Buses to Boots

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Executive Summary: I traveled through Peru by air, then by bus through most of Chile as I headed south to the tip of Chile to meet Sarah. We backpacked for a week in gorgeous Torres del Paine national park before taking a 3 day boat back to Puerto Montt, Chile.

Traveling 53 degrees the hard way
My plan to travel from Ecuador to the tip of Chile the easy way hit the typical snag of costing too much. I’m not sure why air travel is so expensive down here, but I was sure I could beat the $800 one-way fare to Punta Arenas from Ecuador with a little old-fashioned can-do attitude. I’ll give you the punch line early: I think I saved about $200, and it took about a week rather than a few hours, but still, the value of adventure? Priceless.

After the scary border crossing by bus into Peru, I got 2 separate air tickets from Tumbes to Lima, and from there to Tacna, just north of the border with Chile. I was saving the lion’s share of travel by land and buttock to the buses and more importantly the roads of Chile. Though I only had an overnight stopover in Lima, the ride to the airport in the morning was worth the unwanted layover. Avoiding the cost of a taxi, I found out I could take a minivan to the airport for about 30 cents. You go and wait on the busy boulevard where tons of the minis come tearing up with the driver’s assistant yelling out their destination. Not a city-coordinated business, it’s terrifyingly competitive work, with drivers going to the same place fighting for passengers. They also do best by driving absolutely as fast and as fearlessly as possible. I like roller coasters, so while able to not think about my mortality, thought it was a blast. I don’t think I’ve ever seen more brazen driving, and maybe it’s the opposite bookmark for driving in polite Portland. The minis would weave in and out, blasting the horn, and play a fierce game of chicken with buses 5 times their size. The driver’s assistant would hop out and try to physically corral people into the mini, their true destination be damned! At some point, the driver and fellow passengers seemed to be saying something urgent about my baseball cap I was wearing, and I finally figured out they wanted me to take it off, but wasn’t sure why. Next we passed alongside a large church, and I assumed it was out of respect and reverence. I suppose it’s easier to be fearless when you have faith.

I traveled by air within Peru because the international flights were just lots more money. I took a group taxi across the border and found myself within the great desert that makes up the top third of Chile in the large town of Arica. I spent a couple days there waiting for a seat on the bus to Santiago, and was fortunate to be there for the first day of Carnivale. Not the drunken mess I was hoping for, and I guess the Chileans are just better behaved than their Brazilian counterparts. There was an unending parade of groups, all competing for prizes of having the best displays, routines, music, costumes, etc.. The outfits were amazing and way over the top, making good use of large feathers, short skirts that would intentionally swing up over their hips as they danced, exaggerated and emblazoned suits, and lots of color. There was exciting, exhausting choreography as the different ages and genders within one troupe, doing their own thing, would dance and run to the large band and drum troupes that would follow. I saw no drinking and not much rowdiness in the crowds of people jammed into the streets to watch, so they are a more reserved, or a more sneaky culture than I expected.

It took 2 buses to go the 20 degrees latitude that separates Arica and Puerto Montt. This is similar to the distance from Vancouver Canada to somewhere in the north of Baja. And Chile just keeps on going, and going.. In all, including a 4 hour wait in Santiago, it was 48 hours. I tried to help the time pass by coming up with systems to categorize the brutal boredom overland travel. Certainly, I think it’s fair to say that going 9 degrees (1/10 the distance from the equator to a pole) at one time is “sufficient for insanity”, or one SFI unit. Therefore I had to survive over 2 SFIs on this trip, what was I thinking, etc, etc. But of course I exaggerate: I’m a boy and I can certainly ratchet back the IQ sufficient to easily pass the time with such activities as watching the endless movies (though not even I could ratchet enough for the second showing of “Dukes of Hazzard”), eating, reading stupid books, and being mesmerized by the beauty of the country going by outside the window. The Atacamba desert, especially, never failed to amaze. The first half-SFI was all blue sky and rocky, sandy terrain seemingly without any hint of life. There are deep ravines and impressive rocky mountains, and I was reminded of pictures I had seen of the surface of Mars. After 5 hours from Arica we came upon the large coastal town of Iquique, and from there south until it got dark I was entertained by the impressively rocky and stark coastline, and the morbid imaginings of what it would be like to suffer engine breakdown at midday.

From Puerto Montt, while it’s "just" 13 more degrees of longitude to get to Punta Arenas at the bottom of Chile, the bus ride through Argentina is 36 hours and described in my guidebook as a “hellish trip”. OK, so I pulled out my wallet for the 2-hour flight. For those who don’t know, I’m kind of a nut about views, and this flight was absolutely the best scenery I’ve ever had from a jet. Here’s one telling statistic: 111 pre-edit photos taken during the flight. The lower 10 degrees of South America down the length of the Andes is a mish mash of huge mountains, ice fields, glaciers, fjords, and coastline. There was a relatively uncharacteristic lack of clouds and it was simply astonishing. The pilot was even inspired and flew in a complete circle above the Torres del Paine national park, giving me a superb overview of the terrain I was traveling down to hike with Sarah.

Backpacking in Paradise
Sarah was waiting for me at the Punta Arenas Airport, and it seemed like a miracle that we were both there when expected. She tried to complain about her 26 hour flight (from 45 degrees N. to 53 degrees S.!) and I was having none of it! Splurging on some nice rooms and seafood dinners with wine before the dorms of the rustic rifugios in the park, we enjoyed the pre-backpack days there and at Puerto Natales, gateway town to the Torres del Paine National Park. Sarah had made arrangements for the park, which involved a mystifying and frustrating maze of agents, unreturned emails, and language confundity. You have to camp or stay in the minimalist rustic mountain huts sprinkled in the park, and since we (I) didn’t want to carry the extra weight of the tent, and because the huts fill up, reservations are crucial.

I trust Sarah when it comes to choosing where to go backpacking, and she had said this was her first choice above about any other activity or destination in S.A. This park has to be one of the top backpacking destinations in the world, but there´s the difficulty and price of getting there, and there's the fickle weather that can transform a hiker's paradise into his nightmare in a heartbeat. Do activities and destinations seem more beautiful if there's greater difficulty getting there and some fraught element like the weather? During the 6 days we were hiking there, we were lucky with the weather, and therefore experienced the vistas and beauty of the land, and did some challenging hiking without the added difficulty and danger of being cold and wet. Maybe our subjective experience was enhanced by our effort to get there, our luck with the weather, but it is simply a jaw-dropping gorgeous corner of the world.

We had decided to do the 'W' tour rather than the complete circuit, and our first day in brought us to the Rifugio Chilleno. From there it takes about 2 hours to a the Towers Viewpoint, which has several striking formations rising high above a glacial lake. We got a pretty clear view before clouds came in bringing harsh wind and corn snow. Then as we headed back after about half an hour we looked back to see them awash in golden light of late afternoon. Some who had hiked up didn't get a view at all, so it was a good lesson in how changeable and fickle these view can be. Our next 2 nights were at Rifugio Los Cuernos, which were at the base of the crazily formed, chocolate-dipped peaks (striking color differences half way down the group of mountains, from dark to light). This group of moutain peaks is the postcard shot of the park. We hiked up the Valle Frances the next day and got some cold wind and rain, but were able to see the gorgeous 360 degree view at the top of the hike, with sharp ridiculous towers and huge multi-level glaciers on the largest mountain across the valley. Every 20 minutes or so there would be thunderous cracks as portions of snow would fall at once off an edge and form a snowfall down the mountain.

Besides the mountains, the vistas include wide open, lake-filled scenes, with a variety of blues from deep royal to the creamy turquoise of glacial till-influenced lakes. Our last 2 nights were at Rifugio Lago Gray near a large glacier ending in a lake. It was as advertised a very windy stretch, and sometimes we had to laugh as we headed into the wind, sometimes getting buffeted back or off the trail. We knew were getting close when we started seeing the deeper blue of icebergs floating in the long lake.

The park is pristine, being so far away from civilization. It took a couple days before I realized I hadn't seen any jet trails. Because of the changeable weather, we were also entertained by the cloud shapes and their swift movements in and around the mountains. We saw a fox, a hare that I swear was as big as a small deer, plenty of raptors, and guanacas (like llamas). No pumas. It was about $50 each per night for dorm rooms with dinner and breakfast, and we appreciated not having to carry food and tents (though did have to carry a rented sleeping bag to use in the dorms).

OK. so if you are big into hiking, you'll have to add this park to your list.

Back by Boat
We made our way back up to Puerto Montt on the poor man's love boat, the 'Navimag'. This ship carries freight and passengers, and for the 3 day trip with meals it's $350 for a dorm room with 22 people. Thankfully we got an upgrade to a room with 4 beds, thanks to some timely flirting by Sarah. We met lots of folks enduring the same forced boredom and bad food, but it was amazing to slowly float by so much wilderness-- fjords and thousands of islands and narrow passes. The weather did not cooperate and we did not get the views to the Andes we had wanted, and the rough seas during one open ocean stretch had us close to sea sick for about 7 hours. We had lots of movies and documentaries and a final night bingo/dance party, with disco lights and swinging euros.

We offer a big hello back to our family and friends! Our next stage will take us to Chiloe (island near Puerto Montt) before heading into the lake district across the border to Argentina.

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