Sooooo A LOT has happend eversince I missed my bus about 10 days ago. The day after missing my bus I met up with my mexican friends. In the afternoon we grabbed a taxi to go up to the charilift to check out a small glacier not far from Ushuaia. Unfortunately by the time we got there, they stopped their service. Instead we had some late lunch in a typical english teahouse. Afterwards we decided to cook something that night. We went to the supermarket and bought us a big piece of meat, some tomatoes and other vedgetables and some charcoal. At the hostel we had a barbecue we could use. We lighted up the bbq and an hour later we were all having a big piece of meat with salad on our plates. It was a good evening.
The next day the weather kind of changed. Loads of rain and nothing going on. I met up with some guys in the hostel and had some lunch with them in town. Afterwards I just hung around the hostel as there really wasn`t much else I could do. That night I went to bed quite early as I decided to catch the bus to Puerto Natales in the early morning at 5:30. The only downside was that I didn`t have a ticket for this busservice. So chances were big the bus could be full and I had to get back to the hostel and spend another two days there. I figured it was worth a try anyway, as I didn`t feel like spending another 2 nights in Ushuaia.
That monday morning I got up around 4:45. I got dressed and grabbed my bag. The guy in the hostel was really cool and even gave me some milk and cornflakes so I could at least have some breakfast. He told me my chances weren`t really great of catching that bus without a ticket as it happened to be a real popular service up to Chile. I took my chances anyway and headed out to the bus. Once I arrived at the bus in the middle of the night, I found out at least 12 other people took their chances too. They were all waiting in line without a busticket. I saw my chances shrink by the minute. Whilst waiting I spoke to an Irish guy who happened to be in the same situation. Once everyone with a ticket got on the bus the people without a ticket were allowed on. Luckily there were JUST enough spots available to allow everyone on there. I was truly happy to get out of there. The bus drove all morning to a place called Rio Grande. There we had to buy a busticket and change busses. Once we got to the ticketoffice, we found out that all busses heading to Chile happened to be fully booked. There was no chance for us to get to Puerto Natales until wednesday.. I was quite annoyed as now I was stuck in an even smaller town as I was in before. In the end, the guy at the ticketoffice told us he could get us a bus to Rio Gallegos where we could catch a bus to Rio Turbio, a small border town on the argentinian border next to Puerto Natales in Chile. We decided to go there instead and grab a taxi across the border from there. We bought a ticket and hopped onto the bus. After 8 hours in the bus and 4 useless stamps – due to crossing borders with chile – in my passport later we got to Rio Gallegos, back in Argentina. There we had to wait for 3 hours for our bus to Rio Turbio. Me and the Irish guy, Kevin, decided to head into town and have some food there instead of waiting for 3 hours in the busterminal. We walked around the streets of Rio Gallegos, a very quiet – non touristy – town. We had some pizza in a cafe and then went back to the bus terminal. We caught our bus around 20:00. Supposedly it was going to take another 4 hours to get to Rio Turbio. We ended up arriving in Rio Turbio at 1:30 AM.. Once we arrived we obviously wanted to get a taxi and cross the border to Chile. Only then we found out that as of the 1st of April – which happened to be exactly that day – the border with Chile closes at 22:00 as from then the high season officially ends. Needless to say we were stuck again, but this time in the middle of the night in some little bordertown in Argentina. We asked at the bus-office whether there were any hostels around where we could stay for the night. The woman told us there happened to be only one hostel in town. With our backpacks on our backs we went strawling through the quiet town in the middle of the night to look for the hostel. Unfortunately we had no idea where it happened to be. After 20 minutes of walking around I decided to ask a taxi driver to bring us to the hostel. He brought us for a few pesos to the front door. The hostel looked more like an ordinary house than an actual hostel. We knocked on the door and some minutes later an old man opened the door in his pyjamas. We asked him whether he had any beds available. He confirmed and told us it would cost 60 pesos (12 euros) – the biggest amount of money I have ever payed in all of Argentina for a dorm bed. We had no choice than to agree to the price as we didn`t have much of another choice. It turned out to be an ordinary house with some free rooms upstairs. The man showed us our room and as soon as I entered my bed I was gone.
The next morning we decided to take things easy. We slept a nice long time and got up around 11. We had a shower and then checked out of the hostel. We asked the hostel owner where we could catch a bus across the border to Puerto Natales. He pointed us into the right direction and off we were. We found a ticket office in town. The bus left at 14:30. We had some time to kill so we decided to have some breakfast in a cafe in town. Afterwards we headed to the bus office. We bought a busticket and hopped onto the bus. The bus took only half an hour to get to the other side. Chile appeared to be really stern on people bringing food into their country. You are not allowed to bring any fresh fruit or meat into the country. I still had a banana left from Ushuaia so I decided to leave it inside of the bus and go to customs without anything else but my passport. Whilst we were lining up at customs the borderpatrol searched the bus and found my banana. The guy came quite angry up to me asking me whether we had any fruits in our bag, like for instance a banana. I knew right away he had found my banana, obviously we told him we had nothing in our bags. Once we crossed the border we drove another 15 minutes to finally arrive in Puerto Natales.. We finally made it.
Once we arrived we grabbed the lonely planet guidebook and checked out the map of the town. Jannik, the Danish guy I met back in Ushuaia told me to come to a hostel called Erratic Rock. It happened to be on the map so we went to check it out. The hostel turned out to be really nice and cosy. The owner, Bill, happened to be an American guy from Oregon. He was really laid back and easy going. We asked him whether he had a room available for us. He told us he did, but asked us whether we wanted to join his 3 o`clock talk about hiking to the National park, the whole goal of coming to Puerto Natales. We figured it could be useful to get all the information nescessary to this hike. Bill explained us all the things we could do inside of the park, which routes to take, which things to see and most importantly, how to prepare for all of this. To hike through the whole park it would take at least 4 to 5 days. He explained what food to get at the supermarket and where we could rent tents and other outdoor equipment. The talk was brilliant and we were all up-to-date of what to do next.
After the talk we walked up to Bill and asked him about our room. He told us he had two beds available at the Annex of the hostel. A house he rents across the street where he has got some spare beds for emergencies – in case the hostel happens to be fully booked. We decided to book ourselfs into it. He gave us the key and pointed us where to go. Apparently he and his girlfriend were living in the same place in the bedroom next to ours. The house happened to be completely empty except for a table and some chairs and the beds in our bedroom. It must have been one of the crappiest places I had stayed in so far, but apart from that – we did stay at a hostel which could provide us with all the information we would prolly ever need about hiking to the national park and most importantly, in perfect, understandable english for change. I also got in touch with Jannik to ask whereabouts he happened to be. As he had forgotten his boots back in Ushuaia, I was carrying those for him all the way to Puerto Natales as well.
The next morning, after a tad cold but fairly good sleep we went to have breakfast at the main hostel. Bill does really great breakfasts for a fair price. Homemade bread, freshly fried egg, cornflakes, fruits, yoghurt, juice and coffee. Afterwards I decided to go together with Kevin to start preparing for our camping trip to the national park – the Torres del Paine. That day we also met up with Jannik who had been waiting for me and his boots. He also knew Kevin as he met him in the bar the friday in Ushuaia. He asked whether he could join me and Kevin to come hiking together with us. We both agreed as it would probably be more fun to go all together. I spoke to some people at my hostel who had just been doing the hiking trip. They all told me you could easily do the hike in your t-shirt and even shorts as you get really hot from all the walking. They assured me the worst pants to wear would be jeans, as once they get wet they hardly dry again. Eventhough it did feel a bit cold outside, I still decided to take their advice and wear my shorts during the hike and only wear my jeans during the night when it really cooled down. That night an australian girl, Kylie asked us whether she could come with us too. She promised to cook our food and even carry some of our food too. Obviously we agreed right away, it was an offer we found hard to refuse. On top of that, Kylie had been working for 4 months in the park the year before.
The next day we woke up early. We had to catch the bus at 7:30 to go to the national park. The day before we already agreed what route to take and how long we were going to stay in the park for. The bus took about 2 hours to get to the park. We had to drive across small, gravel roads through the park to get to the start of the walk. Once we arrived a park ranger explained the rules we had to keep in mind while entering the park. No campfires, taking all rubbish along with you, the usual stuff. Once we got ready and stood outside of the ranger`s office, I already regret wearing my shorts. It turned out to be much colder up in those mountains than I first expected. We had a quick lunch and then headed off on our first hike. An 18 KM walk through the start of the mountains to a lake called Lake Pehoe. The first 2 hours were in the open fields. It turned out to be quite windy and rainy. Eventhough it turned out to be fairly cold and misserable, the panoramic views of the whole valley were just incredible and breathtaking. After about roughly 6 hours of walking – with our big backpacks on our backs obviously – we arrived at the first campsite. I was already dusk. We started to put up our tents straight away. After setting up the tents we went into a little shelter with a kitchen inside where we could cook our food. Kylie started to cook right away. In the kitchen we met a guy from Santiago who was just finishing his hike. We had some nice talks during dinner. He asked us whether he could join us the next day to walk along, as he was planning to do the same walk as we were planning to do. A 4 hour walk to Glacier Grey.
After an extremely windy and even quite cold night in the tent we woke up. Kylie was already up and started to cook breakfast for us. Bill advised us to bring oatmeal and milkpowder. That way you have a nice, warm and healthy breakfast every morning. As soon as we got up breakfast was already served. We got into the shelter and had some food. Afterwards we headed back to the tent, there I found Kevin holding the tent as it was about to be blown away by the wind. Needless to say we had to move to the tent to a bit better covered area. We chose another spot and moved the tentl. Meanwhile the guy from Santiago, Pablo, was waiting patiently inside for us to get ready. Once we finally got our tent sorted, we started our walk. We had a little day pack with lunch with us and some bottles with water. The day happened to be quite nice and sunny. We were really lucky weatherwise. Especially as Pablo told us that that last night had been the coldest eversince he had gotten to the park about a week before. After those 4 hours walking we got to the viewingpoint of the glacier. The views were quite nice. We took many photos and had lunch up on the mountain rocks. From there we walked back to camp as we had to be back at camp by 18:00 as walking in the dark through the park is a truly bad idea. We got back to camp around 18:30. There Kylie, who decided not to join us that day as she had been to the park so many times anyway, was waiting for us. She started to cook us soup and pasty. We felt really lucky having our own private cook. After dinner we headed back to our tents to have some sleep.
The next morning we woke up early again. The night was at least as cold as the first one, but I still managed to sleep quite a bit in my summer sleepingbag – meant for minimum temperatures between 0 and 9 degrees. We had breakfast and packed up our tents. We grabbed our bags and walked to the next stop in the park. A campsite only 2 hours walking from the spot we were. Eventhough the weatherforcast was really bad, it turned out to be a beautiful day. Lots of sun and nice temperatures. Once we got to the campsite we setup camp. We heard this campsite had its reputation of a lot of hungry mice who come out at night to eat the food they smell in the tents. We were advised to hang our food up in the trees away from the tents as otherwise they would bite holes in the tents to eat the food. After setting up tent and creating a mouse-proof construction in the trees for our food we decided to relax for the day. We walked a little bit up into the valley we were planning to visit the next day. The views were overwhelming and amazing. We sat there for a few hours. Once it became dark we walked back to the tent where we were having some food. As the campsite happened to be situated in the middle of a small forrest, sunlight didn´t really reach the ground.. You can imagine as soon as the sun got down it became really dark and cold right away. Thankfully everyone else, but me, had a little flashlight so we could at least see what we were doing. It became extremely cold that night. Around 21:00 we still had to cook food and we were all not feeling like making a move as we were all too cold. Me and Jannik decided to start the gas stoves going and boil some water. Kylie came out of the tent too and helped us cooking some soup. The soup warmed us up again. Afterwards we cooked some pasta which warmed us up even more. Meanwhile I was doing some warm-up exercizes as I started to freeze standing around. It looked really silly, but it did work. The others started to join me which must have been a really funny sight. Afterwards I washed the dishes in the extreme darkness. Afterwards I did some more warming up exercizes and went into my tent. That night it rained all night.
We woke up quite early to go and check out the valley. It was raining like crazy. We decided a ltitle bit of rain wouldn`t ruin our plans. Jannik lent me his rain poncho as I wasn`t really prepared for this extreme wet weather. With my shorts on and my poncho on top of it we went up into the valley. The trail happened to be quite a tough climb. We walked for at least an hour all the way up onto the mountain. We saw some people coming down again who told us they had seen enough with all this bad weather. My hands started to look a bit red-blueish and I had a hard time to move my fingers. At that point I told the others I was going back down as the fun was kind of gone at that point. Kylie said she had enough too. Kevin and Jannik still wanted to go on and went on going up. It took us at least another hour to get down again. The nice trails we used to walk up turned into creeks full of water. A few times we didn`t recognize the trail anymore because of all of the water coming down from the mountain. Once we finally made it down again to the forest near the campsite we had to cross one more little river. I crossed it stepping on a rock in the river, unfortunately the rock sank and I stepped with my full foot into the creek. I felt my nice semi-dry hiking boot being filled full of cold creek water. I was certainly not amused. Once we were back at the campsite we had to wait for Kevin and Jannik to come back down again. Kevin came back about half an hour later, as he turned around at some point too. Only Jannik decided to keep on going and reach the top. Meanwhile I got rid of my wet socks and boots. We made some hot soup and tea in the tent. We were discussing whether to just go back to Puerto Natales, as at that point everybody was feeling misserable. Kylie assured us, if we walked for 2 hours more to the next campsite we would be able to warm up at a so-called Refugio, a hostel in the mountains. After the hot soup and tea we were decided to keep on going. We packed up the wet tent and got into the wet socks and boots again. Fortunately the rain finally stopped. We hiked for 2 hours with wet boots on the trails. Once we finally arrived at the Refugio we setup the tents and got inside where we had an amazing hot shower. Finally we were able to warm up and have some warm and dry clothes on us again. Kylie cooked us dinner again. Fortunately for us the people running the refugio happened to be her old friends from the year before. She arranged we were all able to sleep at the refugio that night in a nice and warm bed instead of in the cold tents. We were really surprised and felt so happy to at least sleep for one night in a nice and warm bed after 3 misserable and freezing nights in our tents. That night we were able to dry all of our clothes next to the heater too. I felt like a reborn person afterwards.
The next morning, after a wonderful sleep in the refugio, we woke up with a lot of rain and wind outside. We felt so lucky waking up inside of the warm refugio instead of those silly tents. Kylie cooked us some oatmeal again and we spent the morning watching people depart from the campsite and the refugio into the cold rain. We decided to stay inside and wait for the rain to stop, we were so happy to be warm and dry. Around 13:00 the rain stopped. We had to pitch our tents down as we did set those up the night before of course. Afterwards we continued our hike to the final camp on the other side of the camp. The hike took a bit over 4 hours. The hike was really beautiful. This time it wasn´t rain pooring down on us, but actual snow. Eventhough I was still wearing my swimming shorts, I didn´t feel too cold as I we kept on moving. As soon as we stopped for some lunch I had to keep on moving otherwise I would prolly freeze to death. At some point we even considered going camping at a campsite 250 meters higher than we initially planned. We changed our minds quite quickly as soon as we had our lunchbreak. As long as you keep walking you feel warm and have no idea how cold it really is once you stop moving. We decided to just go to the base camp where hot showers were waiting for us at the campsite, as only a few campsites around the park offer these facilities in the low season. Once we arrived at the campsite around 17:00 we setup the tents and had a hot shower. Afterwards we went into the refugio next to the campsite to see whether we could cook dinner there. We found out this refugio was not as generous as the last one, so we ended up going back to our tent and cook some pasta in our tent. Jannik came to cook in our tent too. Kevin still had some whiskey `for emergency situations` left which we drank too. Jannik decided to wake up early – around 5 AM – to go and see the actual Torres, 3 amazingly big shaped rocks at least 5 to 6 hours walking from the base where we were. Me and Kevin didn´t bother getting up at such times, especially cause we heard from people who had been there the whole area happened to be covered in knee-deep snow up there. I was certainly not prepared for circumstances like those.
After having an absolutely FREEZING night, without getting a lot of sleep, we woke up. The weather didn´t seem too bad. I cooked us some last oatmeal we had left and a cup of tea. We decided no matter what, this was the last night we were sleeping in a tent. As the weather seemed quite nice, we considered going up to see the Torres too. Then once we got down we would spend the 20,000 chirean pesos (30 euros) for a bed in the warm refugio. Then after breakfast we opened up the tent and found ourselves in a winter wonderland. In the timespan of an hour the campsite transformed in a white snowy landscape. We immediately decided to just go back to Puerto Natales instead, cause whether up on the mountain would only be even worse. But as soon as the snow came, the sooner it disappeared again too once the sun broke through. We decided we might have a chance anyway. We packed up the tents and decided to go the refugio to book us in there for our final night. As soon as we got to the refugio we met two Isreali guys who had been camping all the way up next to the torres. They told us they had a horrible night, having to camp in knee-deep snow without being able to sleep and finally not even had a glimpse of the Torres as big white clouds were covering the whole area. They assured us there was no point what-so-ever to go up there as all we would probably see would be big packs of white snow. Once we heard about these things we decided to keep the money in our pockets and just get the hell out of the park. We bought a busticket and caught the bus at 14:00. Meanwhile Jannik returned from the mountain as well. He confirmed all he saw was a lot of snow and white clouds. We were happy we didn´t go. Then right before we headed off the clouds cleared a little bit and we finally did get to see a glimpse of the Torres all the way from the foot of the mountain. We grabbed the bus and drove off back into civilization.
About 2,5 hours later we got back into town in Puerto Natales. We checked into our hostel again. We told Bill about the bad weather we encountered. He told us this was the first bad weather they had so far ALL season. I was kind of annoyed we happened to be exactly there when autumn was setting in. On the other hand it did become a geat adventure, which might be even worth much more than seeing those 3 silly towers everybody comes to visit. That night me and Jannik bought us a ticket to El Calafate, the next destination on the list.
That next morning we got up early again as we had to catch the bus at 7:30. After 4 hours we arrived back in Argentina in El Calafate, where weather is not much better. Cold and snowy weather.. The rest of the day we have been doing a lot of administrational stuffl. Booking tours and bustickets for the next couple of days. Tomorrow we are going on a bus to a national park where we are going to admire one of the most beautiful, fast moving glaciers in the world.
That´s it for now… Soon more news from cold and snowy Patagonia!!!
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