A day of relaxing at the hostel and Puerta Natales after the trek. Tom and I watched Pulp Fiction and did some big feasting at the hostel with some of our other hostel friends, especially a couple of dutch gals who also returned from a trek and are much better cooks than us.
My profile from when I got back from the trek
Then: 8 days, 61 lb pack, 108 miles of rugged Andean mountain wilderness, fierce Patagonian weather, a Canuck named Tom, 4 pounds of rice, 1.5 pounds of tomato sauce
Now: 1 liter Cerveza austral, feet by the fire, el gato purring in my lap, Tommy the canuck feasting on an entire chicken
Now: 1 liter Cerveza austral, feet by the fire, el gato purring in my lap, Tommy the canuck feasting on an entire chicken
3/12 Day 1
Took the bus to Torres (towers) Del Paine National Park. I had met Tom, a Canadian from Saskatoon, Canada late that night before at the hostel and we decided to trek together. He ended up being an awesome trekking partner. Unlike all other canadians, he doesn´t love hockey, but instead loves basketball, so we talked a lot about the march madness we were missing. He´s 25 and is on a 6 month travel through S. America. He walks at a good pace. Not quite as fast as me, but I was totally fine with that to have someone to talk to. He was also very flexible and wanted to see everything, so we both agreed that we would wait out weather in order to see things. He´s easy to talk to and fun to laugh with, joke about the hard times, and he really appreciates the good things. So I was really lucky to have met him and have him as a hiking partner. Wish we had met earlier so we could have divied up things in our pack like tents, stoves, etc to make them lighter bc we ended up having pretty big packs. My pack weighed in at 61 pounds when I started. I had lots of food though. The trek is supposed to take 8 days, but I had enough for 10 in case we got stranded with a closed pass bc of snow or wanted to stay at some place longer bc of weather. In the end, Tom ran out of food, but I had so much left that I was feasting the last few nights so had plenty to share with him.
It´s hard to know what to pack for food while abroad and without the familiar freeze dried cuisine you get back home and other things we have such as packets of oatmeal, trail mix, and high energy bars. I ended up taking 4 days worth of pasta with tomato sauce, 5 days worth of rice with tomato sauce and 1 to 2 nights worth of ramen noodle type things. For breakfast and lunch the first 5 days I had peanut butter (I found it in punta arenas!) and bread, but I worried the bread would spoil after that, so after that I had these low energy excuse for cereal bars and lots of cookies. I also had some snickers along too.
Most people do the easier "W" as it is called that days 4 to 5 days, but we went for the circuit trek which is supposed to take 8 days and goes completely around the Torres mountain range and on the back side is much more remote and hardly any people. On the W there are these Refugio places where for 40 bucks you can get a bed in a warm cabin and for 50 more full board. Of course we would be camping, but it added another thing to it to see these people carrying nothing bc they would be staying in warm luxury while we carried heavy packs and had cold nights
Most people do the easier "W" as it is called that days 4 to 5 days, but we went for the circuit trek which is supposed to take 8 days and goes completely around the Torres mountain range and on the back side is much more remote and hardly any people. On the W there are these Refugio places where for 40 bucks you can get a bed in a warm cabin and for 50 more full board. Of course we would be camping, but it added another thing to it to see these people carrying nothing bc they would be staying in warm luxury while we carried heavy packs and had cold nights
The first day, most people hike to Seron, but bc the weather the next day was supposed to be awesome, we went straight for one of the highlights (the Torres/the towers). It rained the whole bus ride over and rained a bit at the start of the hike, but luckily the whole big uphill to campamento Torres where we would camp was only in mist. Once we set up camp we hiked on a side route to campamento Japon, but couldn´t see much bc of the thick fog and at this point rain. After that we hiked up to the Mirador Torres (towers viewpoint). It actually cleared a bit, so we could see the lower part of the towers and the emerald lake in front of them. We were super impressed with just that view, so we knew it would be amazing on a clear day, which we hoped would be the next day.
3/13 Day 2
We woke up in the dark to do the hike up to the mirador to see the towers at sunrise. We could see stars out so we were hopeful. But by the time the sun came up and it got light, there was a thick fog, so thick in fact, that we couldn´t even see the lake. It was a clear and sunny day, it´s just that it had rained so much the past 3 days that a thick mist just clung to the mountains (we later found out in burned off after noon...but we had left around 9 to move to the next campsite, with the intent of coming back here at the end)
So we hiked back down and rejoined the trail that led to Campamento Seron. The weather was much nicer and the hike was very scenic meandering along a very blue river for some time. Seron was a nice campsite and in the sun, so we dried out all of our stuff and relaxed in the grass.
3/14 day 3
We hiked from Seron to Dickson and then onto Campamento Perros. This was a big and long day. The suggested itinerary and what most people do is camp at Dickson and then go to Perros, but we decided to do two days in 1 bc the weather was very nice. At one point when we came over a little pass we had a gorgeous little rainbow and then stunning views of glaciated mountains with large glacial blue lakes at their base. cap which is one of the largest non antarctic ice fields in the world. We had lunch at Dickson which is on a gorgeous lake with glaciers coming into it and mountains rising up all around it. From there we hiked through forest to get to los Perros. Along the way we passed right by a really sweet giant hanging glacier.
3/15 day 4. Hiked from Los Perros to Refugio Grey via Paso (pass) John Gardner (4000ish feet...remember we started at about sea level), Campamento Paso, and Campamento Los Guardias. Grey is where we met back up with the people doing the W. It was a beautiful and awesome day. Great view of the mountains from the pass and then incredible!!! views of giant Glacier Grey the whole day. The ice was just so gorgeous, and the glacier so huge. And you could see about 6 other glaciers running right into glacier grey. We walked about 10 miles along the glacier all the way to where it was calving off into giant Lago Grey. The whole time we were walking along on this cliff right above the glacier. Camping that night was right under these giant and spectacular granite spires
3/16 day 5
We started our day today walking in a steady rain all the way to where we had lunch at Paine Grande. After that the rain stopped in steadiness and we just got rain bursts with extremely high winds on the way to Campament Itiliano. A few minutes after leaving Paine Grande the weather cleared from the hard rain and the sky opened up a lot more and then all of a sudden through lit up clouds, the might Cuernos del Paine (horns of paine) broke through in front of us. What a spectacular sight! One of the more famous views of the park, and it just opened up right in front of us. The Cuernos are cool bc they are these giant grantie buttresses with a dark sedimentary rock cap on the top which gives them a unique coloring. The hike on this day took us past many, many lakes, including Lago Gray with all its icebergs floating around. We also walked along giant Lago Pahoe
3/17 day 6
Extra cold and night and woke up to some snow in the morning. Walked up the Valles Frances in the fresh snow for amazing, amazing views of giant granite towers and spires, including the Cerro Catedral. We had a 360 degree view of the towers and cuernos. And Tom and I were the only ones up there since the weather had been bad in the morning and no one had decided to go up. But it cleared for us when we got up to the viewpoints, and it was just unreal. There was also a giant mountain, Paine Grande, across the way w/ big hanging glaciers. It was cool to watch some ice avalanches fall down the mountain and hear them boom and reverbate throughout the tight valley. Once we got back to Italiano, I backtracked towards Gray for a bit of an hour since it was such a nice day and I wanted to see the famous view of the Cuernos with the lake in front in clear weather. Tom was feeling pretty exhausted so he moved on. After that I continued on to where we would campt at Refugio Cuernos which sat on a lake. Part of the trail went right alongside shimmering Lago Nordenskjold and was sandwiched between the lake and the towering Cuernos´.
3/18 Day 7
Walked from Cuernos back to Campemento Torres where we had spent the first night. The early part of the hike was spectacular bc the sunrise over the lake was unreal and in addition the sun lit up the glaciers on Paine Grande a nice shade of pink and lit up the Cuernos a fiery red. Tom was feeling tired and his knee was hurting so he wanted to go really slow and told me to go ahead. There were some ominous clouds ahead, and I really wanted to see the full Torres without them blocked by clouds, so I really busted through the route, doing in 4 hours what they say should take 7.5 hours. I hiked up to the mirador (viewpoint) and saw a really nice view, but one of the 3 towers still had its tip in the clouds. Then the clouds came in thick, so I walked back down to have lunch and wait for Tom. Later in the afternoon, the sky completely cleared to all blue, so I hiked back up and got the full view of this amazing view point. 3 giant granite spires, the towers, a glacial lake in front and a hanging glacier covering the rest of the cirque. I stayed up there for quite a while soaking it in and doing some reading and journaling. I finally started heading down when I got to cold, but ran into Tom, limping his way up, so I decided to join in and walk up once again (largely so that I could share my last of the 3 victory snickers I brought...one for here, one for the valles frances and one for the pass...all amazing views, all big climbs up.). So we watched the sunset from up there, which was very nice with the sun shedding a back light on the Torres. The view of these giant rock pinnacles with the lake and glacier and all of that, I will never forget.
3/19 Day 8
Went back up (without Tom bc he was hurting too much) to the Torres for a nice sunrise, lighting them up. I then hiked back down to the lodge at the start of the trek. From there you can pay a shuttle to take you to the park entrance, but since I had the time and energy, I hiked on the last 4 or 5 miles to the entrance. At this point Tom was exhausted and out of food, so I left him some cookies and at the shuttle stop and in the care of some Israeli girls who gave him a sandwich as well. This last part of the trek was through tree-less steppe and I saw a couple herds of guanacos (wild llama type things)
Back in Puerto Natales we had a big feast with wine and beer. I had been craving cheese tortellini and avacado sandwiches on fresh baked bread, so I had that. Tom ate an entire chicken of the kind you get pre cooked at supermarkets. That night we hung out at the bar attached to our hostel (remember, free pisco sours for those staying at the hostel!) and met some funny british girls who are all scared about their upcoming W trek.
Its pretty funny bc there are definitely a lot of people that head out for the W that have little camping experience and some have never even set up a tent. It´s also funny to see the groups that develop. There was one group doing the W that started the day we left made up of 3 Germans and a Brit (none of whom had camped) and they were all making jokes about how the germans were going to drive the poor brit into the ground, but he was going to call on the americans and aussies to save him. Patagonian weather can definitely be fierce and so there are definitely lots of people quite scared about doing the trek.
We definitely had our fair share of patagonian weather from heavy rain to snow to hail to crazy winds. Intense sun (this is one of the weakest ozone layers in the world over patagonia) and bitterly cold nights. But we were very lucky, we had really nice weather while hiking for the most part, saw all the views we had wanted to and never set up or took down our tent in the rain (something both Tom and I dreaded). We did take down a lot of wet tents bc it precipitated in some form or another every night except 1.
All in all we did the circuit in 7 days with 1 more day to redo part of it. We figured it out to be about 108 miles.
One of the other cool things about the trek is that you bond with the few other groups doing the circuit. There were 3 other groups more or less on our schedule: A three person group of very nice Frenchies, a 2 person group of fast-moving Austrians, and then 2 guys from Boulder who we were with for most of the trek, but they are 100 mile race runners and did the trek circuit in 5 days. They were funny bc they would only camp at the places that were paid campsites or refugios so that they could buy wine. They´d get really drunk, sleep in til noon, and then come rushing past all of us that had left at 8am later in the day. In the end, all they could think about was eating at El Asador, an argentine grill type place.
One of the other unique things about this park is that the water is perfectly safe to drink, so anytime you see a stream (and there are thousands with all the glaciers), you can just stop by and get an ice cold drink. Not many places left in the world where you can do that.
But WOW! what a spectacular trek. Such really unique mountains and stunning scenery.
Just a few notes about argentina and chile travel so far. Unlike Asia which is so dirt cheap, here you don´t get your own private bungalows or rooms, but you always stay in hostels. Also eating out is way too expensive so everyone cooks at night in the hostel and we all eat the free breakfast together in the morning. In this way, it´s more social than my travels through asia bc you share rooms with people (how I met Tom) instead of having your private place and you all cook and eat together instead of wondering around a town and eating street food or eating alone in a restaurant if you are by yourself. The cooking part is interesting bc it adds an extra challenge to things bc you have to shop most days in a super market or grocery store very unfamiliar to yourself, whilst on a budget, and likely buying for just one person for a day or two. Tom and I laught bc we are sort of uncreative, easy meal type guys. Sandwiches for lunch and then easy to make pasta with ready made sauces for dinner. Or rice or something. Whereas some of the girls, especially groups of girls, just go crazy and get all creative and make these wonderful dishes and meals (often some with touches from their own country...we had some very nice citrus type salad from Dutch girls today) of which they often can´t eat the whole thing and so we get to help out. Also, chile and argentina are very famous for their wines, and you can get a bottle for 2 to 3 bucks or a 2 liter box wine for the same price. So we often buy a bottle of wine to share and it´s really cheap, but really good still.
Tomorrow Tom and I are off to cross the border back into Argentina and head to El Chalten, home of the mighty and unique Fitz Roy mountain range. It´s quite nice to be travelling with someone. Tom has a music fest in LA coming up soon, so probably Chalten or maybe Calafate will be the last place we´ll hang out. But I have really enjoyed his sense of humor and positivity and stories and such while travelling with him.
3/14 day 3
We hiked from Seron to Dickson and then onto Campamento Perros. This was a big and long day. The suggested itinerary and what most people do is camp at Dickson and then go to Perros, but we decided to do two days in 1 bc the weather was very nice. At one point when we came over a little pass we had a gorgeous little rainbow and then stunning views of glaciated mountains with large glacial blue lakes at their base. cap which is one of the largest non antarctic ice fields in the world. We had lunch at Dickson which is on a gorgeous lake with glaciers coming into it and mountains rising up all around it. From there we hiked through forest to get to los Perros. Along the way we passed right by a really sweet giant hanging glacier.
3/15 day 4. Hiked from Los Perros to Refugio Grey via Paso (pass) John Gardner (4000ish feet...remember we started at about sea level), Campamento Paso, and Campamento Los Guardias. Grey is where we met back up with the people doing the W. It was a beautiful and awesome day. Great view of the mountains from the pass and then incredible!!! views of giant Glacier Grey the whole day. The ice was just so gorgeous, and the glacier so huge. And you could see about 6 other glaciers running right into glacier grey. We walked about 10 miles along the glacier all the way to where it was calving off into giant Lago Grey. The whole time we were walking along on this cliff right above the glacier. Camping that night was right under these giant and spectacular granite spires
3/16 day 5
We started our day today walking in a steady rain all the way to where we had lunch at Paine Grande. After that the rain stopped in steadiness and we just got rain bursts with extremely high winds on the way to Campament Itiliano. A few minutes after leaving Paine Grande the weather cleared from the hard rain and the sky opened up a lot more and then all of a sudden through lit up clouds, the might Cuernos del Paine (horns of paine) broke through in front of us. What a spectacular sight! One of the more famous views of the park, and it just opened up right in front of us. The Cuernos are cool bc they are these giant grantie buttresses with a dark sedimentary rock cap on the top which gives them a unique coloring. The hike on this day took us past many, many lakes, including Lago Gray with all its icebergs floating around. We also walked along giant Lago Pahoe
3/17 day 6
Extra cold and night and woke up to some snow in the morning. Walked up the Valles Frances in the fresh snow for amazing, amazing views of giant granite towers and spires, including the Cerro Catedral. We had a 360 degree view of the towers and cuernos. And Tom and I were the only ones up there since the weather had been bad in the morning and no one had decided to go up. But it cleared for us when we got up to the viewpoints, and it was just unreal. There was also a giant mountain, Paine Grande, across the way w/ big hanging glaciers. It was cool to watch some ice avalanches fall down the mountain and hear them boom and reverbate throughout the tight valley. Once we got back to Italiano, I backtracked towards Gray for a bit of an hour since it was such a nice day and I wanted to see the famous view of the Cuernos with the lake in front in clear weather. Tom was feeling pretty exhausted so he moved on. After that I continued on to where we would campt at Refugio Cuernos which sat on a lake. Part of the trail went right alongside shimmering Lago Nordenskjold and was sandwiched between the lake and the towering Cuernos´.
3/18 Day 7
Walked from Cuernos back to Campemento Torres where we had spent the first night. The early part of the hike was spectacular bc the sunrise over the lake was unreal and in addition the sun lit up the glaciers on Paine Grande a nice shade of pink and lit up the Cuernos a fiery red. Tom was feeling tired and his knee was hurting so he wanted to go really slow and told me to go ahead. There were some ominous clouds ahead, and I really wanted to see the full Torres without them blocked by clouds, so I really busted through the route, doing in 4 hours what they say should take 7.5 hours. I hiked up to the mirador (viewpoint) and saw a really nice view, but one of the 3 towers still had its tip in the clouds. Then the clouds came in thick, so I walked back down to have lunch and wait for Tom. Later in the afternoon, the sky completely cleared to all blue, so I hiked back up and got the full view of this amazing view point. 3 giant granite spires, the towers, a glacial lake in front and a hanging glacier covering the rest of the cirque. I stayed up there for quite a while soaking it in and doing some reading and journaling. I finally started heading down when I got to cold, but ran into Tom, limping his way up, so I decided to join in and walk up once again (largely so that I could share my last of the 3 victory snickers I brought...one for here, one for the valles frances and one for the pass...all amazing views, all big climbs up.). So we watched the sunset from up there, which was very nice with the sun shedding a back light on the Torres. The view of these giant rock pinnacles with the lake and glacier and all of that, I will never forget.
3/19 Day 8
Went back up (without Tom bc he was hurting too much) to the Torres for a nice sunrise, lighting them up. I then hiked back down to the lodge at the start of the trek. From there you can pay a shuttle to take you to the park entrance, but since I had the time and energy, I hiked on the last 4 or 5 miles to the entrance. At this point Tom was exhausted and out of food, so I left him some cookies and at the shuttle stop and in the care of some Israeli girls who gave him a sandwich as well. This last part of the trek was through tree-less steppe and I saw a couple herds of guanacos (wild llama type things)
Back in Puerto Natales we had a big feast with wine and beer. I had been craving cheese tortellini and avacado sandwiches on fresh baked bread, so I had that. Tom ate an entire chicken of the kind you get pre cooked at supermarkets. That night we hung out at the bar attached to our hostel (remember, free pisco sours for those staying at the hostel!) and met some funny british girls who are all scared about their upcoming W trek.
Its pretty funny bc there are definitely a lot of people that head out for the W that have little camping experience and some have never even set up a tent. It´s also funny to see the groups that develop. There was one group doing the W that started the day we left made up of 3 Germans and a Brit (none of whom had camped) and they were all making jokes about how the germans were going to drive the poor brit into the ground, but he was going to call on the americans and aussies to save him. Patagonian weather can definitely be fierce and so there are definitely lots of people quite scared about doing the trek.
We definitely had our fair share of patagonian weather from heavy rain to snow to hail to crazy winds. Intense sun (this is one of the weakest ozone layers in the world over patagonia) and bitterly cold nights. But we were very lucky, we had really nice weather while hiking for the most part, saw all the views we had wanted to and never set up or took down our tent in the rain (something both Tom and I dreaded). We did take down a lot of wet tents bc it precipitated in some form or another every night except 1.
All in all we did the circuit in 7 days with 1 more day to redo part of it. We figured it out to be about 108 miles.
One of the other cool things about the trek is that you bond with the few other groups doing the circuit. There were 3 other groups more or less on our schedule: A three person group of very nice Frenchies, a 2 person group of fast-moving Austrians, and then 2 guys from Boulder who we were with for most of the trek, but they are 100 mile race runners and did the trek circuit in 5 days. They were funny bc they would only camp at the places that were paid campsites or refugios so that they could buy wine. They´d get really drunk, sleep in til noon, and then come rushing past all of us that had left at 8am later in the day. In the end, all they could think about was eating at El Asador, an argentine grill type place.
One of the other unique things about this park is that the water is perfectly safe to drink, so anytime you see a stream (and there are thousands with all the glaciers), you can just stop by and get an ice cold drink. Not many places left in the world where you can do that.
But WOW! what a spectacular trek. Such really unique mountains and stunning scenery.
Just a few notes about argentina and chile travel so far. Unlike Asia which is so dirt cheap, here you don´t get your own private bungalows or rooms, but you always stay in hostels. Also eating out is way too expensive so everyone cooks at night in the hostel and we all eat the free breakfast together in the morning. In this way, it´s more social than my travels through asia bc you share rooms with people (how I met Tom) instead of having your private place and you all cook and eat together instead of wondering around a town and eating street food or eating alone in a restaurant if you are by yourself. The cooking part is interesting bc it adds an extra challenge to things bc you have to shop most days in a super market or grocery store very unfamiliar to yourself, whilst on a budget, and likely buying for just one person for a day or two. Tom and I laught bc we are sort of uncreative, easy meal type guys. Sandwiches for lunch and then easy to make pasta with ready made sauces for dinner. Or rice or something. Whereas some of the girls, especially groups of girls, just go crazy and get all creative and make these wonderful dishes and meals (often some with touches from their own country...we had some very nice citrus type salad from Dutch girls today) of which they often can´t eat the whole thing and so we get to help out. Also, chile and argentina are very famous for their wines, and you can get a bottle for 2 to 3 bucks or a 2 liter box wine for the same price. So we often buy a bottle of wine to share and it´s really cheap, but really good still.
Tomorrow Tom and I are off to cross the border back into Argentina and head to El Chalten, home of the mighty and unique Fitz Roy mountain range. It´s quite nice to be travelling with someone. Tom has a music fest in LA coming up soon, so probably Chalten or maybe Calafate will be the last place we´ll hang out. But I have really enjoyed his sense of humor and positivity and stories and such while travelling with him.
No comments:
Post a Comment