Alright! We`re back!

We rested another day or two in Punta Arenas, which included a birthday cake, dark chocolate raspberry cheesecake made in a pot and a jenky oven with no controls, for Acacia complete with candles and singing. We even shared a bit of it with our friendly hostal owner, Eduardo, who was very impressed. The next day we had an early bus to catch for Puerto Natales, a small touristy town near Torres del Paine national park in Chile. Since we were trying to go to the park quickly after arriving in Puerto Natales, we did some grocery shopping at the ´Zona Franca´, or duty free zone, in Punta Arenas for an 8 day trek on our last day there. This meant that we could no longer fit all of our stuff and food in our packs by any stretch of the imagination, especially since my bag was on it´s 3rd set of sewing repairs to hold it together. After eating a large homemade Eduardo breakfast, with eggs and all, we grabbed our backpacks, the google bag full of food and some immediate bus entertainment, and two large bags of groceries and headed towards the bus. More than one Chilean was seen pointing and laughing at the loads we had. In any case, we made it to the bus with about 3 minutes to spare and ate our birthday cake leftovers and listened to our last ¨bottom of the bottle¨ podcast on our busride to Puerto Natales.

In Puerto Natales, Eduardo had already called a hostal to get us reservations and a discounted rate, as well as sold us tickets for a bus to pick us up the next morning, also for a discounted rate, right in front of the hostal. We walked over to the hostal with our Dutch friends, checked in, and immediately went on a second shopping journey for some more fresh groceries that weren´t at the store in ¨Zona Franca¨ and some camp stove fuel. We first checked all the outdoors shops in town (only a few blocks since the town was small) for the cheapest gas, possibly a new backpack for me (which never happened), and a pair of gaiters for Mike. At one of the stores we ran into a couple of guys, one from California and one from Germany (I think?), who invited us to go to the local brewery later that evening. Yes please! Then we headed towards ´Unimarc´, the town´s supermarket.

The general flow of grocery shopping for treks tends to go something like this:

John: We should definitely get this giant jar of dulce de leche and a bunch of bread and some bananas, and 2 dozen eggs.

Acacia: That´s going to be so heavy and we don´t need it!

John: It´s ok, I´ll carry it. But I guess we don´t need all of this. (Puts back one banana).

So, with a grocery cart full of food and libations (read: 1.5 liters of wine, 1 liter of beer, and a bottle of manioca liquor, all in glass containers as well as some beer for the rest of the afternoon) we made our giant purchase and then carried the massive load back to the hostal. Once there, Floris and Mike immediately turned into American white trash as we found them out back of the hostel, with shirts off and drinking beer in the sun, in front of a couple of beeter trucks. We all had a few beers in the backyard, which included a couple of Belgian beers imported to the grocery store in Puerto Natales that Floris was stoked on, and Acacia tried to figure out how to pay Canada some fee for health insurance or something. After a couple of beers and general success on Acacia´s part, we made some dinner. In the kitchen we met a couple of American girls who were about to embark on the same trek in Torres del Paine as us, but a couple days later, and we chatted about there experience in Argentina and Chile to get some pointers for our own travelling. Our dinner was some pretty quality lentil patties, and I sampled a meatball or two from the Dutch guys. After dinner, of course, we headed out to find the brewery! All we knew is that it was on the square, but we couldn´t seem to find it. Being the person who most wanted to find the brewery (or something?) I walked into the first open business I saw and eloquently asked ¨Donde esta el cerveceria?¨. Well, it worked well enough, and I was pointed across the square to the brewery. To the brewery we went! And we met the same couple guys from earlier in the outdoor shop. The Californian had been living in SF, and was travelling around because his job to afford living there as a loan specialist was too shitty. Anyway, the beer. Best beer in South America so far. We got a pitcher of the IPA, and Acacia and I were diggin it while the Dutch guys weren´t as stoked because it wasn´t a belgian. But, after somebody else did the reading on the menu, it turns out that the brewery was started by a few Chileans who visited a brewery in San Diego and got it started with one of the San Diego residents´pointers on the beer. Cheers to that! We didn´t have too much though, because we still had to pack for the trek tomorrow and had an early bus. We all wandered back to the hostal around midnight and proceeded to drunkenly pack and then go to bed.

The next morning, we woke up around 6:15, wolfed down the breakfast provided by the lady working at the hostal, who also got her older daughter ready for school while serving us and looking after her younger daughter, impressive! When the bus didn´t come at 7:00, we started getting worried, but the lady also called the bus company and informed us that the bus would just be a bit late. We placed all of our non-trekking items in a storage room at the hostal, and jumped on the bus to Torres del Paine around 7:20. After arriving in Torres around 10:30 (not the hour and a half we were told it would be) we were efficiently sent through the park entrance office and forced to pay a steep fee, USD $40 or something, watched a movie about how to behave in the park, and sign a waiver saying we would behave. Well, Acacia and I had about USD $10 total, so we turned to our Dutch buddies who lent us enough money and then some to pay for the campsites we were also forced to stay (and pay) at.

Day 1:

Immediately, we could tell this would be very different than our previous backpacking experience. This place was designed to handle visitors, a lot! And, of course, the campsites were set up at about 3/4 day length hikes for us to make us stay longer than we otherwise would have if we were allowed to backcountry camp, but a bit too far apart to make skipping a campsite very worth it. However, our bags were loaded with food! So the short days were really pretty nice. Super sunny, great weather, and a well maintained, relatively flat, trail the first day took us to a nice campground with a slackline out front and expensive bad wine for sale. Fortunately we had our own cheap bad wine, which I drank immediately after arriving because I noticed that an entire liter of oil had spilled all over the bottom of my pack and needed an immediate boost. We made a delicious cream cheese and garlic pasta. We also ran into a German guy who had been staying at our hostal in Ushuaia, who happened to be a very successfull mooch. That evening, he borrowed my spoon and used a bunch of our cooking set as a windblock for his after telling us how he had asked everyone in one of the other campsites for leftover food to live off of while in the park. The next morning he borrowed our tarp to roll his sleeping pad up on, and took about half a roll of duct tape of the Dutch guys. He was a friendly enough guy though.

Day 2:

For the first time this trip, someone got up before me while backpacking, Mike. Mike was so confused about this that he actually thought I was missing before deciding to check and see if I was in fact still sleeping, which woke me up. So, naturally, I made pancakes, complete with the improved backcountry recipe which included raw eggs and lots of butter. We had a pretty slow morning, and eventually left around noon for a 6 hour hike according to the map. The trail was pretty flat, but we went around a point along a large lake that was pretty exposed, so it was mighty windy. The views were pretty good, but mostly pampas and lakes with the mountains in the background. We stopped for lunch for like an hour and a half and made cheese/hardboiled egg/mustard sandwhiches (a lunch that was getting to become pretty common) and a spoonfull of dulce de leche. As we approached our camp for the night, we were pretty high above it on the side of a hill and could see a sizeable refugio and a bunch of tents just off a huge lake. The ¨Refugio Dickson¨campground and refugio (essentially a hotel with breakfast included in the middle of the trek) also sold wine and beer, and had a bunch of tables to cook at with open fields for camping. Immediately after arriving we noticed a billion mosquitos all around, so quickly set up the tent and just sat inside, away from biting bugs. Once the Dutch guys set up their 4 person tent, we all jumped in there for party time with a game of cards and a Floris concoction- manioca brandy, rum, sweet apple syrup, water mixed drink- we were all sharing. Once it got cold enough for the mosquitos to die down we all finished setting up the bedding/tents and made some dinner. It was at this point that I realized our spoon had been left on the side of the mountain during the spoonfulls of dulce de leche eating. Bummer, we were now utensil-less. So we used the Dutch guys´ utensils for the rest of the trip. I tossed them some pancakes in return. Afterwards, we were allowed to hang out in the refugio out of the cold, and then watched the night sky for some shooting stars and went to bed.

Day 3:

Well, if yesterday wasa slow morning, this one was even slower. I made pancakes again, to use up all the pancake ingredients. We all took hot showers at the refugio, and then hung out by the lake for a bit before deciding to begin the next day of our hike. By the map, this one was 4 hours, so taking it slow seemed like the thing to do. Similar to the day before, it was a lot of pampas and lakes. A bit less flat than the day before, but still a pretty easy hike, especially now that Acacia and I had been eating our way through a bunch of fresh fruits and vedgies and wine to make our packs lighter. Approaching camp we got to an alpine lake at the bottom of a large glacier, though we could only see a bit of it. We all sat for a bit at the top of the lake and just enjoyed the view for a while. But, it started to get cold so we walked the final 5-10 minutes into camp. This one was within a bunch of trees, and also cost money, but didn´t sell wine and didn´t have hot showers, so kind of a ripoff. Acacia tried to hide in the tent when the fee collector came by, but I didn´t catch on and ended up paying for both of us. Since it was St. Patrick´s day and all, we drank the Chilean IPA we brought along while making dinner, and then enjoyed the Floris concoction.

Day 4:

Today was definitely the hardest day. We had a big climb ahead of us as we were going from the valley floor where the campground was at over a pretty high pass. The hike basically went straight up through some forest and into alpine where it was basically then a couple miles up scree slope. The views were pretty epic, as we got higher and could see over the entire valley we had been walking through the last day and a half. There was some pretty crazy geology going on too, with a few really good anticlines (Mike has just finished his undergrad in geology in Holland). And so we climbed up, and up, and eventually reached the top of this pass where it was SUPER windy. So we walked just beyond the immediate top of the pass to where it was a little less windy, and had a fantastic view of a huge glacier, and prepared to gorge on hardboiled egg and cheese sandwhiches for about an hour and a half. Many people that we passed on the way up made it to the top, stopped and ate, and continued down while we were still eating lunch. It was a good feeling. The way down was pretty steep, and pretty long. It was roughly the same distance we had climbed up, but seemingly more steep, as indicated by the handrails and ropes installed on some parts of the trail. But, the views were even more epic! The valley at the bottom of the pass we just went over was currently being carved by one of the largest glaciers in the world, 14,000 square kilometers. Basically, it was really big. As all of our knees and ankles were nearly giving out going through the forest of Southern Beech trees lower on the mountain, we got to a sign that said we had about 2km to go with some more downhill. However, it was about 1km and all uphill, so bad sign. But we were all relieved to not be going downhill anyway. We arrived at the camp (our first free one) and looked around for a campsite and set up. As I was in the kitchen area preparing dinner, Acacia was setting up the tent and bedding, which is the usual delegation of work. But, Leif, an American from Minnesota who we met back in Ushuaia our last night in the hostal, ended up setting up camp right next to us! It´s crazy how many people we keep running into doing the similar travel itineraries to us. Leif´s a pretty friendly guy who had just finished a NOLS course learning to mountaineer in northern Patagonia for 30 days, had just hitched a ride on a sail boat to Isla Navarina, south of Ushuaia, with a french couple and trekked around there for a few days, and was planning on canoeing down the Mississippi when he got back to the U.S. We had a lot to talk about. I think this night was our last of the Floris concoction as well.

Day 5:

Today we got off to kind of an early start because we were going to try to skip one of the paid campgrounds in order to save money and so we could complete the trek with our dwindling provisions, aka way more than  everybody else had for the entire journey. Breakfast was oatmeal and biscuits, and I met a couple guys from California in the kitchen area, both middle aged and in the medical sales field, who were pretty envious of the biscuits. We packed up and headed off down the trail by like 11. In the AM, it was a record! It was a fairly gradual downhill hilke through the forest, so definitely one of the easier days. We stopped for lunch at a nice lookout spot over the glacier and met an older dude from Tasmania. Around 2 or 3, I can´t really remember, we got to the campground/refugio that we were skipping. This was the fist refugio that was part of ´The W´, a trek that was only 5 days by the map and included in the one we were doing, but gets WAY more backpackers because its easier and more accessible. With that said, the refugio was huge, had clean bathrooms, had a market that accepted credit cards and sold wine anc chocolate. So we took a long break at this one with the four of us splitting 3 liters of wine. While we were sitting in the sun enjoying the view of the mountains, Leif caught up to us and busted out his Pisco and joined the party. It was a pretty good time. After a while of hanging out there, the 5 of us all headed down the trail for the final 3 or 4 hours of our hike with a good buzz going. Fortunately, the trail was well used and easy to follow. It went through the forest a bit more, and then went down through a pampas covered canyon where it started to rain towards the last 10 minutes of the hike or so. We had been told that the refugio and campground we were going to was ¨The Disneyland of Torres del Paine¨, and that was pretty accurate. Loads of people, and a bunch of showers and bathroom, a large hotel, a restaurant, a market, and boarded walkways out to the campsites. We set up our tents to get things out of the rain pretty fast, and then entered the most crowded kitchen ever. There were 3 working stoves in there, but with about 70 people, most everyone was just cooking on their stoves in there. We made some pasta and bought some wine at the market and just hung out in the warmth and the tables in the kitchen area until 11 when we were kicked out to our tents. While we were in there, though, the craziest thing happened. Acacia thought she recognized someone as being from Montgomery, and I was guessing a Warren twin. So, after pressuring Acacia into asking ïs your last name Warren?¨, and me hearing the scream (not from Acacia, just to be clear) indicating that it was indeed a Warren, I walked over and we both talked to Brittany. Turns out she was studying abroad in Valpairiso, west of Santiago, and was down in Torres del Paine for her spring break with some other students or something. Small world. Anyway, 11 rolled around, and we got kicked out to head back to our tents. However, the Dutch guys cheap Walmart quality tent had snapped a tent pole in the wind and needed some repairs. We all kind of stood around and watched as Floris did his best to repair the tent with some duct tape, but it was in pretty bad shape. In any case, we all survived the night.

Day 6:

Woke up and made some oatmeal as well as noodles for later in the day since we could use the stoves in the kicthen instead of our fuel. Although we weren´t planning on skipping another campground, we were planning on doing a several mile hike to Campo Italiano, another free campground, and then do several miles up a valley to a lookout and back, so it was going to be a long day. We started sort of early, but the Dutch guys showered, and tried to repair their tent in the light, and we all said bye to Leif who was taking off farther north since he was flying back in a week or two. The hike to Campo Italiano was fairly easy, with some decent views over a big lake and eventually leading to a glacial river with a large bridge over it that was right at the entrance to the camp. Apparently this was the spot to camp because this was the most crowded campground yet, so even though we were there by like 2, we set up our tents just to secure a site, and make sure it was close to the kitchen. We ate some of our pasta, and then headed up the valley to the lookout. Floris was leading, and for some reason he was booking it! I had convinced people to bring more clothes than they wanted since we were going up in elevation to somewhat stormy looking weather while the sun was going down, so moving fast made everybody very warm. We de-layered, and then continued on up at a bit slower rate after stopping to drink some water from a stream and try to climb some good looking boulders. We stopped again for a bit most of the way to the top for a small snack, and ran into Brittany again as she was on her way down from the lookout. Turns out she got snowed on. Good thing we brought those extra layers. Anyway, about 5 minutes farther and we were at this lookout-esque spot that seemed as though the trail used to go farther, but now just kind of ended at this boulder that was a bit higher than the trees so you could look out over the valley and see the mountains above. It was a pretty epic view. As more people came up to the lookout while we were there, the boulder started to get pretty crowded, and we were getting cold, even with the extra clothes. So we headed down pretty quick, stopping for some pictures and to look at the glaciers and valley. We got down and made dinner in the super crowded kitchen area and then played some cards before bed.

Day 7:

I woke up early enough to catch the last bit of sunrise. And it was pink. So my knowledge of poetry told me that it was going to be stormy out today. Well, under the cover of the trees that the campground was in, it didn´t seem too bad. So, we took our time getting ready in the morning and were nearly the last people to leave the camp. As soon as we left the cover of the trees, it was super windy and rainy. My rain cover flew off about 30m so I had to bushwhack for that, then quickly throw on all the waterproof layers before continuing on through the bad weather. Stopping at all meant you would instantly get cold, so when we came to the refugio that was a couple miles into the hike, we decided to go inside for an early lunch. The weather was getting worse, and the huge glass wall of the refugio made it seem terrible. Fortunately the refugio had whisky hot chocolates, so we got some to warm up. Also, the weather was seeming bad enough that we all came up with the plan to bail on the last day of the hike if it was going to be bad weather the next day. We had approximately 18km left to get to the campsite up in the mountains later that day, but it didn´t seem to worth it if the weather was going to be bad and leave us without any views. In any case, we hiked pretty quickly to get to the hotel at the bottom of the valley and asked them about the weather situation. Well, it was supposed to be only kind of bad the next day, but really bad all the rest of the week. With those conditions, we all decided to call the hike quits at the hotel. There we got some irish coffees, and ran into the medical sales guys again and chatted for a bit in the warmth of the hotel (picture the Ahwanee in Yosemite) before hitching a ride to where the bus picked us up to go back to Puerto Natales. We almost didn´t fit on the bus, and got the very last seats on this super uncomfortable bus crammed in the back on a windy dirt road. But at least we weren´t getting rained on.

We arrived in Puerto Natales around 10 and went straight to the hostal we had been staying at. It was locked up and nobody was home. Sketchy? Especially since our non-trekking gear was inside. So we wandered around to a bunch of other hostals that were either completely full or way too expensive. Eventually we found one about 20 feet from where the bus initially dropped us off for a good price. We got to the hostal pretty late, so took showers and went to bed pretty quick.

The next day we woke up to a nice breakfast that included real coffee, something we were all missing being in Yerba Mate country where coffee drinkers normally only have the option of instant coffee. After breakfast, the plan was to get our stuff from the locked hostal from the night before. We walked the couple of blocks to the hostal, and discovered that it was again locked. Floris held me up and I looked into every window and tried to see if anyone was around, but it didn´t look like it. So, we did the next best thing to wander into the local bakery across the street (Acacia said I wasn´t allowed to get anything... A edit: because the last time John and Floris went out together they stopped for baked goods like 3 times-something like 6 churros per sitting- and didn´t bring me or Mike any ) and ask about the people there and if they could call the hostal or something. No luck. What´re we going to do now? We already had bus tickets for the next morning so we needed our stuff today! As we were walking back to our new hostal to ask what to do there, we stopped at the laundry facility next door to the locked hostal and tried to ask about how to get into Martina´s House, the name of the locked hostal. When everyone had given up and was about to walk out, I pulled some of the few Spanish words I know out ¨Dejar equipaje en Martina´s House¨. Something about leaving our luggage in the hostal, and then the lady at the laundry seemed to get it, and told us to go to a different hostal to find a family member of the owner of Martina´s House and ask him. So we did. And he took is in to Martina´s House through the back door, seemed very confused about where his family was, and was also confused why our stuff was no longer in the storage room. At this point, we were all about to freak out because the most logical conclusion was that our stuff was jacked. Hundreds of dollars of mountaineering gear that we haven´t even used! Noooo! But then the guy who led us in opened up another door to the room we had stayed in, and our stuff was in there. Phew. So we grabbed our stuff and headed back to our new, non-sketchy hostal. The rest of the day was essentially a recovery day. We got some laundry done, wrote some letters and postcards in the park, played frisbee and drank beer in the park, and the Dutch guys bought a tent and new stove off a couple Germans we were hanging out with at the hostal. For dinner, we came across a lady selling salmon out of a cooler in front of the grocery store, so we went shopping for all the ingredients to go with the salmon, but then she was gone by the time we left the grocery store with cash to buy some. But, while Acacia was finishing writing some letters, Floris and I made another beer run and I saw a guy selling some kind of none too fresh fish from a cooler in the same spot, so I quickly purchased a whole fish. I have never really cooked a whole fish before, so I attempted to roast it in the oven and smother it with BBQ sauce. It turned out pretty decent. We also made some squash bread before going to bed to have for the bus ride the next day.

The following day, we had to get up early to catch a taxi to the 8:30am bus to El Calafate, back into Argentina. We quickly ate the breakfast with lots of coffee, and then all 4 of us crammed into the taxi with all of our stuff. Acacia and I ended up on bus 2, while the Dutch guys were on bus 1, but the ride was pretty uneventful with several pieces of squash bread involved. We arrived in El Calafate about 30 minutes after the last bus to Glacier Perito Moreno left, so that meant hanging out in El Calafate for at least a day to get a chance to see the glacier. We walked to a campground that was on a river and set up our tent next to what smelled like burning plastic, great. We went to the grocery store for some lunch ingredients including green olives, apples, cheese, bread, and some wine. We were feeling classy. Though maybe not so much with the boxed wine. We said cheers to the Dutch guys who we found sitting on a bench drinking beer and watching some local music in a plaza in town as they were waiting for their bus to El Chalten. They were trying to move north faster than us and had already been delayed by joining our trekking. After our late lunch, we did some meal planning for our trip the next day to El Chalten and the trekking we wanted to do there. El Chalten is a town within the Los Glaciares national park that was built in 1985 specifically for tourists, so we´d heard that food was limited and pricey once we got there, and there was no cash machine. Obviously, this concerned me, so grocery shopping included tons of bread and cheese and an entire grocery cart full of food. Familiar. Anyway, we stayed up kind of late cleaning out our packs and condensing our provisions to fit in our bags so we could leave early the next morning.