Patagoonietoons

We have arrived at December 15th, the penultimate blog post, and the Tufts in Chile kiddos are heading back home today. I have the incredible pleasure of staying for another two weeks because the fammy fam's plane touches down in Santiago today, well actually, exactly now as I type this out (10:18am)!!! I'm going to take a blogging break as I spend some long over due time with them, but this long novel of a post will keep you busy until my last blog when I finally make my way back to the US.

So what has been keeping me so busy for the last three weeks? I first finished all of my classes, handed in final essays and presented final projects. But most of all, on November 29th, Shayna, Matthew, Bryce, Maria, and I adventured to Patagonia. We flew out of Santiago at 2am on the morning of the 30th and arrived in Punta Arenas, the southern most city in the world that sits right on the Straight of Magellan. Very tired and even more disappointed at the extreme lack of foods available in the airport at 5:30am upon landing, we hung out and napped and started nibbling on our pre-made GORP until our bus arrived at 8:50 or so to bring us to Puerto Natales. Puerto Natales is the closest large town (/city..?) to Torres del Paine National Park, the world famous bucket list destination of millions each year from around the world. Maria, Bryce, and Matthew planned to do the O, the circuit hike that takes you entirely around the park, while Shayna and I were doing the W, the more common bottom half of the O. After making last minute errands to rent final equipment and some secretly baked (and semi burnt) brownies to celebrate their last night in civilization, the O trio headed out of our hostel on the morning of the 1st. Shayna and I stayed extra in Puerto Natales to give the O crew an extra head start, as we planned to meet up on the 7th and hike together up to the famous Torres on the 8th. We took the time to explore Puerto Natales a little bit and get some extra rest before our 62km hike.

Puerto Natales finds along the coast

Soon we were off too, leaving Puerto Natales in the pouring rain at 7:15am with our packs filled to the brim with our food for the next week and all of the layers required for a park in which each campsite should have its own weather app page. But that pouring rain subsided (leaving our first daily rainbow) over the hour and a half bus ride to the Laguna Amarga checkpoint where all of the visitors are required to pay an entrance fee and watch a video explaining the rules of the park, which, boiled down, say don't start a fire where you aren't supposed to because you will go to jail for a very long time. End of story.

Shayna and I did red, and the trio did blue+red

Shayna and I then hopped back on the bus that took us to Pudeto where we caught the catamaran across Lago Pehoé that brought us to Refugio Paine Grande, the site of our first peanut butter and nutella wrap lunch. From there we hiked up to Refugio Grey, a campsite that sits just below the beginning of Glacier Grey. All of the signage said the 11km hike from Paine Grande to Grey would be 3.5 hours, so Shayna and I were feeling oh so casual and great. We made it to the first lookout (about of the third of the way on the map), Laguna Pato, after a little over an hour. Right on schedule, so we took a little snack break. There the sign said we had traveled 3.5km and have 7 to go. After packing up again and heaving our packs over our shoulders we set off very confidently. But a little less than two hours later, we reached the Glacier lookout only to find another sign that said we had walked 4.5km and had 5 to go. So not only had we only gone 1km in the time that it took us to go 3.5, the trail had magically been reduced by 2km!!! Frustrated that at this rate we wouldn't arrive until 9pm, we hiked on in silence pondering our quick change in fate. Thankfully, it wasn't long until we ran into some friends we had made in the hostel two nights before in Puerto Natales, who told us that sign was completely wrong and we were only about 50 minutes (2km) from camp. And BOY did we zoom after that. They saved our hike I truly believe that. We were 4 hours in and not about to end the day on a high note before seeing them. But we made it to Refugio Glaciar Grey!!! Pitched our tent for the first time, made some pizzadillas, and hit the hay.

Mirador Glaciar Grey, hated the sign to my left but the view was fiiiiine I guess

I woke up freezing my butt off, because it turns out being really close to a glacier ain't the warmest thing around. But following some well deserved hot chocolates, Shayna and I packed up and walked about 15 minutes to the glacier lookout. I half really wanted to see it calve and half really really didn't so I didn't actively watch the glacier diminish, but there were plenty of floating ice bergs to make that point clear. Lago Grey used to just be Glaciar Grey and that central Island that you see both in the photos above and below (which is just that mound to the left of the glacier beginning) used to be covered in ice. And, as of this summer, Perito Moreno, the last glacier in the world that was still growing has now ceased to. For the first time this year, it's growth was stagnant which does not bowed well for the future. There is not one glacier in the whole world that is growing now. NOT ONE!!!!! Shayna and I were talking about how incredible the views were at quite literally any given point of our hike, but how our views this year will be different from those who hike next year and certainly drastically different from those of the next generation of visitors. If you want to learn more about glaciers I highly highly highly recommend Chasing Ice, and documentary on Netflix about an environmental photographer that documents the shrinking of glaciers. Certainly not the most uplifting of films, but it is incredibly powerful to see the imagery of things whose magnitude, even when shrinking, are so difficult to comprehend. 

Glacier Grey and two weirdos

After going to the lookout, we walked back to camp and saddled up ourselves again for our return leg hike back to Refugio Paine Grande. Though we had worse weather, the hike was FAR superior because we knew that in fact it would take us 5 rather than 3.5 hours and we could follow our progression exactly because we had done it all in the opposite direction the day before. We arrived at Paine Grande campsite at around 5 and set up the tent just in time for a little evening rain shower. But it didn't last long and did leave us our second daily rainbow. The Paine Grande campsite and Refugio sit right on the shores of Lago Pehoé and have a direct view of the Paine Grande Mountain and the entire Paine Massif range (on the right side of the photo below). If you look carefully in the center of the photo, you can see the backside of the famous Torres, which we hiked up to starting at 2am on our very last day of the W. That story will come later, but it was incredible to a) be able to camp below this incredibly picturesque view and b) know exactly where we would be 5 days later. 

Campamento Paine Grande

Daily Rainbow #2

It was windy when we arrived, but we did not plan for the tent to slap us in the face all night long. We certainly learned our lesson about the amount of p-cord needed for our lovely lightweight tent that Bryce was letting us borrow, and you could say that was our worst night's sleep. But day 3 brought us incredible things! New friends from Australia! More views of Paine Grande! A very manageable 7.5 km hike that wasn't that steep! Reduced pack weight as we ate more food! Wow so many amazing things. 

Who are those goons

Night three brought us to Campamento Italiano, a free CONAF (the National Forest Corporation of Chile) camping site right at the base of the middle line of the W. There we met Teegan and Pete, a dope couple from Australia who quit their jobs together and are traveling the world for a year. They were on day 1 of the O and we ended up having two legs of our trip with them. They are so nice, so cool, so funny, and had SUCH strong Aussie accents it was tricky to understand them at times. But we played Uno together (btw there are weird Australian rules to that game...) and almost collapsed a sad picnic table with them. Ahh best trail friends. Well we could never actually hike with them because they walked about twice as fast as us, but best camp friends we certainly were. 

After spending the night in Italiano and p-cording the CRAP out of our tent even though it wasn't even windy, we woke up and hiked up the central trail of the W (Valle Francés). This leads up to Campamento Britannico, which is now closed down. Anyone else seeing this incredible colonial power drama? In less than 3 km we have the French Valley, the Italian Campsite, and the British Campsite. Golly... Shayna and I decided not to hike all the way to Britannico because we got an incredible view from the first lookout and low key almost got blown off the mountain at one point by a freak wind storm. But while we were there, we could see the Frances Glacier calving and mini avalanches falling from the backside of Paine Grande. WILD

We then hiked to Los Cuernos, which had some of, if not the best, views of the whole hike. We walked along the seafoam green Lago Nordenskjöld (below) with the famous Cuernos (horns in Spanish) to our left. Quite literally got blown over twice, but the wind was so strong that it blew up lake water which then... wait for it... turned into rainbows!!! SO COOL

Lago Nordenskjöld

Los Cuernos (+ I spy a sneaky waterfall!!)

Los Cuernos campsite was super windy, super over priced, and gave Shayna and me our first experience of interacting with REALLY annoying stuck up travelers. There are tons of people that do the W without carrying a tent or food because they stay in the refugios (mini hotels) that provide lodging and meals. So they just zoom around with their tiny little packs as Shayna and I slowly make our way. And we had the ~luxury~ of meeting plenty of thirty somethings who are just "taking a little time off" from work because "the corporate life is just a lot right now." Which is all lovely for them, but there was an incredible lack of processing and critical thinking on their part about who has the capacity to travel and how they could pay for the luxury of zooming around the world for 7 months just because they were a little tired of their job. I am certainly in some form of glass house throwing many stones when I type that out, but with the increased privatization of the park, it is being inundated with more and more people (not Chileans I may add) staying in refugios or paying for guided tours rather than hiking and camping on their own. Teegan and Pete also brought up the fact that they are also cutting down on the amount of campers allowed (at some campsites tent numbers are being reduced by 25%) -- both to try to reduce the traffic coming to the park but also trying more and more for people to pay for refugios and lodging and guided tours which is certainly not affordable for the vast majority of travelers, even the vast majority of international travelers. 

Lago Nordenskjöld still... 

After spending a day at Los Cuernos, we continued on towards Los Chilenos, the closest campsite available this season to the Torres. It ended up being my favorite day because of the incredible views we had, our speedy pace with reduced food, and the fact that we met up with Maria, Bryce, and Matthew right before lunch! It was absolutely lovely to do a half a leg with them before hiking out on the 8th. Also just great to see they were alive and hadn't died of starvation as Shayna and I feared as we more or less bought the same if not more food than they did. After another one of those freak windstorms right as we entered into the valley in which the Torres reside, we made it to camp for the night. Maria and Bryce proceeded to mountain goat their way up to the lookout in 80 minutes which is a solid 40 minutes quicker than the average. They oh so generously tested out the water for the hike we planned to do the next morning for sunrise. Which was quite helpful when we headed out at 3am in the dark with headlamps. 

We made it to the famous Mirador Las Torres at 4:57, just under two hours after we left. Sunrise was at 5:35, so we had plenty of time to sit in the freezing cold. And we sat and we sat, waiting for the famous sunrise golden, almost red orange, glow to reach the torres, but sadly an eastern cloud cover kept that famous view from our eyes. But it lit up the sky and the clouds around the torres to make everything look like cotton candy, and just being there was incredible. We headed down about an hour after arriving with fingers and toes on the verge of falling off from being icy cold repeatedly bringing up how gosh darn productive we had been before 6 am. 

Las Torres

behind the scenes in a freezer

And so, from there, we headed down to Chilenos, grabbed some coffee to warm up, packed up our tents, and finished our hike out of the park all together. We were at the visitors center waiting for the shuttle by 12:20. Between then and 1, we had eaten lunch, I had stabbed my finger with a knife, my tourniquet was in place, and were on our way back to Puerto Natales. Talk about a productive 40 minutes! Before we knew it we were showered (what!?), in clean clothes (COME AGAIN?!), and sitting down with fresh pizzas and beer. At that point, Shayna was waddling like a 9 month pregnant woman and there were 2 achilles tendons raging with tendonitis between the five us. But none of it mattered because we had all completed top bucket list items, new goals, a first backpacking trip (!! GO SHAYNA!!) and had visited the most beautiful place in the world in my oh so humble opinion. 

goodness what a crew featuring the Torres in the cloudy background where we had been about 5 hours before

But our trip wasn't even over!!! We headed back to Punta Arenas the next day and met up with Sam, Claire, and Joel who had all been doing their own traveling for the 10 days prior. We had three days to explore there, and though there isn't a ton to do, we filled our time with a tour of the Austral Brewery, a famous boat replica museum, and lots and lots of cards. 

yumm

fun replica of the HMS Beagle (I see you Charles Darwin)

replica of Shackleton's teeny tiny lifeboat that he insanely survived on

We originally were planning to go on a penguin tour, one of the most popular things to do in Punta Arenas, but the tour was a tad more expensive than we were expecting, and on top of that the port was closed because it was too windy. Ahh those uncontrollable Antarctic + Southern Atlantic + Southern Pacific gusts all coming together.

And before we knew it, it was the 12th, and I was eating a personal camembert in the Punta Arenas airport on my way home to a laundry machine and a real comfy bed for the first time in two weeks. But even more than that, I was taking my last flight back to Santiago as a Tufts in Chile student. And there was no way better to commemorate a completion of my #1 bucket list item and visiting the place that had been a huge factor (if we are being honest here) in my choice to come to Chile in the first place than to fly over the Torres del Paine National Park as the sun was setting, lighting up the Torres from the west in the exactly perfect way that we had hoped to witness from the east four days before. I was on the verge of tears as I looked out my window to Paine Grande and Los Cuernos, Glaciar Grey, and the lakes that surround them. I could follow the exact route Shayna and I had hiked together for a week. Even from so far above, it remained just as majestic as it was and lost none of its silent power.

Well, after that novel, we have come to the end of this post. Over the next two weeks I am traveling more with my family, returning to some of the greatest hits of the past 5 months. I will see you back here for some kind of emotional and cheesy wrap up blog right before the New Year. Happy holidays to everyone, and I cannot wait to see you oh so very soon in 2018!  

Sending lots of love,

Olivia/Liv/Boo