Into the Wild and Back

Torres Del Paine, a National Park that offered me one of the most challenging weeks of my entire life. I and two other girl friends, Keeley and Carly, hiked the “W” (or Doble V) technically from Monday through Thursday. We arrived in the park on Saturday and remained until the next Friday. I am now laying in bed back in Punta Arenas looking through my pictures and listening to Enigma “The Return to Innocence” and still in disbelief my body and mind are attached after the mind blowing and physical challenges I have faced over our hike through the Andes Mountains.

I’m not sure where to begin, but I will try for you.

First let me explain exactly where I was and what I have been doing. The Andes Mountains has a National Park named Torres Del Paine. They have two very famous hikes, The “W” and the Circuit. Originally my friends and I were going to hike/backpack through the entire Circuit which takes you around the whole park and lasts about 9 days. Unfortunatly, due to Avalanches this time of year we were adviced not to take this route. So, Carly or the embodiment of nature women as I will forever think of her, devised a route to take us through 8 days of hikes which would include the “W”. The “W” is the formation the most famous hike in Patagonia makes, on the map it literally looks just like a W hence the name.

http://www.besthike.com/southamerica/chile/paine.html

Keeley and I arrived in Puerto Natales by bus on Friday afternoon to meet Carly, who is volunteering there. In order to get to Torres del Paine one must take about a 3 hour bus ride (well, depending on how drunk/high your driver is varies on how long it will take to get there) from Puerto Natales( this is where the previous outdoor pictures had been taken that are posted on the blog).

Friday night the three of us went grocery shopping for nine days worth of meals to carry with us for our hike. Our list included everything from avocado, bread, potatoes, chorizo (sausage) to chocolate bars and gas for our stove. We headed back to Carly’s house with full grocery bags and began divvying up our goods so that the weight was equal for each pack. We all carried our own sleeping bag (one of which we discovered the first night did not zip up). Finally, at about 11:00 pm with the tent, various foods and my clothes strapped/packed away we tucked ourselves into bed and fell straight to sleep. What felt like 5 minutes later we rudely awakened by a 6:00 am wake-up call from my cell-phone.

A called in a cab, got dropped off at the bus station and were on our way by 7:30 to Torres del Paine, which Carly and I translated into Towers of Pain (haha, we had no idea how true this metaphor would become).

The weather unfortunately hadn’t gotten the heads up we were planning on spending the next week outdoors so our first hike (Saturday) up to Campamento Zapato was full of mud, rain, wind and lastly snow. About 4 hours into our hike we realized with every step the monsoon looming was getting closer and closer. Luckily, Keeley, had the sense to stop and turn us around so that we could find refuge before we were completely annihilated by all of mother nature’s weapons. We hiked/ran/slid back down the mountain towards Campemento (basically this just means Campsite) Pingo. Quickly, our week in Torres Del Paine was turning into a nightmare. Campamento Pingo could be compared to where they found the guy from the film “Into the Wild” dead. I was having visions of our bodies being plucked from the trees the next day when the Park Ranger came by due to what felt like 70 mph winds, and the rain that was pelting us sideways. Carly and Keeley luckily had noticed an abandoned shack about 50 ft. from Campamento Pingo, so we grapped our tent and packs and ran for it. Ha, my visions now turned from Into the Wild to The Blair Witch Project, instead the actors would be found in an abandon shack inside a tent.

So, yes, we pitched our tent in the house, hung our clothes from the nails sticking out of the walls, and cooked our dinner which we lovingly named “Pingo Mix”. Unfortunatly, our “Pingo Mix” which was hamburger, potatos and peas would be traveling with us for the remained of our trek because we spilled it in the bottom of our tent and there’s something about that smell you can’t get rid of. Eventually it just becomes part of your sweat, skin and sleeping bags.
We awoke the next morning (Sunday) to more rain (seriously I still don’t understand how it could possibly rain that much). We packed up our wet clothes and knew hitchhiking was in our near future because walking in that monsoon was no longer possible and the park doesn’t have transportation inside the park for broke English teaching campers.

… more to follow.