Patagonia Part I

Last Friday night at 3:00 am my flight landed in the southernmost city in South America: Punta Arenas. In the dark, Emma and I joked that we were probably landing on top of an iceberg or squashing a penguin colony...hmm, maybe that was funnier when we were delieriously tired. Anyway, after sleeping in the airport for the next few hours, the sun finally rose and I could see that we were not actually surrounded by snow, but still in a in the middle of a rather dry, barren tundra. Our destination was Torres del Paine National Park; one week earlier my friends and I decided on a whim that we must make it to Patagonia. Torres del Paine however, is nowhere near Valparaíso. We had to fly three hours to Punta Areans and then take a bus 6 hours north to the Park. It was totally, totally worth it.

First of all, I should say that when we arrived we had no idea how long we'd be backpacking. There are both free and paid campsites in teh park, but there are also refugios (kind of like hostels, but still pretty expensive). There is a common route through the park called the "W" which you can do in anywhere betwee 3 and 6 days depending on how much hiking you really want to do. In the end, to avoid paying for refugios, we decided to hike and camp the entire 6 days. Indeed, 7 people turned out to be a bit too large of a group to travel with, but we made it work.

The first day of hiking was sort of the optional day, or extended trip hike. We chose to hike 6 hours to the base camp at Lake Pehoe rather than spending $20 to get there by boat. This was perhaps my favorite day of hiking for several reasons. First of all, the weather was gorgeous. It was very windy, but still really sunny. Also, the trail wasn't too difficult, which is nice given how heavy our packs were. Also, less people take this trail, I think we only passed one other couple the entire day. That night however, things got a little rough. We were stupid enough to bring a borrowed tent before checking to see if everything was okay with it. We got to the site at Lake Pehoe kind of late because the bus didn't get us to the trailhead until noonish. Turns out the tent was broken. One of the strings inside the tent poles had snapped. We had to perform major pole surgery in the dark, freezing, wind. Everyone was grumpy--we fought a lot that night. In the end we did manage to pitch our ridiculously huge 6-person mansion (which slept 7 comfortably even with all the backpacks inside) and we awoke in the morning to another beautiful day.
Day 2 was a hike up to Glacier Grey. I have never seen a glacier before (where would I?) and it was amazing. I especially couled believe the way the light lit it up as the sun rose. That night we had to fix the tent again, in fact we had to fix it every night of the entire trip. Every time we took the tent down it broke again. However, we finally figured out a method of repair and we never stressed as much as we did the first night. There is so much more to tell...rainbows, the torrres, but I'll save it for the next post. I don't want to make these too long and overwhelming. Check out the pics of these first two days!