Patagonia: The Second and Final Installment

...And by "tomorrow" I mean a week. Again, apologies. Busy, busy, and this blog business is not small work. But without further ado, the completion of my Patagonia trip... (go ahead, read the last bit of the previous Patagonia entry; it has been a while, I know)


It was Friday, March 20 and we woke up in our rent-a-tents with a bright, shiny day ahead of us. From the Supply Tent we gathered up the unsuccessful tents from the night before and went in search of a prime camping location. We soon found it and began to raise shelters in a wind-free and well lit environment. After all the practice the night before, we had no trouble setting up the green tent, and as Megana was waking up we transferred our belongings into the new area. As part of a complete breakfast, we enjoyed pancito with salami, palta (avocado) and cheese.

After our breakfast of champions, Ana and I left camp in search of the meeting place where Lee and Paco would be dropped off by their bus. Remember that Paco had missed his flight (our flight) so Lee stayed in the hostel another night to wait for him. And today was the day we would all be reunited, the only problem was that we didn't know where they would be dropped off, or when. We really didn't have any clue, so at first the options were daunting. Here? There? Further over there? Soon? Later? Earlier? When we realized all the possibilities, Ana and I were a little concerned that we might have already missed them and perhaps they might have gone on to the next campsite, miles away. We narrowed down our options and were getting tired of waiting, when Ana decided to go tag someone else to come wait with me since she needed to pack her stuff for our hike soon. I watched a few buses pass, none containing my friends, and saw a few more park and let people out a little ways up the road. So I walked up to where it forked and continued to scan buses until I saw people waving frantically in one of them. Lee and Paco were so happy to see someone from our group there; I think they were probably worried that we would have a hard time finding each other as well. As we made our way back to the campsite, three others from our group met up with us and helped carry backpacks.

Over at the picnic table Ana had begun to make our lunches for the day. She had just started to make peanut butter and manjar (dulce de leche, its like caramel) sandwiches when she sliced her finger open with the Swiss Army knife. Luckily Ben has had EMT training so he cleaned, bandaged and instructed Ana on how to help it heal in the quickest fashion. The bandage was truly a work of art. Ana bled so much that she went through the first two within a 10 to 15 minute time span. We only had one left so after applying more pressure with toilet paper, the bleeding went down significantly. And with the final remaining band-aid, Ben dressed the wound and secured it with string. At first glance one might have thought that dear Ana Maria was trying her best to not forget something. What is it that you must remember Ana? Could it be to buy more band-aids? How about always cut away from yourself and others?

I finished up the lunches and by this time everyone was complaining that we were behind schedule. As if we ever really have a schedule... So we all ran around gathering water bottles and packing things into the mesh bags that our sleeping pads came in. Most people only had their huge backpacks, so the mesh bags were perfect for our few supplies. At the last minute, I remembered the trail mix ingredients that we had bought in Puerto Natales and made someone unlock the tent so I could get them. And with our group reunited, eight anxious, excited study abroad students made our way to the beginning of the hardest, most intense and satisfying hike any of us had yet completed.

Back at camp it had been shady and cold with the morning sun still relatively low in the sky and the morning dew still scattered on the ground, so we left with coats, sweaters, scarves, hats and Under Armor. But as we made our way down the path to the beginning of the real trail (a pre-trail, if you will), we began to shed clothing as the sun came beating down and we started to work up a little sweat. It wasn't long until scarves went into the sacks, sweaters got tied around waists, coats hung from day packs, pant legs got rolled up and sunscreen was applied. We felt a little silly for having so much extra baggage, but we were on our way, and would just have to deal with it.





The first part of the Mirador (trail) was obviously meant to weed out the frail, the children, the disabled, the acrophobics and those prone to heat sensitivity. It showed no mercy. My thighs haven't felt so much burn, or for so long, since my gymnastics days. Oh how I would have welcomed those repetitive squats and lunges to the happy and endorphin-giving but confidence-in-muscle-control-taking and bodily-strength-sapping stairway to hell we were on. At least in conditioning you knew how many more sets you had until you were done, and there was a way of quantifying the pain you endured for a workout. The mirador was seemingly endless, and there was no way to tell how high we were actually climbing. All in all it was becoming too much for Megana to handle. So finally she told us to go on without her, that she would just go at her own pace.

It wasn't actually much longer after that when the steep incline stopped and the trail leveled out for a while. But this mirador wasn't doing anyone any favors. While the grade became easier, the trail found itself on the edge of a steep cliff with wind gusts that made our previous night of tent attempts look like cake. But the natural high we earned from the first part of the trail had us in high spirits, and anything this trail could throw at us we could catch. We leaned into the wind at otherwise dangerous angles; we held onto our sunglasses when it made sudden attempts to swipe them; we shouted back primal screams when it roared and tested our endurance. It was so exhilerating to be over the first trial and to have the wind so alive, pushing and pulling every part of your body. It was dangerously exciting, strong enough that we had to pay better attention to what we were doing, but not strong enough to really throw us from the trail (although it tried a few times).

We passed the wind's challenges with flying colors and were rewarded with ice cold glacial spring runoffs. We had foolishly packed a relatively minuscule amount of hydration and, remembering that running water from glaciers was okay to drink, we unscrewed our caps and took turns waiting for Lee to straddle the stream and refill each of our 1.5 liters. I remember from a canoe trip with my Aunt Diana that a good rule of thumb for hiking is "when your bottle is half way empty, your hike is half way done." Going by this advice, we wouldn't have made it to the top of the first section. The streams we found along the way became symbols of support and fans cheering us on, "you're almost there, here take more water. You can do it!" And it was the most delicious water we had tasted, already chilled and ready for our enjoyment.

We had a tendency to split into two groups: Ana, Lee, Ryan and Paco in one, with Ansel, Ben and myself in the other. The irony of it was that the leaders of the group were the heavy smokers and the asthmatics. But that was just a testament to how much freaking energy Lee and Paco had. They would wait for us at random places and we would all walk along for the next few minutes as a large group, but with Ryan's rare ability to walk faster uphill than on a level plane, and Ansel and my obsession with photography, we would soon find ourselves split again.

When picnic tables emerged, they waited there for us and we all took a nice, relaxing break together. I whipped out the trail mix ingredients and proceeded to mix them together. I was glad I remembered because the trail mix would come to be a much loved, convenient and often demanded snack food. At this particular rest stop (shown above) we had our first real, up-close view of the Torres (the Towers). This was a very popular rest stop because it had a small restaurant, places to camp and horses tied up, with which I obviously had a small photo session.

This third section of the trail had come back down to the river and was mostly through the woods, although at a reasonable upgrade again. It wasn't as steep as the first, and it wasn't as windy as the second because of the trees, but I still managed to find areas of the path that made my thighs feel the burn again. After resting for a while near the horses, our sweat had cooled and we weren't kept warm by the constant workout, so we put some of our cold-weather gear back on. We didn't feel so silly that we had brought them now... The walk through the trees allowed us to hear each other since the wind was shielded, and between story-telling and joke-making we had sing-a-longs of old Disney songs from childhood. This was the longest portion of the trail and we passed many small streams.

A classy bridge. I did not judge, however, for I understood the necessity of finding one's building materials on site after such a laborious hike up the mountain. After a while longer, we stopped and had a late lunch of peanut butter and manjar sandwiches. It was a perfect combination of carbs, protein and sugars to keep our energy up. And we would need it because the last 30 minutes of the trail was a steep trek through boulders. When we finished lunch, we were freezing and finally justified in carrying all that weight from coats and the like. I very much appreciated my scarf, gloves and toboggan hat at that point.

A popular theme for group discussion was the threat of pumas. No, not the German shoe and sportswear company, but the species of large cat closely related to the cougar and mountain lion. I think technically "puma" is the genus and not the species, but never-mind. Our conversations consisted of creative ways to thwart a puma attack and to deter the large animals that were apparently a real threat in the park, as well as to come up with ingenious methods to prey on the said animals ourselves. The more successful of the former category being WD40 and a long-stem lighter. (just picture that for a minute and try not shiver with fear yourself). And for hunting purposes we imagined fashioning a spear-like instrument from our Swiss Army knives (seeing as they had already proved themselves successful in causing human bodily harm) and a large stick (something like that of Ben's walking stick which you can see if you look closely in some of the photos above). Another option was to build a trap, but we resolved that in the most likely scenario we would only end up capturing one of our own. And don't think for a second that we didn't have plans thought out for what we would do in the event that we did catch a puma. That was easily solved with an ethnic tribal celebration for the occasion of staying in the most bad-ass park in Patagonia. From items found in nature, as well as the skin from our puma, we would produce instruments as well as clothing and decorations. For initiation purposes for Lee and Paco, we would paint our faces and bodies with colors found in flowers and crushed colored rocks, and after this celebration would commence the puma hunting party. Following the success of our spears and natural hunting abilities we would roast the mountain cat over open flame and celebrate into the wee hours of the morning. I will conclude this topic with the quote that I believe started it all when Ryan said, "If the Apocalypse happens, I want it to happen while we're here. Then I'm going to kill a puma and smear its blood all over my face." Elaborate details and far-fetched plans were our groups specialty. Its a shame we didn't dedicate more of that brainpower to planning the real aspects of our trip.

Finally we had made it to the last 30 minutes of our 3.5 hour hike (one way) and after three hours of what we had already been through, there were times in this last stretch that I honestly believed I would not make it to the top. I was so exhausted and the climb was so consistent in its steep climb and troublesome rocks and boulders that one had to pay attention to. And I'm pretty sure that there are portions of this last section that I frankly just don't remember because I was so focused on pushing myself one more, one more, one more step. I took frequent breaks, but they were never very long because I was already the caboose of the group and just wanted to get to where everyone else was. Ben and Ansel stayed with me and kept my moral up. At last we made it over the last rocks and the view of the Torres was incredible. It was so worth it. At the foot of the Towers was a small, emerald-green lake that we had not previously known about, and it was a nice surprise that we weren't expecting to see.

Finishing the trail was such an amazing confidence booster, but it was humbling as well. I was so proud of myself for making it all the way to the top because this was, hands down, the most legit hike or outdoor excursion I had ever done. And I've done some impressive ones. We had passed through so many different climates and terrain to get here, heat, wind, rocks, woods, gravel, sand, cold... And because of that, I suddenly realized... I am in no way, this cool. How did I end up with this experience? I am not this legit. I was so blessed to be able to challenge myself and be rewarded with such a view. I don't know how many people get to view the mountains from where we stood, from our perspective, with our pride and accomplishment. We were now part of a select few, an elite club. So what did we do next? Took ridiculous poses with the Torres, duh.

Who is excited?

Ah, mermaid pose...

And a sacrifice to the tower gods of course.

There was a most legit cloud at the top. It looked like a marshmallow. Apparently its a very rare sight.

The hike back was so much more enjoyable. Most of it was downgrade, and we had such a high from reaching the summit that time was just flying. We had made it back to where we first refilled our water bottles, when Lee and Ansel decided to forge a new trail back home. They decided that they would climb down the hillside and follow the river back to the first bridge we crossed. And then there were five: Ryan, Ana, Paco, Ben and myself.

When we got back to the top of the first section, the view was incredible. It would best be described as undescribeable, but I'm going to try anyway. You could take in so much at one time. The rolling hills were more impressive than any I have ever seen; they had perfect dips and curves and went on forever. Mountains, lakes, sky, clouds...all at once; and knowing that we just attempted and succeeded in climbing one of them made me feel so much more a part of what I was viewing. It was mine.

I thought a lot on this hike about all those lessons from high school biology so many years ago, how plants reproduce, symbiotic relationships between plants and animals, how mountains form...and I could only wonder at why they are all here. Why do they produce in the ways that they do? Why do they have the shapes and colors they have? They live to reproduce and to supply animals with food, but what more? Why are they here and what is their purpose? And I can only say that I think the best answer for me to those questions is: that there absolutely is a higher power. That we need to slow down, conserve, go with the flow, thank the universe, and that you don't always have to know what you're up against, plans fall through, expectations can be wrong and you may surprise yourself sometimes.

And now that we are on the subject of surprises...when we got back to camp, Megana was there, and we expected to hear how she spent her day south of the mountain. But as it turns out, she had met some other girls that were going her pace and went all the way up to the base of the final rocky, vertical climb. She had made it back to camp only 20 to 30 minutes before we did.

So I changed while Ana and Paco started a fire and people began dinner. I lied down in the tent because I felt like a knife had been stabbed through my upper right thigh. As a group we decided that if Ansel and Lee hadn't made it back in 45 minutes that we would inform park authorities. They showed up within 20, and we heard all about how thorny the riverbanks were and how they had to climb right back up to the real trail.

During discussions of where we would consume dinner (our tent, their tent), exhaustion and crankiness poked their heads around camp for a while. In the end we ate in the other tent, killed a bottle of pisco and moved the fiesta outside the cramped quarters with a second bottle. We lied on the picnic table again, watching shooting stars, and decided to go for the third and final bottle. More Disney songs commenced, Ana's hotdogs from dinner returned for the festivities and I peed twice in the forrest, which was probably the very same distance from our camp that the actual bathrooms were. When I returned from my second bathroom break everyone was calling it a night. We had had a very eventful day and it would not take long before we were all fast asleep.

The next day was Saturday, the 21st of March. Everyone woke up a little groggy, but it wasn't anything a hot shower couldn't fix. The water was steaming and strong. It was perfect. When I returned everone had eaten and was scrambling around putting up camp. Apparently we had missed our bus to the other side of the park and our camp angel walkie-talkied another bus to come get us. Within 10 minutes both tents were disassembled, and we discovered that a tent bag as well as two sleeping bag bags were missing, probably from the first, windy night. Much sooner than we had expected, we were on our way to our next adventure in Parque Nacional Torres del Paine. But when we got to our next campsite, we realized that there wasn't actually camping. But the wonderfully nice Park Rangers told us that we could make camp behind one of the sheds after the last bus of the day left.

With the Chilean flag at the Park Ranger station.

So we left our stuff at the station, Ben and Ansel caught their catamaran to the glacier where they would hike during the day and camp at night and the rest of us went up the trail to Los Cuernos (the horns).

It was far less difficult and much shorter than our Torres hike, but almost equally as beautiful.

Group shot taken with the timer setting.

We did our own little version of TLC's "waterfalls." There was a little beach on the side of the trail before we got to the lookout point, so we took off our shoes and played in the water for a while. It was freezing cold. It was water from the glacier runoffs and after a minute or so it made your feet numb it was so cold. And it made your feet so numb that they hurt.

My friend Ryan's foot.

The top of the lookout was sooooo windy. I was an amazing 360 degree view and we could even see the wind whipping the water up into small hurricanes over the lake.

When we got back to "camp," Ryan and Megana took a bus back because they were headed to the airport the next day. Ana decided to go with them and stay a night in their hostel because she was a little tired of camping. That night Lee, Paco and I found an abandoned boat to hang out in. We were having a good time, telling stories and having heart-to-hearts when suddenly is started to rain. Then it began to hail! When we were tired enough, we ran back to the tent and curled up in our sleeping bags to stay warm. But we had pitched the tent on a small incline and had to sleep perpendicular so we wouldn't roll onto each other in the night. The rain/hail kept up till morning when I woke up with freezing feet. I think if I hadn't been with two of the most positive people I know, there probably would have been a lot of complaining. We had a lot of time to kill in the morning, so we drew and wrote until the boys came back on their catamaran. Then we all left the park for Puerto Natales where we would meet Ana.

But Ana was not where she was supposed to meet us. And we had no real way of getting into immediate touch with her since her phone had died. We went to the hostel that Lee and Paco stayed in their first night before meeting up with us and left a message for Ana, then we called Megana to see if she knew where our friend would be. Megana told us which hostel they had stayed in the night before so we headed over there. About a block from there we saw Ana walking toward us and decided it was time to eat lunch. Carlitos probably got a good portion of their income that weekend from our group. We probably ate there a total of 10 times between all the mini-groups. We found a hostel, unpacked, showered and bought some wine. Horrible, cheap wine. We met a man in the hostel from the Isralean army and all played a little poker with the chips he had brought.

The next morning, Monday the 23rd, we caught the bus to Punta Arenas and saw this rainbow. You could actually see it all the way, from side to side, but I didn't have enough room between the buildings to capture it all.

When we arrived in PA we found a hostel for the night and went to the store for lunch and dinner groceries. Lunch was soooo delicious. I remember sitting in the kitchen of the hostel, with the sunlight shining on me, thinking "this is the best sandwich I've ever had (palta, really good cheese, and fried eggs on really good bread) and I'm eating it with my awesome group of friends at a strangers sunlit kitchen table with a view of the ocean. After some napping we headed out to the beach, Ansel tried a little fly fishing since he couldn't do it in the park because the water was too cold for fish to live in, and we had a foot-tour of the city. The cemetery was closed, so we didn't get to see that. It was supposed to be really beautiful.

We had bought two bottles of rum earlier because we wanted to having a rum tasting party. And we had wanted a rum tasting party because we were a little tired of all the pisco. So we opened them up and waited for the kitchen to free up. Ana and I made pasta with ground beef, and the spices weren't labeled very well so I just put in what smelled like it should be in there. Everyone really loved it and I felt very proud to be able to cook for them all. I also appreciated our rule that "those who cook don't clean."

We had a night out on the town and we all left for the airport in sets the next day. Lee left at 5 in the morning, Ana, Ben and I at 10 and Ansel and Paco that evening. I don't remember what I did when I returned home, but I'm sure I slept very well that night.

Whew! I told you this was not small work. Maybe I won't procrastinate so much next time. I have a lot more to tell about my time and travels here, so I promise I'll try to keep up with that. I don't believe any of my other stories should be this long, so if I can finish this one, I can do any of them... Thanks for taking the time to read all of this, whether it was in one sitting or four. And I hope you like the photos.

So much love,

Caitlin