Glaciers, Hiking, and Heading Still Farther South

Hey all! It´s been a little while since I´ve found cheap enough internet to do an update so bear with me while I try to let you all know what we´ve been up to in Patagonia! I last left you in El Calafate, Argentina, where Brad and I took a tour into Parque Nacional Los Glaciares to see the impressive Perito Moreno glacier. It is one of the biggest tourist attractions in Patagonia because the front of the glacier is 3 miles long and can be easily observed from a series of intricate walkways that allow visitors to see the glacier from different vantage points. The glacier is also quite important because it is still advancing and it is said that it grows as much as 2 meters everyday. All of those miles of ice pushing the glacier forward makes Perito Moreno the most exciting piece of ice you will ever observe nonstop for 6 hours! Chunks of ice constantly break off and fall dramatically into the chilly water below creating large waves that send the icebergs floating off to the middle of the lake. I chose to sit in one spot where I could see the best of the glaciers faces and listened to the popping and cracking noises that indicated where the next icy plunge would occur and shockingly, before I knew it, 4 hours had passed! Though expensive, the trip to see the glacier was one of the highlights of this trip so far.

Two nights in touristy and expensive Calafate was all that we needed and after the trip to the glacier, Brad and I were off to Puerto Natales, which required a border crossing and more stamps in our passports! In Patagonia, there is almost no difference between Chile and Argentina...in fact, it almost seems as if we have left South America entirely because prices are so high, there are so many tourists around, and English is either spoken or written everywhere. I am actually quite excited to head back up north to explore the real Argentina and actually speak some Spanish again! Anyway, Puerto Natales is a colorful, windy little town on the edge of a lake surrounded by mountains and glaciers. That´s the other thing about Patagonia...there are glaciers everywhere! You can hardly walk around a corner without running into another glacier and the really crazy thing is that all of the glaciers are at sea level, not just confined to the mountains. So, we camped in Puerto Natales, in the yard of a hostel, and we spent a few days organizing ourselves to head into Parque Nacional Torres del Paine, the most famous park in South America.

In our travels we have run into many people coming from the south who had done Torres del Paine and we have gotten a lot of mixed information and recommendations about the right way to experience the park...do just the circuit, do the W trail, wear raingear, just get wet and dry out later, you will get muddy feet, the wind will knock you over, the sun is so hot you will sweat like an athlete, etc. I had initially thought that we could wait around for a favorable weather window in which we would be safely able to see the entire park with little rain but upon arriving in Puerto Natales, I learned that the weather in Patagonia is incredibly complex and completely impossible to predict. If there is one constant, at least in the summer, it is the strong gusty wind. So Brad and I did some grocery shopping, enough to last us 8 or 9 days in the park and headed out to hike the circuit trail. Most tourists who come to Torres del Paine hike the W trail, which leads you to the highlights of the park and only takes something like 4 days. The circuit takes about 8 days and leads to the backcountry sections of the park which are more remote and visited by far fewer people. On our first day we hiked 28 km to Refugio Dixon in the most gorgeous, sunny, windless weather you can imagine. We assumed that our offerings to the weather gods had paid off and we could hike blissfully in ideal weather for at least a few days. But the following day we hiked for hours in the pouring rain, though it did remain windless. On the third day we set off in freezing, snowy, and windy conditions to hike up the John Gardener pass, the highest point on the circuit, which is not actually that high when compared with other hiking we did in Peru and Ecuador. It was a thrilling experience to emerge from the trees onto the snow covered, windswept trail that lead up to the pass. By the time we reached the top, we were taking a few steps and then stopping to hold onto rocks as the wind gusted, threatening to blow us over. From the top, where we stopped long enough to take one photograph, we had our first view of Glacier Gray, one of the biggest glaciers in the Patagonian icefield. But we descended quickly into the trees on the other side as the wind was relentless. After a steep, muddy hike down toward the glacier, we arrived at Refugio Gray for the night. There are a variety of campsites in the park, some you have to pay to use and others are free. The free sites are less tidy and often have problems with mice or overflowing pit toilets. It was a mystery to me how the park could charge a hefty entrance fee and then provide less than stellar accommodations for it´s campers. Also the trails, especially around the circuit, were often covered in calf deep mud and it was impossible to avoid getting extremely muddy even on dry days. Oh well, that´s just Chile. From Refugio Gray, we hiked to a free campsite at the base of the Valle Frances, which many people claim is the star of the Torres del Paine show despite the name of the park. When we poked our heads out of the rainfly the following day, however, it was pouring rain, and Brad had a little stomach bug that had him running down the trail to the bathroom frequently. I emerged from the tent only twice during the whole day as it continued to rain without pause. The next day, it was still raining but I made a gallant effort to explore the valley but after hiking one hour in without seeing any mountains and with the wind blowing in my face, I gave up and returned to camp to pack up and hike out to the final campsite, Las Torres. (Brad was feeling much better by the way). On the way, we hiked on the shore of a lake where you could observe the gusts of wind building up over the water to push the waves in a huge misty spray in toward the shore...it was pretty exhilerating! On the final morning, we woke up to sunny skies to see us out of the park and back to Puerto Natales and my first shower in 7 days. So, overall, we did some great hiking and saw many unforgettable things and I left feeling proud of completing my longest backpacking trip yet but a bit disappointed for not getting to see ALL of the sights.

In Puerto Natales we had a great time hanging out with our NW friends, Ryan and Molly and also with a couple from Vancouver BC, Claire and Dan, who we met at the hostel. We had a couple of really great bbqs and we spent a lot of good times there. But we said goodbye to them this morning and headed south to Punta Arenas, the southernmost city on continental South America. We spent the afternoon sightseeing around this windy city situated right on the Straight of Magellan. They have a gorgeous cemetary which Brad has already told you about in the previous post and there are wide boulevards which make walking around very easy and comfortable. The population of Punta Arenas has been incredibly mixed in the past from prisoners to soldiers and sailors to my favorite, ´dandies of the wool boom` who made their fortunes on sheeps wool and who built elaborate mansions that still stand around the plaza de armas downtown. It has been fun but we are off to Ushuaia tomorrow on a long bus ride that will take us to Tierra del Fuego and almost as far south as you can go on this continent! It is unbelievable to have reached this point in our adventure.
Hope all is well! Love, Anika