
I learned that dinner service was supposed to end at 9pm.
The menu on the blackboard read “Asado”, so I was pretty excited that we were
having a nice steak. The hunks of meat
on the other plates were pretty massive too. At about 8:30, Kishore and I
decided to not wait any further and just get our food. My steak came out…
except that it was a thick slice of meatloaf. And for some reason, they thought
it would be interesting to stick a hot dog through the meatloaf in the middle…
so I had a section of an Oscar Meyer wiener. It wasn’t very good, of course.
As the clock neared 9pm, I let the desk know that Renuka
& Sharon hadn’t made it yet, and they worked with the kitchen to hold a few
dinners aside for them. I had told myself that at 9:15pm, I was going to down
the beer I was having and just go back out and start looking for them – from
the end of the trail to the towers weren’t very well marked, so I was worried
they took a wrong turn somewhere. But they showed up 5 minutes before my
“deadline”, in pretty good spirits. It turns out that they stopped at Chileno
on the way and had a snack and a long break. And they walked back together all
the way, which was more time consuming because Renuka’s was a slow hiker on
entirely different types of terrain than Sharon. So they effectively slowed one
another down. But no matter – they were happy. And now that we’ve seen the glacier
and the towers, Sharon had essentially deemed the entire trip a success already,
even though we still had the better part of a week to go yet.
Wednesday, February 12th, 2014
We left at about 10am, primarily because check-out time was
9:30am and we couldn’t really linger and longer. So we put our full daypacks
on, mine included the lunches again plus leftover fruits & trail mixes from
the day before, and headed west along a relatively flat stretch of land. Our
scenery for the first part of this trail was a massive mountainside to our
right that was impressive, but not necessarily awe-inspiring.
For the first hour, we were together as a group. I made sure
to not be in the lead, since I was the fastest hiker by far and this seemed to
work well. Sharon tended to lag behind a bit, so we stopped after an hour to
rest, regroup, and have a piece of chocolate from today’s boxed lunch. We also
stared a bit at the sky, which was mostly blue but had the occasional strangely
shaped cloud. The clouds were very thin in spots, almost like a dusting or a
gentle Bob Ross brush stroke, and then heavy in other spots nearby.
When we started up again, we were faced with some extremely
strong winds (>70 mph) and I found myself at the front. With this wind, the
best way to hike was with your head down while trudging forward. So I did that
for the next hour until I came to a nice stopping point – it was just after a
somewhat strenuous climb up a hill that reached a cable bridge over a small
rock stream. There was a short climb after the cable bridge and I chose to
perch there to wait for my friends because it offered a great view.
I waited for 30 minutes and didn’t see a sign of anyone
coming, so I guessed that they must have stopped earlier for a break. The wind
had died down and I was almost baking in the sun, so I decided to get back on
the trail. The mountain to the right had changed a bit – it was a different
mountain with two really dark peaks atop larger white masses of rock that then
changed back to dark rock below. It was quite magnificent to look at.
After hiking a bit more than an hour, I stopped again to
wait for my friends. It was nearing 2pm and I thought I’d stop for lunch and I
was certain that they were hungry as well. I found a cozy little spot where a few
other hikers had chosen to relax for extended rests as well. After eating my
sandwich, I contemplated getting back up and moving, but I stuck around
figuring that it’s now or never to get them their lunches.
After waiting a little more than an hour, I started asking
other hikers if they had seen 3 brown people. Finally, one of them said yes –
that they were filling up water perhaps 10 minutes behind so I walked the trail
back and found Renuka shortly thereafter. We returned to the spot I had stopped
at and I transferred snacks and lunches to her. All in all, they were 90
minutes behind me at this point, but I was antsy and I just needed to get moving again.
The next refugio was called Refugio Los Cuernos, named after
the abruptly colored mountain peaks I described earlier. I reached this refugio
about 90 minutes later and it was packed with people staying in the campsite as
well as in the dorms. We weren’t staying here either because they were fully
booked up when we tried to make reservations. Instead, we were staying at a new
installation called Refugio Frances that was another hour down the trail.
After getting directions from one of the employees, I went
ahead and started walking again. It was a little after 5pm at this point and I
didn’t know how much further the new site really was nor did I know what time
dinner was supposed to be served, so I figured getting there sooner than later
might be a reasonable idea.
The trail went downhill for a bit, all the way to a nice
little beachfront by a lake that had formed at the bottom of the mountainside –
the signs said that this was at sea level. A few people were relaxing here on
the beach, but I figured I’d get to the refugio and then possibly return on a
short hike with my sandals and a towel. Though it was hot and sunny out, the
water was still quite freezing.
The trail continued forward normally for a bit before
hitting a massively steep incline. After fighting this incline for the next 10
minutes, I realized that any chance of returning to the beach was unlikely at
best. Finally, I saw a sign pointing to Refugio Frances to the left,
downhill. I followed the direction of the sign to a small footpath that didn’t
appear very well-worn. After a few minutes, this path hit a dirt road and I saw
some small domes on what appeared to be an active construction site.
I knew that this refugio was brand new, but I had expected
it to be fully functional and lots of other people around. Instead, I arrived
and was greeted by the wonderfully beautiful Josefa, who proceeded to tell me
that we were the only guests there. She showed me to the dome we would be
staying in, which had two showers, two toilets, and one sink for the 8 beds
that were there. Apparently, this was the only working bathroom on site, as the
construction workers periodically ran in here to use the bathroom as well.
I’m still a bit baffled as to why you’d only install one
working sink. It seems to me that two should be a bare minimum. In fact, I’m
sure there’s something published out there about this – in public or shared
facilities, I could imagine that there very well could justifiably be more
stalls than sinks. But upon further contemplation, I would think that it should
near a 1:1 ratio, with a minimum # of sinks at all time being 2. The Excel
formula would probably be something like max(2,0.75T) where T is the number of
toilets.
Yes, these are the things that I think about. And you should
have realized this about me by now.
After taking a quick shower to cleanse myself of the sweaty
mess I had become, I tried to figure out what the heck to do next. I had asked
sweet beautiful purrfect Josefa if there was another dome somewhere that we could
retreat to with scented candles, massage oil, and Barry White on the sound
system, but unfortunately there was not. It was about 6:45pm by this point and
I needed to do something or go somewhere – there wasn’t even really a place to
sit down because everything was really still under construction.
So I headed back up the trail in my sandals and decided I’d
walk forward a bit to see what was coming up in the morning. I went about 10
minutes and came to a clearing with a positively gorgeous view of the Los
Cuernos peaks. To the left of these peaks was the French Valley that we would
be hiking up in the morning, bordered on the other side by a magnificent
snow/ice-capped peak. There were clouds up there, but there were strong winds
was pushing them against the peak, which was almost parting the clouds as this
happened. So you could see white on one side and a streak of blue within that
white on the other. I, unfortunately, had left my camera behind in the dome.
I returned to the campsite by about 7:30 and my friends had
all arrived by this point and had started to shower and clean up. All in all, I
had hiked significantly faster than they had – the 6 hour hike would have been
closer to a 5 hour hike for me (after excluding the waiting), but it took them
closer to 9 hours. That’s not to say that they were this slow, it’s that they
knew they had lots of time and they spent it along the hike – as Renuka had
told me earlier, they were “dilly-dallying” quite a bit. This was actually a
pretty smart plan, especially considering that there was absolutely nothing to do at the
Frances refugio.
What I definitely learned today was that my mode of hiking is to
get the hike done quickly and efficiently and then find a nice spot to relax
and soak in the view. I think for me, there is an athletic component of hiking
that I also enjoy, so moving fast and pushing my body is part of what I look
forward to with these hikes. In either case, something would have to change for
the next few days because I didn’t want to hike and soak alone – that was the
whole reason of having friends with me. If today repeated itself for two more
days, perhaps I would have been better off carrying a full pack and camping.
Heck, I could have joined my Antarctica friends Chelsea and Celine to do the very
strenuous 9-day full circuit hike instead.
And so we had a mini-festivus that evening over
dinner in the barely constructed dining room, as we aired our concerns and
grievances to one another. I don’t fault my friends one bit – they spent a ton
of money to come down here and have every right to enjoy their vacations as
well. We just needed to talk through how to manage our differing styles and expectations.
Among us all, we had four very different types of hiking personalities: a very
fast hiker w/ minimal dilly-dallying, a very slow hiker w/ minimal
dilly-dallying, a medium hiker w/ maximum dilly-dallying, and a medium-to-slow
hiker who is equally happy to dilly-dally or not dilly-dally.
After dinner, we returned to our dome and ended up getting
an early sleep. There really just wasn’t anything to do around here, and we
knew we had a very long day ahead of us and could use the rest.
Thursday, February 13th, 2014
Owing to the conversation last night, I tried my best to
stay towards the back of the group as much as possible this morning and was
mostly successful at that. It took us about an hour to get to Campamento
Italiano, which was a campsite at the base of the French Valley. There, we left
two packs and put almost everything into my pack before continuing onwards.
From this campsite, we had about a 3 hour walk to the
mirador point deep in the valley, and then would have 3 hours of hiking just to
return to this point. A significant portion of the first part of the hike was
up and around all sorts of rocks boulders – frequently, it was difficult to
figure out exactly where the actual path was, but it helped that there were
lots of others hiking as well. These rocks split us up a bit, particularly
Sharon who took her time and had a stated intention of not going all the way to
the mirador so that she could make it to our next refugio before dinner. As we
were walking up these rocks & boulders, we could hear the portions of the
glacier calving – it sounded like thunder or an avalanche, but if we saw
anything, it was a snowy ice mixture creating what appeared from a distance to
just be a temporary waterfall.
After about an hour of the bouldering, we got to a flatter
area of the mountain and had a bit of a walk before a large mirador appeared in
front of us – lots of people were stopping here for pictures and a rest,
ourselves included. The wind was quite minimal today and there were almost no
clouds in the sky, so it didn’t take long before we were hot and wanted to
continue forward.
The next hour was mostly under the shade of small trees – it
was relatively flat as well, with only the occasional hill to climb. Overall,
we were gaining in elevation, but not a ton. After about an hour, we came to a
campsite that had no one in it – it was either just abandoned or people just
didn’t see a need to camp here. I’m thinking it could be the latter since the
Italiano campsite is not that far away.
After passing through the campsite that wasn’t there, the
trail turned right and went up a pretty steep incline of dirt and rocks for the
next 30 minutes towards the final destination, Mirador Britanico. We couldn’t
exactly tell where we were headed, but finally we could see people perched atop
a rock about 100ft away from us and we knew we must be there. We climbed atop a
different rock and sat and stared – for a full 270 degrees, we were surrounded
by an amphitheater of incredible mountains. And none of them looked the same.
The other 90 degrees of view were directly behind us and we could see the
valley we had just spent the morning hiking.
So Renuka, Kishore, and I sat down to eat. The lunch smelled
a bit funny, but I took a bite anyway. Then I realized why it tasted funny – it
was a disgusting tuna fish sandwich. I immediately wrapped mine back up and started
asking our hiking neighbors if they wanted a free sandwich. No takers. Renuka
got through about a third of hers. Kishore was quite happy with his vegetarian
sandwich, even though a good 85% of it was pure bread.
About 30 minutes later, Sharon shows up, so I hand her her sandwich,
which she proceeded to have three bites of before being disgusted. After a
little while, Sharon asks us if we’re going to keep going to the final
viewpoint – upon hearing that we were there, she was actually a bit disappointed
that she had walked so far, because that meant that she could have turned
around sooner. Nevermind that the view we had from this location was so
ridiculously good. It was quite probably the best viewpoint of the entire trip.
After a few minutes, Sharon turns around to start heading
back and then Renuka does the same 15 minutes later. Kishore and I hang around
for another 15 minutes before doing the same. In that time, some French people
show up at the mirador and I notice they are trying split up the small amount
of trail mix they have amongst them. Sensing an opening, I offer them the tuna
sandwiches and they immediately decide that I’m their best friend and take
pictures with me. All for a crappy tuna sandwich.
On the way back, I got the brilliant idea of trying my hand
at pseudo-trailrunning to see just how fast I could make it back to the
campsite at the beginning of the valley. Though I had left 30 minutes after
Renuka, I caught up to her and Sharon after only 30 more minutes. Then I went
for another 45 minutes before deciding that the trailrunning idea was dumb. So
I found a tree that was holding on to the cliffside for dear life and leaned up
against it to take a picture so that I could give my mother a heart-attack. Sharon
caught up after a little while, and we walked back to the campsite together.
We still had a 3 hour hike to get to the lodge we were
staying at that evening and it was already after 3pm. The hike back was mostly
uninteresting, except for fields of charred trees. I believe a few years back,
a campfire got out of control and burned down an ungodly amount of acreage –
this must be part of where that happened.
The other memorable thing was that it was unbearably hot.
There was almost no wind and the sun was just beating down on us. For that
reason, I went ahead and walked ahead – Sharon’s comfortable speed and my
comfortable speed are very different. Getting a shower a full hour earlier was
worth it.
Friday, February 14th, 2014
Kishore hadn’t slept very well at all because his allergies
were acting up in a big way, and Sharon had told us that she was all-around
tired and that she only wanted to do enough of the trail to be able to say that
she did the “W”… the only question in her mind was how far up do you need to go
to make it look like a “W” instead of an odd-looking “U”. So today would likely be a bit scattered as far as our hiking group was concerned.
We got started somewhere around 9:30am and had calculated
that our turn-around time was 1pm… meaning wherever we each are at 1pm, that’s
when we have to turn around to give us enough time (with some buffer) to be
ready for the first catamaran that evening to start our return journey to Puerto Natales.
The weather was quite perfect this morning, perhaps a little
too perfect even, because every lookout point we got to, we stopped for a
while. I suppose it didn’t hurt that we happened to be stopping with some other
hikers who were going at the same pace as us, and I found one of them to be pretty
darn cute too. It probably goes without saying that women who actively hike
tend to have nice stems. I’ve been impressed. I need to hike more often in
foreign countries.
Before long, Kishore’s lack of sleep caught up with him and
he stayed back to nap at one of the miradors, while Renuka and I trudged
onwards. Renuka was actually ahead of me because I had stopped to get some
water and it took a long while to catch up to her – within the span of these
few days, she has become a much faster hiker overall.
The miradors looked out over a lake and far-off mountains. A
few of them had chunks of frozen ice that had broken off of the glacier
upstream, but for the first 90 minutes or so, we still hadn’t seen any sight of
the glacier itself. And then we had a short climb and got to a mini-mountain
pass and we could see it far off in the distance, partially obscured. It
definitely looked neater than any glacier we had seen yet in this park, but I
think we were all a bit spoiled by the massiveness of Perito Moreno outside of
El Calafate.
Renuka and I eventually got to a stretch that was a very
steep downhill stretch – which explained the scores of panting and gasping
hikers going the opposite direction. It hit us then that the way back might be
more difficult.
Renuka and I got to our destination, the Grey Lodge, just
before 1pm and it was a bit anticlimactic. We asked around and were told that a
mirador was only about 10 minutes away, so we opted to walk a bit further (and
stretch the 1pm turnaround time rule). After all, it would have been a crying
shame to walk this far and eat our lunches on the front porch of a secluded
lodge that has a view of nothing really.
The mirador on the other hand was quite nice. We found a
spot to sit and watch near the sign that said “mirador” and had a few bites of
our sandwiches. Then we noticed that there was a massive rock jutting out
closer towards the glacier and wondered if we could get closer. As we walked
towards it, it was clear that getting out there would require some minor
climbing and scrambling, which I definitely didn’t want to pressure Renuka
into. So we agreed to split up and I’d catch up with her on the way back.
The rock formation was right up my alley – I love this type
of climbing and scrambling around. There were a handful of our hikers out here
as well, but the winds were whipping around at a pretty good pace here too and
needed to be kept in consideration. I finally found a nice little indented spot
in the rock to plant and lie back for a few minutes to enjoy the view and the
rest of my lunch.
The way back wasn’t too bad – Renuka had about a 15-minute
headstart on me and we met up shortly after the steep climb. From there, she
was largely outpacing me the rest of the distance. She must have gotten her
second wind or something, because she was making much better time on the return
than on the way in. We ended up getting back by around 4:30pm, which was more
than enough since the catamaran was scheduled to leave at 6:30pm. Fortunately
for us, an earlier catamaran loaded up at 5:30pm and we were able to squeeze
onto that one.
The catamaran ride was less than an hour in total, but
offered some wonderful views of all of the mountains we had been hiking up and
around the past few days. The views from up top of the boat were beautiful, but
it was cramped standing room only so Sharon and I opted to stay downstairs.
When we got to the other side of the lake, we found our bus company operator
and he opted to put us all in a smaller van instead of a bus for the return
trip to Puerto Natales.
As we drove towards the park exit in our 15-person minivan,
we all started feeling pangs of nostalgia. It was hard to believe that this
magnificent park that we had toiled around for the past 4 days was leaving us
to become a faded memory. I completely understand why people rave about
Patagonia – it really is different than anywhere else I’ve been before. The
landscapes are fabulous and very varied, and it’s really all quite accessible
(during this time of year).
I’m fairly certain that if I return to any of these
countries again in the near future, Patagonia will be atop the list. I
definitely want to do the full 8-9 day circuit with my own pack, and I also
want to explore some of the lesser traveled trails around the rest of the park.
Judging by the trail maps, there’s probably enough for 2 full weeks really. And
then there are still other areas north of Fitz Roy in Argentina that are worth
exploring as well.
We got back to Puerto Natales earlier than we expected, so
we dropped our bags off at the hostel and decided to go get some food. The food
at each of the refugios was definitely lacking in taste and quality, so we
figured we may as well go out and enjoy tonight. The only concern was that
tonight was our last night in Chile so we wanted to get rid of whatever pesos
we had left.
I had remembered walking by a nice place in the corner of
town that appeared to be more of a foodie-type of place called Aldea, so we
headed there. After seeing the menu, we were very impressed and excited, but it
was clear that we were going to be cutting it close. I had a grilled wild hare
loin or something strange like that, and it was remarkably tasty and well
cooked. The others were raving about their meals as well. When all was said and
done, our bill + tip came out to 59,000 Chilean pesos, which was precisely the
amount of money we had left on us. Perfect.
Saturday, February 15th, 2014
So long, Patagonia, and thanks for all the fish.
In the end, I’m very grateful that my friends came out and joined me on
this trip. As I think I had mentioned before, I had hit travel fatigue right
around the new year, and while Antarctica kept things different for those three
weeks, this trip and everything involved with it mixed it up for the rest of
the time, so it salvaged part of the trip for me in a way. And frankly, all
super experiences are better when spent amongst family, friends, or loved ones.
Tidbits
1.
Some Spanish words are almost identical whereas
others are nowhere close… this bites me in the butt every once in a while. I
asked other people on two different hikes where the best spot to watch a
sunrise, or “sonrisa”, was, only to get a curious stare in return. Then my
Google translate app informed me that “sonrisa” means “smile”. Stupid gringos.
2.
Special thanks to Kishore for cracking up even
at the tiniest of sarcastic comments. I had no idea I was so damn hilarious. At
one point in the journey, we were bored and the girls told Kishore to read my
last blog post aloud, which Kishore had downloaded onto his phone. Apparently,
reading my blog takes twice as long for him because he’s laughing too much.
3.
Another note on Kishore – I noticed early on
that he was making videos of seemingly mundane things, like the briefing in
Spanish that we got from the Torres del Paine park rangers. Before I made fun
of him too much, I asked him why he does that. His response was that his family
back home loves to watch these things because it makes sharing the experience
much more real, and that his grandmother will never see someone speaking
Spanish. For his gramma. Ya can’t make fun of that. Dang it, Kishore! I used to
love snickering at Asians (starting with my own momma) who videotaped everything. And now you ruined that. Jerk.
4.
By the way, laughing is good exercise – you
should try it. Even if it’s gratuitous, belt out a hearty laugh. If memory
serves, Julia took a laughing class when we lived in Boston. I thought it was
nuts. She just thought it was funny.
5.
I hate the plastic napkins that many
establishments choose to set on the tables instead of proper napkins.
Seriously, they’re plastic, meaning the absorption quality rivals that of
stainless steel. I guess this plastic napkin is cheaper or something – they
should just save more money and tell you to wipe your face on your sleeve like
God intended. Has oil seriously gotten so cheap that it’s that much easier to
extrude plastic napkins than to cut down a tree, mash up he pulp, shoot the
pulp at a high speed wire mesh to form a sheet, dry the sheet via a sequence of
pressure rollers and hot air dryers, wind the sheet onto a large core into
massive parent rolls, store the parent rolls for who knows how long, unwind the
parent roll into a new machine, emboss a pattern, decorate/print, slit the
sheet into the correct widths, fold the sheets, cut the sheets into the correct
lengths, bundle multiple napkins into a single sell unit, wrap plastic around
the sell unit, bundle multiple sell units into a pallet, wrap the pallet to
keep it from toppling over, and then distributing it from there? Don’t answer
that. And no, I did not work in the paper manufacturing business for 7 years.
Okay, I lied.
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