So my journey began way back on Saturday December 6th. That day I had had to say goodbye to my host mother Lucrecia since she was traveling to Switzerland to visit her daughter and new born grandson for 3 months. That was very sad to have to say goodbye so early, but I have her email address of course as well as her Skype account so we can easily keep in touch. Anyways, my program buddy Finn and I had bought our tickets the month or so before to Punta Arenas, which is the largest city in the southern tip of Chile that you can fly to essentially and access the surrounding areas. Before we got on the plane, Finn's host family had organized an asado (giant tasty BBQ) to fill us up nicely before heading into the wilderness. We left from the lunch directly to airport, where I had to say my goodbyes to another program buddy, Dan, since he was going to be out of town (Santiago) when I got back because his family was coming down to visit and tour Chile for the holidays. I will see him back in the states for sure since he is from San Francisco.
That afternoon, we got on a 3 hour plane ride to Punta Arenas, where we stayed the night in a hostel with the plan of touring the town and picking up supplies over the course of two days before taking a bus to the city of Puerto Natales, the 'base-camp' town to the National Park of Torres del Paine. Strangely, we were able to pick-up our food for camping, last minute supplies, and tour the entire city in less than one day, so we decided to change our bus tickets to that afternoon rather than stay another night in Punta Arenas and leave the next morning. In terms of exploring the town, we visited a museum on the history of the region that was conveniently located across the street from where we were staying, walked through town and visited the central Plaza with a giant statue of Ferdinand Magellan, and visited the Strait of Magellan.
After a 3 hour bus ride to Puerto Natales, we took refuge in one of the three hostels all under the same name of "Erratic Rock." This hostel is a well run ship, with a great system and awesome owners. They are two friends from Oregon who decided to move to Puetro Natales and open their own hostel after visiting the national park, and now they are part of a co'op under the same name which has 3 hostels in Puerto Natales and one in Punta Arenas, all with the same system and feel. One in particular in Puerto Natales is a multi-function hostel, rental equipment provider, and information source for any questions about the park and the surrounding area. Each day at 3 p.m. they have an info-session for all backpackers. So we stopped by the hostel to talk to the owners about our plan to do the "W" trail in the park and how to arrange for bus to take us to the park. The next morning we left at 7 a.m.
Each leg of our journey is marked in a different color, with START and END labeled.
The bus ride to the National Park of Torres del Paine is about 2 and half hours with multiple stops depending on where you want to be dropped off. Normally foreigners have to pay $30 to enter the park, but since my buddy and I had Chilean identity cards, we only had to pay 8 dollars. Too bad the $22 dollars we saved went directly to buying tickets to ride a boat across Lake Pehoe(yellow line). The boat dropped us off at the base of the left side of the "W" trail and upon arrival we embarked on our hike up to "Glacier Grey." (light blue line)
The entire trail is 70 km, so our hikes from campsite to campsite were anywhere between 12-22 km. The initial hikes up to Glacier Gray was rough since we had all of our food, meaning backpacks were their heaviest, and our hiking legs we not yet up to speed. We decided to walk about an hour past the "Refugio Grey," which is a pay-campsite with a view of the glacier from a distance, to go to a free CONAF campsite (Chilean National Forestry Association), "Las Guardas" which had a view overlooking the glacier from above.
After a night at "Las Guardas," we packed up our gear and headed to the middle section of the "W," to a campsite called "Italiano" (green line). Along the way we managed to run into a couple of friends from our Education Aboard Program since the trails are essentially fixed meaning your bound to run into people. At times, it becomes a big of a nuisance because there are so many people visiting the park (200,000 a year) with the park only open less than 6 months, so we saw a lot of people: many Germans, Brits, Americans, Israelis, French, and few Chileans. Once we arrived at camp Italiano, we setup our tent in the crowded campsite, only afterward discovering that there was a much better location right next to the river that flows by and with no views of other campers. So we moved our gear to this prime location and realized there was no rush to leave the next day, so we hung around for 3 days. You can drink water straight out of the rivers since it's all glacier melt, some of the best water in the world. It was definitely the best campsite we stayed at (below).
The next day we took a day hike up to a lookout of "Los Cuernos" mountains about 2 hours up "Valle Frances," which represents the middle part of the "W" (pink line) After lunch at the lookout with many of campers, we decided to follow a not-so-often-walked trail up to higher elevation for a better view of the valley and to get away from the other campers. We walked through snow which was fun and the view was spectacular.
The rest of the time at Camp Italiano, Finn and I just hung out, read, and explored the nearby parts. Now 1t day 6 into our trip, we hiked out to the right side of the "W" to see the famous Torres del Paine that the park is named after (dark blue line). They are three rock towers that have glaciers melting just below them, forming dozens of waterfalls that in turn form a aquamarine lake that feeds into a river down the valley. It was essentially observing the entire water cycle in one view.
We had camped less than 45 minutes below the Torres at another free campsite(Campamiento Torres), spent 2 nights there, and on the third day left down the right side of the "W" to leave the park (orange line). The "W" takes most people only 3-4 days to complete, but we decided to take our time since we had enough to food to stay longer and we wanted to enjoy our time in the park. The experience was incredible, breathtaking, probably some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen in my life. We would have stayed longer had we brought more food, but there was just not enough space. So we left to park back to Puerto Natales.
We headed back to Erratic Rock to talk with the Oregon owners about another place nearby that we could camp since we had about 4 days until our flight back to Santiago from Punta Arenas. They recommended a Lake called Laguna Sofia, which is essentially a lake with the land surrounding it divided in half since it is owned by Cow ranchers. However, we were told it would not be a problem camping on private property and we would not see anybody while we were there, which seemed very appealing. So we got on the same bus that took us to the National Park, but told the driver to drop us off at an entrance to a private road about a half hour into the drive, where we would walk 7 km to the base of the lake, and then about another 5 km to the other side of the lake to camp.
During our walk, a 80's Mercedes drives up behind us and offers us a ride to the Lake. It turns out to be one of the two owners of the land, an Italian immigrant, who had no problem with us camping there and was very friendly. After being dropped off at the base of the lake, we walked to the other side and found a small bay with a bit of grass perfect for camping. We would stay there for two nights and leave on the third day.
The water of the lake was not too cold, so I decided to go for a swim.
On the walk back, we did not have any run-ins with any cars, so we had to walk to the entire trail back to the highway, where they we hitch-hiked with a truck driver back to Puerto Natales. We spent the afternoon to take a shower and have lunch in Puerto Natales, and then took an early evening bus to Punta Arenas. Once we got to Punta Arenas, we took refuge in the Erratic Rock for two days and planned to visit one of the Penguin Colonies and pickup souvenirs before leaving back to Santiago.
Seno Otway (Otway Sound), is a Penguin Colony of supposedly 8,000 Magellan Penguins, but it seemed like there were a bit less than that. Antarctic researchers who were on our small tour hypothesized that the tourist aspect of the colony might have scared away part of the population, but it was not clear since penguins always come back to the same place every year to breed before returning to the ocean once again. There were still plenty of penguins to see.
We also saw a couple Ñandús, which are the Chilean version of an ostrich. Weird creatures. They are endangered since they have been hunted for their feathers and their tasty meat.
We spent the night there, and had a flight the next morning around noon on the 19th. The entire 13 day experience in Patagonia, Chile was most certainly the most scenic trip I have ever taken. It is a unique part of the world with difficult weather (luckily there was hardly any rain during our entire trip), stunning views of nature and wildlife. Visiting the Strait of Magellan is probably to closest I'll get to Antarctica, and I hope one day I can come back and check out the Argentinian side of Patagonia as well.
It would be two quick days in Santiago to pack, pickup gifts, say goodbye to my friends, teachers, co-workers, and host dad, before I got on a plane for Buenos Aires. 6 months flew bye so fast, and if it were not for the fact that I have the graduate after this coming, I could have easily extended my stay another six months. I could also easily come back down to Latin America to work one day, but we'll have to wait and see. It was so tough saying goodbye to my host parents, they because part of my family and I became part of their's. We will keep in touch digitally, but I hope to one day see them again, either in the United States, Chile, or Europe where their daughters live.
So that ends my trip to Chile. I couldn't have expected a better experience, with all that learned in terms of the Spanish language(even though Chilean Spanish is full of so much slang and their owns words it is sometimes hard to talk with other Spanish speakers, but at the very least it is very easy for me to listen and understand others because Chilean talk to fast), all the history of Chile and Latin America that have given me a fuller perspective of the region and my own family history, the experience of being so culturally immersed in a new country while going to school working a job. There are so many similarities Chile has with California, but obviously very different in many ways as well. It is going to be a bit crazy coming back and adjusting to life in the United States, especially since I only have 3 months left of school before I hit to the real world. Pretty crazy. One thing I know for certain, I will definitely be coming back one day.
PS: I will continue this blog until I leave South America on the 4th of January. After that, I think I will create a new blog on my life going forward. It will have a new address and I will post a link here when I create site. But until then, I will have one or two most entries here on this blog. Cheers.
"El niño que no juega no es niño, pero el hombre que no juega perdió para siempre al niño que vivía en él y que le hará mucha falta."
English: “A child who does not play is not a child, but the man who doesn't play has lost forever the child who lived in him and who he will miss terribly.”
-Pablo Neruda
Chi-Chi-Chi...Le-Le-Le...Viva Chile.
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