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Published: April 21st 2006
Getting on the plane...
Ready to embark for Punta Arenas!Wow.. every week is better than the last! This past week has left me even more in awe of Chile and even more anxious to do some serious traveling for extended periods of time in the future, thanks to talking with many other extranjeros (foreigners) passing through Chile/South America as well as various Chileans from our hostels, in stores, cabbies, school kids, and a street vendor. Ok so it began last Tues night.. well actually more than a month ago when we started planning . There is so much to say, so many nights and awesome moments and a lot more that I'm sure I can't describe adequately. But here are some numbers anyhow-
Here's THE COUNT:
7Days traveling,
2 Days missing classes,
3 Travelers.
Easter break is called Semana Santa here, and we got classes off on the Thursday before Easter and the following Monday. As I don't have classes Fridays anyway, this was really the best week of the semester to take any sort of extended trip. Michelle and I, about a month and a half ago, started to plan a trip to Torres del Paine, a beautiful national park in southern Chile. After changing dates several times
How far is it to...
Dozens of arrows pointing to countries all over the world with the distances to each city! Taken from the lookout point in Punta Arenas and who all was going to come, it ended up being Laura, Paco and me (we're coming to be a good little travel group 😊 ) , for a weeklong trip, Weds morning (skipping classes Weds) to Tues night (skipping Tues classes).
4 Hour flight to Punta Arenas from Santiago.
On April 12th we flew to
Punta Arenas, a region known as "the end of the world." It's common to go on a penguin tour from PA, but because of the prices and because of the fact that by mid-April there aren't that many penguins left in the area, we decided against it. It cost about $60 to go to Isla Magdelena. We went to the main plaza, Plaza Muñoz Gamero, and realized we were farther south than everyone we knew.. I waved. We visited PA's cemetary (Cementerio Municipal), and was as interesting as they all are here, but also because we spotted several tombs in English, from the German, Scandinavian and Yugoslav immigrants . All the graves are so different. Some have gates around them, some have huge family tombs, many are almost stacked.. it's worth visiting if you have time to kill in PA.
1 Piece of
Cemetario Municipal
Paco and I exploring the cemetery... wood found in Torres del Paine.
In PA, we checked out a great view overlooking the whole city (Mirador La Cruz), which reminded me a bit of looking out over Valparaíso, all these colorful little houses and then the ocean. Difference here is that the Patagonia region is so incredibly flat. An endless expanse of pampa... fields beyond fields, whereas all the homes in Valpo were snuggled into the hillsides overlooking the ocean. From the lookout point we saw these great tall posts with signs and arrows pointing to countries all over the world, with their distance from Punta Arenas. We decided we had to make a sign before we left that pointed to Notre Dame with the distance from "the end of the world," and that we'd enter it in ND's photo contest. So we found some wood in Torres, Laura carried it with her for most of the trip, and when we came back to PA we made a great looking sign with the distance to ND and everything (6,616 miles). We're hoping to win something!
2Hostels.
#1- María José in Puerto Natales. Coming from PA, we weren't exactly sure how we would find the hostel our
friends recommended, esp. b/c it was dark by the time we arrived, but as we have been discovering, it's real easy to find hostels. Most of the time people wait at the bus terminal and all try to tell you what they're offering at the same time. Within minutes we were settled into the hostel María José for 3 mil ($6 a night) and off to buy our food for the next 4 days and rent our camping tent, sleeping pads, cooking stuff, etc. She also let us keep stuff with her we didn't want to take into the park with us, a definite plus.
#2- ??? in Punta Arenas. 3 mil/person ($6), breakfast included, private baths, and free internet! We were sold. Well we were sold with the free breakfast but the rest was nice too. It turned out to be freshly baked bread (which we devoured), and homemade apple, plum, and peach jelly. We breakfasted with two travelers from Argentina who gave me their email should I have any questions about traveling to Buenos Aires! Which I really, really need to do.
10 Packages of cookies consumed by the 3 of us.
Also,
3bars of chocolate,
1 package of chocolate Easter eggs,
38 slices of cheese,
3 packages of salami,
17 pancitos (bread) and
2 boxes of Gato Negro wine for the freezing nights. My sleeping bag kept me pretty warm, but the nights honestly would've been really miserable without the warmth of the chocolate and wine!
40 Miles hiked.
Ok so,
Torres del Paine.. amazing. Beautiful. We were hesitant to go this late, because we kept hearing that into April is a rough/cold time to go, the tourist season is ending, etc. etc, but we were so glad we ended up going. The cold nights (and I mean COLD nights... I slept with my socks, jeans, thermal, long sleeve, Tshirt, sweatshirt, and winter coat) were worth all the beauty during the days and the small number of other tourists. Also, lucky us, it only rained one night. We entered Thursday morning (on a discount because we had our Chilean IDs, yesssss), and began what is known as the "W," for the shape of the route. We hiked up hills and rocks, over ravines and waterfalls and wooden bridges, through cow pastures and forests, along lakes, on mud and ice, and through beautiful green hillsides. We
Las Torres
Final destination- Day #1. Reached after a long hike, my tour book describing the last hour as a "knee-popping scramble up boulders" ... saw glaciers, condors, ñañdús (ostrich-like birds), people from all over the world, fall colors, guanacas... The water was clean and we could stop whenever we wanted to drink straight from the flowing water and fill up our water bottles. Much of the time we had a time schedule more or less (to get to the next campsite before dark), but there were times where we all just sat and looked out over the expanse of mountains, snow, lakes, and trees, with the sound of water in the background... I can't really do it justice. But those are the moments Chile awed me and calmed me and excited me all at once... oh Chile.
17 Foreigners we talked with.
The first day and night we hiked/camped with a 28 year old from
Switzerland, who was out of school, had worked for a few years, hated his job, quit and decided to get out and see the world and was traveling through South America. We also entered Torres with 3 people traveling together- one from
Canada, and a couple from
Germany, ages 25-27, who we actually ran into everyday up through our last night in Puerto Natales. The guy from Canada,
Laura and I
Relatively flat hiking after the previous day.. and a beautiful view over the lake the whole day! Leif, was a very outgoing and adventuresome person, yet very down-to-earth and funny and I enjoyed his stories. As Laura and I talked about later, we felt like we actually learned things from talking with him! With everyone we met I liked to hear where all they were planning on traveling and why they came to South America. Leif graduated in psych, worked for 2 years, picked up and taught English for awhile in Asia, traveled all through South Asia, and has been traveling the past year and a half through Central and South America, parts with a girlfriend, parts with a few friends, and parts independently. I think that traveling by myself would be a quite a different experience that I definitely need to have. Just not quite yet... We also met and spoke a bit with people from
Australia, Israel, Holland, and Hong Kong. After Leif, my favorite extranjeros we met would definitely be 4 18-19 yr old boys from London we met at the hostel María José in Puerto Natales, right after we got out of the park. They were bursting with energy and enthusiasm and kept us laughing. The first thing they said was, "Are any
Hiking, day 2
Well it definitly wasn't alllll flat
of you from this place called Wisconsin?? We keep hearing of this place that we never knew existed!" haha. They thought it was "West Constin." (I actually did meet another girl from Madison in Torres.) Also, interestingly enough, one of their dads taught for ND's London Study Abroad Program.
1 Mouse in our tent!!!
The last night in Torres, it had chewed a hole through our tent and I found it scurrying around our heads!! yuck
3 Important lost items.
I almost hate to admit this, but I must... I set my jacket down for no more than 30 minutes along the trail in Torres, and when I returned it was gone... keep in mind this was relatively early on a morning in the off season with hardly any tourists. Aaaaaggggghhhh. Unfortunately it had both my cell phone and Chilean ID card. I hadn't lost anything in Chile up until this weekend, so I guess I was long overdue. I just hate that it had to be those 3 things all at once... it was even worse when Laura realized I would need some form of ID to take the plane back to Santiago, which proved to be
Yes!
Everything seems under control when you're in Torres del Paine
a process getting a hold of my host family and having them fax a copy of my passport down to Punta Arenas. Fortunately I got home ok. I'm going to stay hopeful for the next week for word of my belongings, after which I suppose I should think about getting another phone. HOW do I lose things all the time? I can hear my dad telling me to be more responsible with my things!! I try, really.
1 Easter mass in
Puerto Natales.
It was certainly a unique Easter... from waking up in a tent and eating the little chocolate eggs we bought for bfast and lunch to the local mass in Puerto Natales. I realized how much I really love spending Easter weekend at home with the family, especially the past 2 years when Hamsa, Jess and Steph have been able to come to Minnesconsin with me! Spending the previous 4 days hiking through Torres was about as religious of an experience as I've had in awhile though, and while I'm not much of a mass-goer, it was nice to go with Laura and Paco and have a nice dinner of lomo a lo pobre (steak with a
Paco, me, Laura
Takin a break to enjoy the view, Day 2
fried egg on top) for our first meal out of the park. For dessert? Wait for it... wait for it.... 2 plates of french fries. And they were amazing.
Although the south is cold this time of year, there's something really great about traveling in the off-season... especially when the 3 of us wander through the little side roads of these towns (Valdivia, Pucon, now Punta Arenas and Puerto Natales), grab lunch at the local supermarket and find a nice little bench to eat our sandwiches/empanadas/chocolate/cerveza. Laura and Paco and I have done a fair amount of traveling together now, and I loved having the past week of hiking- sing alongs, questions, games- and spending nights together; Laura's great with keeping Paco and I moving and finding good things to do, and Paco is really easy going and funny. I liked when we would hike and the 2 of them would sing to our jr. high classics.
Ultimately, it was a very unique trip for me. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I loved it. From the one afternoon we had to take a taxi to chase down the bus we missed to Puerto Natales
(all our stuff being on the bus), to the night in Torres we all hovered over our pot of mostly cooked noodles and watery sauce in the near dark, shivering and shoving the pasta into our mouths as fast as we could before the food got cold, to the night in PN when we just relaxed after dinner at Lomit's and I ordered 2 cups of hot chocolate because it was warm and delicious and we had time. If only there weren't classes to get back to in Santiago... I need a job that I can work at long enough to save up enough money to just go and travel for a long period of time.
It was a great week.
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