To The End of the World (Or Close Enough)

We didn’t actually make it to the End of the World. We made it to Punto Arenas. The official southernmost city in the world is either Ushuaia or Puerto Williams, depending on how you want to define “city.” But being generous, and saying Puerto Williams is the most southern, and Ushuaia is number two, Punto Arenas still comes in at number three. And that’s not too bad in my books.

 

We arrived in Punto Arenas with a rough itinerary, some phone numbers, and  backpacks full of warm clothes. We had nine days in southern Patagonia before our return flight to Santiago. So we wasted little time in Punta Arenas before catching a bus that evening to Puerto Natales, the entrance city to Torres del Paine National Park, Chile’s “crown jewel.” I’m not even going to mess around with words like breathtaking, stunning, or it’s so pretty I just peed a little. I’ll just go straight to the pictures (click to enlarge):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Puerto Natales we stayed in Casa Teresa for about 8 dollars a night, where we only broke one window and a poster. Teresa also happened to own a tourism agency, which saved us a lot of time and hassle. We spent the first day being driven around Torres del Paine National Park in a very photogenic van—

 

 

 —stopping to take pictures and goof around, mostly on beaches as has become our hallmark. No one, however, did cartwheels.

 

Things we saw on the tour:

 

 A Mineral Lake whose name I have forgotten.

 

Lago Grey.

 

A waterfall I was sure people were going to die at.

 

 

 

 Lago Pehoe.

 

And then: and then we hiked. The next day we woke up early (the sun was rarely up before us on this trip) and loaded back into a bus that drove us to the beginning of the trail to el Base de los Torres. It was supposed to be an 8-hour hike, but do to the fact that it was us, it took about 9ish. It is not a solid ascent to a summit, because summiting Los Torres requires at least a week and the ability to scale sheer granite. The trail instead winds up and down a few times, sufficiently exhausting the inactive person before shooting up at the end in an AgroCrag-like rock-scramble to a lake at the base of the Torres. But that just wasn’t enough for us. “This is great,” we said, looking at the splendor around us, “but… that treacherous ridge of loose, jagged rock over there—let’s climb that.” And so we did:

 

 

 

 

(And I can only image that at some point back there in history, when everything was grainy black and white and men had beards and those beards had ice in them, a group of icy-bearded explorers forged their way through rocks and snow and oceans to come to the base of these towers and stood with ice in beards, breath crystallizing in front of their faces, looking at these jagged granite cliffs disappearing into the swirling clouds. And one of these men said, through a beard full of ice, “Let’s climb it.”)

 

So we returned to the van, late as usual, and were driven back to Puerto Natales, where we had dinner. And then we slept.

 

The next day we tried to go kayaking in the fjord near Puerto Natales. We hired our guides and took off in the van and suited up at the edge of the water, in the biting wind. Now I could claim exactly 4 hours of previous kayaking experience in my life, and that in very calm lake waters. The others were George, Nubia, Theresa, and Alexis. George and Nubia teamed up in a kayak, Theresa and I in another, and Alexis settled in with Daniel, the soon to be love of her life.

 

30 minutes later: we have gone 10 feet. Theresa has already nearly forced us to turn around because her hands are painfully cold (Gloves? This is Latin America!) and I’m trying desperately to keep us pointed into the wind and the waves. I ask sternly that she keep paddling so we don’t flip, at which point she decides to demonstrate how hard a kayak is to flip by rocking the kayak. At which point I yell at her, and she responds: “Have you ever seen a kayak flip?”

 

“Well, no I haven’t actually seen it but…(looking back over my shoulder)…oh crap, Nubia and George flipped.”

 

Yes, Nubia and George got themselves sideways and blew right over. I’m not going to try to recap the story, because I can’t capture the hilarious terror of George’s telling. But Theresa and I turned around when the wind settled a bit and headed back. And that was that. We changed out of our wetsuits and played around on a windy hill for a while, which was again very scenic and very epic.

 

The next day was Perito Moreno day. Perito Moreno is a “temperate glacier,” according to the more or less useless Argentinian guide that shouted at us in the van for an hour or so. I would recommend it to anyone, regardless of fondness for ice. It’s an impressive sight, and if you can be there in late afternoon/sunset, you will probably get to see some chunks fall off—

 

 

 

 

 

 

—which was apparently lethal in the past, before the times of signs, railings, and common sense:

 

 

The tour left us in el Calafate, Argentina. And when I say “left us” I mean it in the most abandony way possible: kicked out of the van to stand on the side of the road with a pile of backpacks:

 

Apparently I don’t have a picture of this.

 

So we stood there and looked around a bit and sighed and put our hands on our hips. Then we found a cabin to stay at. The next day, I believe (my memory is blurring a bit, so forgive my dates if they’re wrong), we bussed up to El Chaltén, Argentina. But this was no ordinary bus. I woke up when the bussed stopped, assuming we were at a gas station. But when I looked out the window, I saw that we were at a small restaurant road-stop and Alexis was fighting a guanaco. This is a guanaco:

 

 

 

The guanaco she was fighting was trying to get into the restaurant, and she was trying to stop it. Turns out the guanaco was a pet of the owner and eventually did enter the restaurant to wander around the tables and let tourists feed it from a bottle, which was adorable. Unfortunately, I left my camera on the bus, so I don’t have pictures of this. But there was also a pet cow that stood pathetically at the door watching the guanaco being bottle-fed and fawned over. I pet the cow for good measure.

 

Okay: El Chaltén. This is El Chaltén:

 

 

 

 

It was founded in 1982 and is almost halfway constructed by now. You’ll notice most of the buildings are missing some walls or windows and there is no real grass and very few trees. The town has no bank or ATM, and at this time of year, very few people. The man who worked at the bus station, however, was very helpful:

 

 

But El Chaltén is the site of the trailheads to Mount Fitz Roy and its torres. There are a lot of options for hiking here, ranging from 1 hour to about 12 hours, with options for camping. As we went in winter and were poorly equipped, we did not camp. The first day we spent the afternoon on a 3-4 hour hike to el Mirador de los Torres, which was an incredible pay off for such an easy hike:

 

 

 

 

 

The next day we were up early again for our last major expedition: the 8-hour hike to Mirador Tres Lagos at the base of Mount Fitz Roy. This hike was more challenging, but not beyond the capabilities of anyone in decent shape. It’s really all flat until the last 500 meters, which start like this:

 

(Dear Visitor: The last 500 meters of this hike are of high difficulty and contain exposed faces. Do not climb if you do not have hiking boots and experience in mountain climbing. Avoid accidents.) This was also the only sign along that way that was not in English as well as Spanish.

 

And end like this:

 

 

But the entire hike is one big Ansel Adams print, as were most of the excursions in Patagonia. There is nowhere to look that doesn’t take your breath away.

 

 

Almost.

 

And then it was three wine-fueled days of working our way back to Punta Arenas from El Chaltén. Buses were sometimes tough to come by, and half of us ran broke to the point of considering street-performing as a viable means of income. But we made it back all right, on time, and with most of our possessions.

 

And that’s about all I have to say about that.

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