 los caminantes by Sara Barth & Erich Pfuehler Finally some news from your wandering friends. 17 july 2003 Our last update was from an area known as the Lake District, which straddles southern Argentina and Chile. From there, we took a disturbingly bumpy flight (our first of many in South America) to the city of Punta Arenas in the far southern tip of Chile (which if you pull out a map you will realize just how far south it is). While this city of 100,000 Chilenos bills itself as the city at the "end of the world," the truth is it is only cerca del fin del mundo. But no matter, Punta Arenas is dreary enough that it feels like the end of the world. On our flight from Puerto Montt, we passed vast tracts of barren landscape. Upon landing, we discovered more of the same. While it was sunny at the time we landed, the weather quickly changed (our first lesson in just how abruptly this can happen in this part of the world) and much of our time there we faced gray, rainy skies and whipping wind. For the most part, our stop in Punta Arenas was merely a means to an end - our primary destination in the region was Torres del Paine National Park. Torres del Paine is one of South America's preeminent parks and a major stopping point for most visitors to Patagonia. It is most famed for the rugged monoliths of granite (including the three towers - or torres - for which it is named) that look like sharp points forcibly pushed upwards through the earth's crust. It is a land of glaciers, alpine lakes, rushing rivers, and craggy rocks. It is known as a place of extreme weather, and in particular, for strong winds. We stopped in Punta Arenas for several days to recover from our previous travels and plan our trek through Torres. While in Punta Arenas, we stayed in a "residencial" -- which is basically a private home with a few extra rooms set aside for paying guests. These are quite common in South America and generally fall into the more "affordable" category. In this case, the lovely and entrepreneurial woman running it even had guests sleeping in the hallway on cots that were cordoned off by hanging sheets! Thankfully, we were not in the hallway. Instead, we had a small room so filled by the bed that the only real option for moving around the room was to climb over it. Oddly, we also had a small balcony which we used in lieu of a refrigerator to keep our cervezas (beer) and queso (cheese) cold, as well as for drying our clothes during the rare non-rainy moments. Balcony or not, nothing could make up for the fact that our room, the residencial, and Punta Arenas were all damp, windy and chilly. Literary types take note of the recurring themes -- the foreshadowing: rain, wind, cold. Unfortunately, my friends, these are words you will read again. The most remarkable thing about Punta Arenas was the amazing architecture, which reflected boom times of the past. Lovely mansions in the city center contrasted with the poverty we saw along the waterfront and in other areas. It was also clear that the Chilean government was trying to improve things, primarily by basing an endless array of government offices in the city. It was while we were in Punta Arenas that we hunkered down in a brickskeller bar just off the central plaza to develop our Torres strategy. Oddly, they were playing a great mix of B.B. King, Janis Joplin and various blues tunes that one would not expect to hear at "the end of the world." We did not, however, hear any R.E.M. With good music, a few good Pisco Sours (a wonderful drink based on the region's firewater), and a map of the park that made every trail look feasible, we devised our trekking plan for Parque Nacional Torres del Paine. Not knowing what we were getting into, we were smart enough to determine that the entire circuit would not be possible, but the W circuit (which has absolutely nothing to do with George Bush, but we'd love to send him on it) was possible. It is called the W because instead of going around the whole park, one hikes up the three main forks to see the various attractions. This route avoids the one major mountain pass, but it does involve a fair bit of backtracking. The following is our Pisco induced schedule for conquering Torres del Paine: Day 1 - Boat from Puerto Natales to Camp Las Carretas (an eight hour boat ride and two hour trek). Day 2 - Camp Las Carretas to Camp Grey (a seven hour trek with packs). Day 3 - Camp Grey to Paso and back (a ten hour trek without packs). Day 4 - Camp Grey to Camp Britancio (an eight and a half hour trek with packs). Day 5 - Camp Britancio to Hosteria Torres (a ten hour trek with packs). Day 6 - Hosteria Torres to the Torres and back (an eight hour trek without packs). Day 7 - An extra day to do a different trek without packs from Hosteria Torres. Day 8 - Return to Puerto Natales. This schedule would turn out to be wildly optimistic, but we learned some valuable lessons from it. Lesson number one: planning while drinking Pisco is inadvisable. Lesson number two: using a guide book for trekkers (rather than a guidebook for normal people) is even less advisable. Lesson number three: assuming you will have reasonable weather in Patagonia is even less advisable than our first two points. To get to Torres del Paine, we first had to travel by bus from Punta Arenas to the smaller town of Puerto Natales. It was a journey of several hours that took us past kilometer after kilometer of barren, stark, windswept plateau. Big sky country (only imagine endless gray skies rather than blue ones). We passed desolate ranches (estancias) with an abundance of sheep, cows, and other animals, but nary a human soul in sight. It reminded Erich of the Palouse in Washington State. One key difference -- this landscape includes rheas, which are large flightless birds (sort of like small gray ostriches). A major attraction for Sara. It was plateau, plateau, plateau, until suddenly out of nowhere, snow covered peaks and granite monoliths appeared in the distance indicating the presence of Torres del Paine. As we got off the bus in Puerto Natales, we were greeted by gusts of wind so strong that they nearly blew us over. This is the type of wind with which only those along the plateau of Vantage, Washington, the plains of Nebraska, or certain parts of California would be familiar. Walking with our heavy, overstuffed backpacks, we trod around town looking for a place to stay until we stumbled (literally) upon "Casa Cecilia", a place that would subsequently become a comforting image we would hold out before us in our darkest moments. The neurotic Belgian man who owns Casa Cecilia spent hours nervously examining and selecting sleeping bags, a tent, and other camping gear for us to rent. As it turns out, we were extremely grateful for his thoroughness. Puerto Natales proved to be a surprisingly hip place with several cool restaurants, cafes, and pubs which allowed us to enjoy a nice meal and some smooth malta cerveza (South America's version of dark beer) the night before we began our expedition. That night, however, the wind blew so hard the walls in our hostal shook. It should have been all the warning we needed. Tumbleweeds weren't blowing through the streets (only because they don't have them there), but everything else was. We were fairly convinced that the next morning would be miserable and that we would not be able to take our pre-arranged boat into the park. But, the next morning was surprisingly calm, sunny and somewhat warm. We departed Casa Cecilia looking fairly ridiculous with our now even larger backpacks (thanks to all the camping gear and food). Our plan was to access the park via boat, traveling up the Rio Serrano. We walked to the dock followed, of course, by the ever present neighborhood dogs to begin Day 1 of our Torres trek. Here are the details. Day 1 - Board the Nueva Galicia, which was anything but new, for an all day river journey past mountains, glaciers, waterfalls. Highlights included some up-close viewing of the Balmaceda and Serrano Glaciers and great views of the awesome Andean condor. Second half of the journey to Torres was in a zodiac for which we were provided outfits (to guard against the cold) that were a cross between lunar space suits and the one piece snow outfit your mother stuffed you into when you were a kid. By this point, the morning sun had given way to torrential rain. Upon arrival at the park (many kilometers from where we expected to be), we were tempted to shell out hundreds (we are talking dolares not pesos) to stay at a grim tin shack hotel. But no, we stuck to our plan and hiked two agonizing hours, discovering pains we never knew before, to our first campsite. Camp Las Carretas was located along a lovely rushing glacial river. Along the way, the rain finally broke and we were rewarded with some marvelous vistas of the mountains, including the famed torres. Day 2 - Feeling very refreshed, we were cautiously optimistic because of the morning sun and promising views. However, as soon as we donned the dread backpacks and started walking, it began to rain. Minutes later, the wind started. Blow you over wind. Literally. Wind so loud you couldn't hear anything. Most comic moment: us crawling with our gigantic windsail-esque backpacks across a bridge (which was really a two by four) to keep from being blown into the lovely alpine stream we had to cross. After four hours of this, we stopped finally at our second campsite (not, by the way, our intended destination) Camp Pehoe. Admittedly, the location was awesome... lakeside with incredible peaks and glaciers in the background, but the constant wind made camping here a challenge. Day 3 - We walked 4.5 hours (each way) from Camp Pehoe to Glacier Gray. Hallelujah, we left the dread backpacks behind! The morning was gray, but finally the skies cleared and we again were treated to some great views of the mountains, alpine lakes, and finally, Glacier Gray, which was truly an awesome sight. Erich cooked some fantastic grub for dinner on our heavy, but thankfully windproof, cookstove and we drank our vino to lighten our loads and forget what would be ahead of us tomorrow. Day 4 - Reluctantly we donned the dread backpacks and left Camp Pehoe behind. We had naive plans of walking four to five hours to the next campsite. These hopes were rapidly dashed when the rain started again, sheets of water were blowing off the once-lovely alpine lakes, and we have to navigate a trail that alternated between stream and swamp. After nearly three hours of misery, we stopped at Camp Italiano. We set up our tent under a grove of trees and watched the puddles around us grow ever larger. At this moment, we began to realize that Gore-Tex leaks! Highlight: a curious fox who came near and entertained Sara for about an hour. Thankfully, the inside of our tent remained dry (though nothing else was at this point). As the night wore on, the trees we thought were our friends began whipping so violently, we thought for sure they were going to crash down on top of us. You could hear the gusts coming from miles away, like waves on the ocean. Luckily, we survived the night and lived to walk the next day! Day 5 - It was still raining extremely hard; the river near our campsite was rushing even more than it had been the day before; but we gamely started out without our packs for one of the circuit's best viewpoints. After an hour of hiking in the rain, we reached a waterfall/river that was so flooded it was impossible to cross. We retreated back to Camp Italiano to gather our things (i.e. the dread backpacks) and reluctantly set off for the next campsite, Camp Los Cuernos. Of course, it was still raining extremely hard and the wind was unceasing. After a mere two and a half hours, we reached Refugio Los Cuernos. Getting there involved crossing several bridgeless, raging rivers that we had no right crossing. We were completely drenched and chilled, so the Refugio looked like it would live up to its name. We had some soup and coffee and contemplated continuing or staying. We, along with every other hiker we encountered, decided to stay. But we decided to rough it by sleeping in our tent at the nearby campsite! After a warm shower in the refugio and changing into only-somewhat-more-dry clothing, we ordered dinner and a box of wine! We ended up having an interesting conversation with a German woman and Swedish guy about George Bush, Iraq and global politics. For the record, our foreign friends completely opposed President Bush's approach to foreign policy. Erich had some of the best gnocchi he has ever had and after finishing up our box of wine, we retreated to our tent feeling about as warm and content as we had in days. In case you were wondering, yes it was still raining. At this point, the rain was feeling a bit biblical. Day 6 - We finally awoke to sunshine and little wind. Over breakfast at the refugio we enjoyed some decent views of the massive granite Cuernos (or Horns of Torres). And, we encountered another one of our trip highlights: the music of Soledad y Horacio. They are two Argentine singers/legends who for one time only (por unica vez) did a live concert at Luna Park in Buenos Aries. The refugio workers were playing this excellent music as they served us a great breakfast. In fact, this refugio served some of the best food we had in all of Chile. Well fed and finally feeling warm, we set off optimistically for our next stop, Camp Las Torres, approximately 3.5 hours away. This was probably the best day of hiking we had. Only intermittent rain, only partially gray skies and only a few scary bridgeless rivers to pass. Again we found not just a campsite, but a refugio. We enjoyed having a drink and some snacks at the nearby luxury hotel as we contemplated staying in the refugio (a decidedly cheaper option than the hotel) or setting up our damp tent again. Finally, the refugio won out. We enjoyed making dinner for ourselves in the campground, as the weather for one brief shining moment was fairly nice. But we were very happy to be sleeping in the refugio as it rained all night long. Day 7 - We set off (without our packs) to see the famous Torres del Paine. It was, of course, raining again, but we figured it could not rain the entire 7 hours we would be hiking that day. But yes folks, it did. Driving, blind you, rain. When we finally got to the mirador for the Torres, the cloud cover was so severe we only got a glimpse of their outline. We were astonished to realize that what we thought was thunder was actually boulders being rushed along by the flooded river below. This hike was miserable and we were chilled to the bone by the time we got back to the refugio. We decided that we'd had enough of this park and waited for the evening bus back to Puerto Natales. At this point, the refugio was filled with people like us who had been so rain drenched for so long that they all wanted desperately to leave. There were also many who were at the start of their trek and decided to bail. The bus picked us up, but dropped us off at the edge of a river so flooded that it covered the bridge that led out of the park. Our initial bus driver refused to try to cross. But at this point we were so wet and so cold (uncontrollable shivering) that we stupidly boarded another bus, and the crazy driver drove right through. We are not exaggerating when we say the river water was up to the windows of the bus. It was a miracle that we made it, but we did. We were immensely grateful and relieved when we got to the other side and knew we were heading to a warm hotel. Note: Lest you think we are stretching the truth about all of this ... the day we left the park, the authorities finally closed it and were evacuating people from our hiking circuit by helicopter. Ironically, our next day in Puerto Natales was sunny and warm! We warmed up, caught up on a few things and took a bus the following morning back to Punta Arenas (which suddenly looked inviting). We eagerly looked forward to continuing our journey in the warm, comfortable confines of the Mare Australis (a rather luxurious, eco-friendly mini-cruise ship that takes passengers through the Beagle Channel from Punta Arenas, Chile to Ushuaia, Argentina). We were indeed ready to leave the towers of pain (Torres del Paine) behind and embrace the land of fire (Tierra del Fuego)! We hope that all of you are well, and dry! Sara Barth & Erich Pfuehler |
Bariloche,
Argentina and Parque Nacional Nahue l Huapi Torres del Paine Top Ten Ways We Know We Are No Longer in the U.S. Hola from the Chilean Lake District Erich and Sara's report from Puerto Montt and Chiloe
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