Patagonia - Installment the First

Trips to the end of the Earth should probably take a decent amount of planning. Should. There are many reasons why our particular adventure was a success...and there are many more reasons why it should not have been. Should.

Before you start judging... let me just say that we did try and plan. Not at first, or at last, but somewhere in the middle. It all started when... (cue swiggly music and kaleidoscopic special effects)

We had been shooting the breeze for some time, talking about an excursion to Tierra del Fuego, the Land of Fire, when one day someone said, "Hey, let's get together tonight. Bring your guide books and we'll look and see what there is to do down South." Before we knew it, tickets had been purchased and commitments made. We hit a snag immediately. Someone bought their ticket the next morning, and for almost $100 less. Then other group members made attempts to switch flights for the cheaper tickets. In the end, one member's arrival time was close to twelve hours before the rest of the group, two people were heading back to Santiago on Sunday, one Tuesday before the sun rose, three around noon, and the last two Tuesday evening. An effort at another planning party was made a few days later, and we finalized some seemingly-executive decisions about where, and in what order, we were going to spend our time in Patagonia.

The day of the departure, we all planned on meeting at a metro station where a transit bus would take us to the airport. We had a beer at the airport, because when have we ever been able to do that, while waiting for the 8th member of our team and made it all the way to the terminal, but Paco still hadn't shown up. As it would happen, he was too late in arriving, and the airline had already sold his ticket. He would catch the 5:00 am flight in the morning. It was slightly past midnight when we arrived in Punta Arenas, and since Lee had had a much earlier flight that day, we took a taxi to the hostel she had already found. The owners had flutes and a guitar or two out that they let us dabble with. Ryan is an avid and excellent jazz guitar player, and it had been so long since I'd played a flute...but our jam session didn't last long seeing as the flute head didn't fit into the body, almost at all really (i.e. there was no way it would be in tune), and even if Ryan tuned the guitar to my flute (which he did), some of the keys didn't function, so quite a few notes were simply not an option. We, except Lee who would wait for Paco and meet us later, awoke early the following morning, Thursday to be exact, to catch a bus headed for Puerto Natales, a bit farther North. We thought we had planned this fairly well, actually. We heard that it was best to buy tickets around 7:30, but the office didn't even open until 8:00, and in our impatient, or curious, waiting, Ryan and Megana thought it best to find the other bus company in the vicinity and check out their prices. Miraculously their fare was cheaper and they had a bus ready to leave right away. The only problem was that we had to book it (make haste) over to the other station. The only other problem was that Meggie and Ryan had left their backpacks with us. So we donned extra gear and, literally, ran in the direction of the other location. I choose 'direction' because we didn't know the precise address, per se, of the transportation company, so every street we ran across got scoped out, left and right, for anything resembling a bus station. Meg and Ryan had bought our tickets and as soon as we had our belongings below the bus, we were moving. Ideally, upon arrival to Puerto Natales we would have time to eat a refreshing lunch, gather necessary food items and rent camping gear before the next bus would deliver us to Parque Nacional Torres del Paine. When we exited the bus station in PN, a nice, Chilean couple (because as we found, and you will soon find, everyone in Chile is pleasant and helpful and angelic...except the taxi men outside the airport in Santiago...) greeted us and said, "All the public buses to Torres del Paine have left. Do you need transportation?" So we followed them to their office on the other side of town, which was the equivalent of a 5 minute walk in PN, and signed up for the 2:30 bus to the park. It was the last bus of the day, so Paco and Lee would have to wait till the next morning for a bus to the park. Then we ate a refreshing lunch, gathered necessary food stuffs and rented camping gear.

(Punta Arenas is the bottom left bunch of letters and Puerto Natales is the group of letters that stars with a P just above and a tad to the left of PA)

Never have I seen more gorgeous scenery. The drive to the park was awe inspiring, impressive, and I felt like a kid that was told she would get a free ice cream and received seven. I knew it was going to be good, but it was so much more. Patagonia does not disappoint.

(mountain!)

(These photos are nothing. Just wait... )

It took a little longer to get our gear together than it should have (oh, there goes that word again). And it took a little longer still to actually set a pace on the trail. A guanaco (more popularly known as the llama-giraffe-deer-camel in our circle of campers) posed for us, and we took some photos of it and of the mountain. We saw this huge mountain almost the entire second half of the drive, and low-and-behold, it ended up being the very mountain that we would be hiking towards and camping next to. Everyone was so excited and elated to finally be at the park that it didn't matter how heavy our packpacks were (yes, I said packpack), even if the two smallest girls in the group had to carry the tents and one of them (ahem...) already had the largest packpack of the group, we were ready for the challenges that lay ahead and ready to become one with Patagonia. We traded gear a little ways in (an excellent trade on my part particularly, a sleeping mat for the tent).

Darkness had started to creep in when we made it to the campsite, two hours later. We walked the wrong way and had to ford a river, Oregon Trail style. And by ford I mean walk across a 2x4, and by river I mean small stream. Finding the first open camping area, we began to set up the tents. Of course, the tent I had chosen to assist in pitching was completely ridiculous. For some unknown reason, and I'm sure God doesn't even know why, the poles were supposed to be ran through the rain tarp and the tent clipped on underneath. So of course we had already detached the tarp from the tent and were attempting to raise the tent until we discovered our mistake when we found nothing for the poles to run through. By now it was significantly darker, although not completely nightfall, and reattaching the tent to the tarp proved to be near impossible, but we did it. And as the last rays of sunlight hovered over the campsite, we found ourselves threading poles through what should have been tent, but was indeed, ridiculously, tarp. It was at this moment that the wind picked up. And by picked up, I mean increased approximately ten fold. We couldn't stake the corners into the ground, poles were coming undone, and we discovered another special secret to our precious tent: the holes that stakes were to be staked through were connected to the corners of the rain tarp and to each other by fabric that was not attached to either the sides of the tent or the rain tarp, so we had straps of fabric flowing free and consequently could easily get caught between the staking, threading and attaching of tent to tarp. The wind was blowing so hard now that it seemed literally impossible to pitch the thing where we had made, or were trying to make, camp. Hoisting the tent from its failed location, we transported it to a more secluded place where the wind would not be such a factor. However, in complete darkness, and with a previously unidentified, serious lack of flashlights, it didn't seem possible to construct a secure, functioning shelter in the given conditions.

And this is where our angel of Las Torres made her way into our story. She spoke miracle words that ears were not capable of comprehending; one can only understand the language of miracle words by recognizing that the being who speaks them is other-worldly and brings gifts of unimaginable convenience. "We have six free tents already set up that you can use for tonight." ...You don't believe it. That's okay. It happened. When word got round to all of us, the ruins of tents were scooped up and discarded into one of the six (!) extra (!) tents, which we affectionately called the "supply tent." Food went into another, becoming the "kitchen," and the six of us split into groups of two to complete a 4 "bedroom" "house," complete with garage/shed/supply area, what have you... Dinner was a feast of hotdogs and pancito (bread), followed by a hearty helping of Pisco, the hard liquor of choice for Chileans and Peruvians alike (but don't discuss the matter of its origin with either party, for the rivalry between Peru and Chile over the proper ancestry of the drink is more dangerous than that between the Capulets and the Montegues, Mohammed Ali and Joe Frazier, Rosie O'Donnell and Donald Trump, UT and A&M, Biggie and TuPac...). Everyone slept beautifully and sound in the magical, mysterious, miracle tents in preparation for a full, eventful and equally unimaginable day the next morning.

And here is where I pause. Be sure to catch the next episode, where our group reunites with the stragglers and conquers the Towers, Don Quixote style. Don't miss the action, the suspense, the photographs...tomorrow, same time, same place.