South America - Santiago

All four of us (Lance, Val, Matt & I) have spent time in large Latin American cities (three of us having lived in one) and everyone who has ever done so knows that for the most part...they aren't really places you want to spend a lot of time. Mostly, none at all. Accordingly, we planned one afternoon and evening in Santiago. We wanted to see the city but we were pretty sure that would be enough time. I will admit that Santiago beat out San Jose, Guatemala City, and Managua. Definitely. But thats not saying much. We thoroughly enjoyed our afternoon and evening (many thanks to our German tour guide Chris) and that was enough.

Chris is studying in Santiago so he knows a bit about the city and has an apartment there. After spending a tortuous hour or so in our gold Peugeot trying to find our hostel we met up with Chris and Bernie and got the short tour. He took us to the main plaza, and then we walked up Santa Lucia hill, which afforded us great views of the city. Next, we headed for San Cristobal (is that right? I think so) Hill but got waylaid on the way and stopped for a beer. Chile is not a cheap country at all in general, but their beer is great. It comes in liters and its about $2.50 for a liter of Escudo. We saw a rad little kid dancing with some street performers. It turned out that the beer had cost us our opportunity to see San Cristobal, because it was closed when we got there, but by that point (9pm) we were all ready for some food anyways. South America has a totally different meal schedule than us. Breakfast, then afternoon siesta where everything closes (big banks and all) from 1-3 and then dinner isn't until at least 9. At least. Then you stay up until at least 2am. Despite the fact that the four of us are generally old fogies and not very good at staying up late we adjusted magnificently to the South American schedule.

Chris led us to a nice steak restaurant. I don't know what its called because Chris couldn't remember what it was called when we were looking for it so we were just walking around looking and asking for a restaurant w/ a big red cow on the sign. It worked out. Then Chris took the opportunity to inroduce us to the national alcohol, called "Pisco". Its made from grapes, and its not very good. But when in Chile...

Chris's apartment had a sweet rooftop deck so we headed up to the 26th floor for some more great views, Piscola (Pisco and coke) and...a lesson in German rap.

South America - Part PENGUINS

They were adorable. That really about all that I have to say. Freaking adorable. I wanted to take one home with me, but they were just too quick for me.

For our last half day in the Punta Arenas area we headed out to Seno Otway, home of about 10,000 Magellenic penguins. There weren't hordes of them or anything but we got to walk on a little path through their natural habitat and watch them coming in from the ocean, laying on the beach, walking up from the beach in a cute little line, have funny little penguin fights, and ducking into their little holes in the ground. They laid their eggs about a month ago and they are currently waiting for the little guys to hatch. Its too bad we weren't there in January to see the little ones but...I might have died of a cuteness overload if I were there. So I guess everything works out for the best.

Up next...Santiago

Pictures are up!

Picassa Album of Chile/Argentina

(I think the link works. It works for me. Somebody tell me if it doesn't!)

*All pics by M&M except for the ones that include Mackenzie. Thanks Lance and Val for being our paparazzi

South America - Part 3

DAY 4

Day four was another day of beautiful scenery. We were headed from the middle of the W to halfway up the last (right) leg. The weather was perfect and we had a great view of the mountains and the surrounding plains. We were able to find the fabled shortcut, which was glorious until we got to some really wet/muddy parts (path not maintained as well as the real route) and my tennis shoes failed me...wet feet. We met an older German man along the way and we were asking him about the Torres (the crazy cool mountains we would see on day 5, the namesakes of the Park) and he says 'the torres, they are ok. We have mountains like that in Europe too'.  Please please God, let me never be that spoiled. They were fantastic.

About a mile before we arrived at Refugio Chileno, where we were to stay for the night the wind picked up. And when I say it picked up...I really mean it. When we were going uphill, we could barely move. When we were going downhill, I just acted as if I wanted to fall forward on my face. But I never did because the wind always held me up. Everyones glasses got big nicks in the from the dirt/rocks that the wind was throwing at us. All this on a 1ft wide path on the side of a sheer cliff. It was fun. The weather got pretty nasty after we got to our refugio and we were glad we got an early start. Chris and Bernie (the Germans) joined us later and they had slept in and thus endured some much more intense weather. We had told them about the shortcut the night before, except all we knew what that it was a left that was 'obvious, but not marked'. They took a different left than us and ended up on the edge of a cliff. Bernie got knocked over by the wind, and then pinned to the ground by it. It was Halloween back in the U.S. and the six of us managed to consume three boxes of wine that evening and we taught them Egyptian Ratscrew (a card game, for those of you who don't know).

DAY 5

Our last day in the park was stunning. It was the day we hiked up to the Torres, which is what people do if they are only going to do one thing in the park. We woke up at sunrise, (early) where we could partially see the torres from our refugio. The way the sun shines on them it turnes the torres a crazy red/pink color just as the sun rises. I wish I had a picture. They are all on Val and Lance's camera, and I don't have theirs yet. After watching that for a bit we headed out for an early start. It was a relatively short hike up to the torres, but extremely steep and we were all totally winded by the time we got there. There was not a cloud in the sky and the torres were amazing. It was frigid and we were all starving (no breakfast yet), so we stayed for 30-45 minutes and then headed back down. We could not have hoped for a better last day.

The rest of the day consisted of hiking back to the park exit where we sat around for a few hours waiting for our bus, and then heading back to Puerto Natales. We all enjoyed some hot showers and then went to gorge ourselves on pizza and beer after living on oatmeal, tuna, and dehydrated food for the last 5 days. Except for the Germans. They had been living on things like 16 hardboiled eggs, pickles, peanut butter, avocados and...anything else you can think of that you wouldn't normally bring hiking.

Clean and happy

Matt, Chris, and Bernie

My pizza. It was delicious. And it had a fried egg on it. Which was odd.

South America - Part 2

Day 2

Day two we ramped it up a bit and had 15.5 miles to cover. First we retraced our steps along Lago Grey back to Lago Pehoe and then had a nice flat section to Campo Italiano. The trek is called the "W" trek because, well, it is shaped like a W. So, day one was going up the left side of the W, day two is going back down and then over to the middle. We had more beautiful views of the glacier, the lakes, and it cleared up even more so that we got to see the beautiful mountains that we would be getting up close and personal with in the next few days. It was one of the less exciting days but still stunning all around. A few pics:

(in case you can't read it, the sign says 'only two people at a time on the bridge') A little sketch.

Lago Nordenskjold, on the banks of which we would spend the next two nights.

DAY 3

Day three was Valle Frances (French Valley in English) which was going up the middle part of the W and back. We had been told it was one of the more beautiful parts of the hike but also told that you can get some of the best views from mid-way up the valley and also that the mirador (look-out) at the very top was snowed in. To top it off the day started out windy and snowy. All told we knew we wanted to do the French Valley but didn't know how far up it we were really going to go. We had a steep 3-4 mile climb uphill before we even got to the valley and Valerie's knee started hurting her immediately. By the time we had almost reached the top she was in a lot of pain and despite the fact that 'valley' might sound nice and flat we knew it would be steep going for the rest of the day and that we had a big day the next day too. After all, we were in the middle of the W and you have to get out. Val made the sad but wise decision to turn back and give the knee a rest for the day to make sure it was up for the rest of the trip. Matt, Lance and I continued on as the weather continued to deteriorate. Despite the sideways blowing snow we got a great view of a mountain and another spectacular glacier, along with some cool waterfalls and miniature forests.

After an hour and a half Lance decided to turn back since we had already been gone 3 hours and Val would have been sitting alone at the refugio all day had he kept going. Matt and I decided to continue on "20 more minutes" and ended up not stopping. Boy were we glad we kept going. We had a nice peaceful walk in the snow through some cool forests and then stepped out into a clearing just as the weather was clearing...and had some spectacular view of the Cuernos. The mirador was a couple miles further up and in the company of a nice Australian guy we ran into along the trail we made it to the top just before the clouds and snow returned.

Matt and I raced back down the mountain and made it back to the refugio just as the weather began to furthur deteriorate. We were all tired (two 15 mile days in a row) and sprung for a box of wine that night. Yes, box. Stuff is expensive out there. And we were too tired to care. We had met two German guys who are our age on the trail the first night, and they showed up at the same place again that night....and followed us around for the rest of the trip. :) No, just kidding. But we did end up hangning out with them most of the rest of the trip, which was lots of fun. We learned lots of very useful German words like 'schmoshebearshin' (I'm sure I spelled that wrong) which means 'little cuddly bear' and 'bier' and 'wein', which are of course, beer and wine. No, I do not know how to ask where the bathroom is, or anything that might actually help me in Germany, but Lance can rap a little bit in German. That is way more valuable.

South America - Part 1

Well first off, we are back. Sadly. We had an absolutely amazing time and were not ready to come home. Getting settled back into work is taking some time, but thanks to all the veterans...I have today off. :) There is so much to say about this trip, so I'm going to take it in pieces, starting with our treking in Torres del Paine National Park. The whole trip was fantastic. We had amazing weather the entire time, saw so many new things, worked hard, relaxed, made some great friends, and learned.

Its going to take me a couple posts to get everything up here so just stay posted. I'll also be putting up a Picassa album with more of the pictures (don't worry there are only 175, not the 1800 that I took) so I'll post a link to that once it is up.

It took us 6 flights to get to our destination (thank you Alaska frequent flier miles for the free flights) which was Punta Arenas, Chile. Punta Arenas is on the Staight of Magellan and fights with Ushuia, Argentina over the rights to calling itself the southernmost city in the world. Either way, its wayyy down there. Upon arrival we discovered that one of my (Mackenzie) hiking boots was missing. Gone. It had come unattatched from my backpack at some point during the journey. Drama drama. Long story short I ended up doing 55 miles in my running shoes. It could have been worse, I almost didn't even bring those.

Matt standing in the Straight of Magellan

Punta Arenas

      Next we headed up to Puerto Natales, Chile and then into the Park. We had better weather than we could have ever hoped or dreamed of. In Patagonia, the weather changes every 5 minutes and most days include clouds, rain, snow, LOTS of wind, and perhaps some sunshine. We read multiple trip reports of people who trekked for 5 days and were so excited that "that weather cleared for 20 minutes on our last day and we were able to get some great shots of the torres!".  We did actually encounter all of the above weather, but mainly we encountered sunshine. Sunshine and wind. Patagonia frequently has winds up to 100mph, often sustained winds of 60mph. We had three perfectly absolutely sunny days. One beautiful day that turned into rainy windy madness a about 20 minutes before we arrived at our destination, and one day of snowy windy madness that gave us a beautiful hour of blue skies right at we reached the top of valley. We could not have been luckier.

DAY 1

We took a bus ride from Puerto Natales into the Park on the way saw some cool Patagonian wildlife. The bus windows were not very conducive to taking pictures but we saw guanacos (kind of like a llama, google it) and a mama rhea (kind of like an ostrich) with 20 babies. Once we got into the park we took a catamaran across Lago Pehoe. The lakes are all glacial lakes which have the crazy turquoise color that humbles even Carribean water.

This was our shortest day. After the boat ride we had a 6.5 mile day along Lago Grey, up to Glacier Grey. It was incredible. Glacier Grey is part of the Patagonian ice field, which is the third biggest ice field in the world, the largest outside of Antarctica. It was stunning. None of us had ever seen huge icebergs, and gigantic snowfields before and we were awestuck. Everywhere we turned was something new and amazing.

Matt and I with the glacier in the background

 

We made it!

We just got back to Puerto Natales after finishing the ¨W¨ trek in Parque Nacional Torres del Paine. It was an absolutely INCREDIBLE experience. We had an amazing time, saw the most beautiful scenery ever, and had better weather than could ever be hoped for in Patagonia. Fifty five miles later we are all very tired and sore, but we all managed to survive our various injuries and illnesses (of which there were many) and had an amazing time. It was insanely beautiful. No pictures uploaded now and there are a bunch of people behind me waiting for the computer so I will keep this short but everything is wonderful.