Torres del Paine - Improvised

Lago en Torres del Paine




Los Torres




Crossing the bridge on the way out of the park... very skinny.

THE MAN at the hostel, Rustyn, also my new boss.

-I spent the last week in Patagonia bliss - also known as Torres del Paine National Park. We arrived in Puerto Natales, Chile, from El Calafate, Argentina, where we visited the glaciar, and immediatly found our hostel, Erratic Rock, and settled in. Unfortunatly, we also sent Cortney to the hospital because she could barely talk. She hadn`t told us anything about her sore throat that she had had for the last 6 days until we noticed she was sounding worse and worse. Turns out she had an infected case of strep throat (we think it was strep throat... still a bit of dispute over the tranlation of the diagnosos). Anyway, Cortney had to spend the next 3 days in the hospital getting injections of antibiotics. This put a bit of a kink in our immediate plans. My friend, Mark, from Ecuador, flew down just for the week to hike with us in Torres del Paine and Lucy Page was under a time crunch as well, so Mark, LP, and I left Amy and Cortney at the hospital and headed into the park. We decided to do the ¨W¨ route plus a little extra in 5 days of hiking - 4 nights of camping. We had some long days, but the entire route was absolutely gorgeous, depite some spitty rain/ice we got the first and last day. The views of bright blue glacial lakes and the torres crowning the park were incredible. For the three days inbetween the snowy rain, we had gorgeous partly cloudy skies and when the sun popped out, it warmed things up quite a bit. The hiking itself was a bit scrambly in parts, but the trails were pretty well maintained and the refugios at the campsites were always good places to warm up. Anyway, after finishing the W, we came back to Puerto Natales and were reunited with Amy and Cortney, who were both feeling much better (Amy got strep throat as well). I saw Mark off at the airport yesterday morning and LP headed back to Buenos Aires on her way back to the states. This morning, Amy and Cortney headed off into the park to do the W as well since they were both finally in good enough health to do it. I decided to stay behind because of my hurting knee - it never really recovered before I hiked on it. Luckily for me, the hostel we were staying at offered me free room and board to help out - they already have two other interns, but they needed a Spanish speaker because the Spanish speaking co-owner of the hostel is gone for the week... worked out well for me. So, I am here in Natales earning my keep for the next week and saving a whole bunch of money. YAY! We will decide what is next when Cortney and Amy come out of the park on Saturday.

In other life of Kate news, I have accepted my position as an Environmental Awareness Educator for the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic. I start my training on Feb. 26!!!! I am being innundated with forms to fill out and information to read at the moment, so it is probably lucky I have a week here at the hostel with free access to internet to get everything done before we head back into the backcountry - or at least the less internet ready country.

I should probably be emptying trash cans or translating the names of outdoor gear into Spanish right now so this it for now. I will add more pictures whenever LP and Mark send them to me as I did not take my camera into the park.

El Calafate

Glaciar Perrito Moreno


View from Glaciar

In crampons and climbing harness, hiking on Perrito Moreno

We arrived fresh off a 19 hour bus ride to El Calafate from Ushuaia at 1am, took a taxi to our hostel, America del Sur, and went straight to bed. Even though we had all slept all day on the bus, we still slept all the way through the night until 9am the next day.

El Calafate is a somewhat bizarre little town. It seems that people really only come here to see the glaciar, Perrito Moreno, and then they leave. The town is about the size of Estes Park, CO and has about the same layout - lots of outdoor stores, restaurants, tourist agencies, and hostels. We explored the city the first day and then booked our tour for the next day from the hostel. We decided to go for the ¨BIG ICE¨tour. We hopped on the bus at 7am, drove about 1.5 hours and arrived at the lookout point for Perrito Moreno glaciar. It was incredible!!! I wasn`t sure what to expect, but it was almost as good as Iguazu Falls. I had never seen a glaciar before and my guess is that not many can top this one. Within the first 10 minutes of looking at it, we saw a HUGE chunk break off, accompanied by a crunching noise, and watched it sink into the icy water below. The glaciar is nestled between two sizeable mountains on either side and reminded me of the glacial valleys of the Andes in Ecuador, except with an actual glaciar still inside! We then crossed the water in front of the glaciar, met our guides, and started hiking. We were a group of 20, but eventually split into two groups for the ice trekking. After about an hour we reached the ice, put on our climbing harnesses and crampons, had a lesson in walking with crampons, and started out across the ice. The guide told us that they can´t take the same route every day because the ice is constantly changing but somehow he always knew where the crevasses would be and he carved them out for us to jump over. In some places, water collects on the top of the glaciar and it was an incredible crystal blue color that I have never seen before. Also, there are glacial rivers that find weak spot in the ice and carve their way through. They have found rivers running through the ice that can be as long at 8km. The glaciar, from one end to the other is 30km. HUGE!!! We could only walk on one part of it because it becomes too craggy to walk on without knowing how to ice climb on either end of the glaciar. There was about 5 inches of snow on the glaciar as well, which was somewhat unusual, but it had been snowing for the 3 days previous to our tour. We were the lucky ones who got the first blue sky day in a long time. At one point, we were looking down into a huge sink hole that was bright blue and all of a sudden, one of our guides, from New Zealand, jumped down into it and started climbing down using his ice ax and crampons - not roped into anything. Crazy people.

Lucy Page and Cortney decided to go horseback riding today, Saturday, but Amy and I chose to stay behind to save a bit of money. Also, I twisted my knee a bit on the glaciar because I turned around too fast and my crampons were still pointing one direction and my knee went the other. It is just a bit swollen, so I am hoping that it will be fine by Monday when we start our trek in Torres del Paine. Tomorrow we take the bus to Puerto Natales and then on Monday we will be in the backcountry for about a week - so it might be awhile before another post.

We are all relatively healthy (a couple of colds are going around) and all very happy. In other news, I received my Peace Corps post in the Spanish speaking Caribbean as an Environmental Education representative. I will be working with NGO`s, local schools, and eco-tourism agencies to evaluate the effectivness of environmental ed curriculum and develop youth leadership programs. Very exciting!! I leave in late February.

I can feel the presence of the lizard.

Adventures in Anthropology




Ushuaia Lighthouse










Hiking to Chile








Boat in the harbor at Ushuaia.



Comorants we saw on our boat trip






We have arrived in Tierra del Fuego after saying farewell to the Villafañe family and hopping on our flight. There are hardly words to describe this place. It`s beauty is overwhelming and the idea of being at the tip of the continent is strange to comprehend. It is one of those places that makes you forget about all the other beautiful things you have seen and makes you think that this MUST be it - that it doesn`t get any better than this. Today we took a boat tour of the Beagle Channel and saw sea lions and commorants and had what we calculated to be a 354 degree view of the Andes Mtns. I learned today that the Andes Mtn. range just falls into the sea here in Ushuaia, the southern most port town in the continent and they reappear occasionally as islands before they officially reappear in Antarctica. WHOA!










We ended up spending a week in Ushuaia. Lucy Page and I went skiing on the second to last day of ski season at the southernmost ski resort in the world. The skiing was awesome in the morning, nicely groomed which allowed us to race down the mountain at breakneck speeds. We were joined for the day by Mikkel, our new Danish friend (who ended up coming with us to El Calafate), and another girl from Holland whose name I couldn`t pronounce then and don`t remember now. One day we decided to go hiking to find a glaciar that was only 7km outside the town... we ended up horribly lost wandering around on cross country skiing trails and then in the middle of a peat bog. And yes, you do sink in peat bogs - but only up to your calves. The next day we decided to take a taxi to the entrance of the glaciar, like the rest of the tourists, and found it very easily. You couldn`t see the glaciar itself because it was covered in snow, but we hiked up it for about 45 minutes and then slid down on our butts all the way to the bottom. We spend a couple of days just hanging out in the city - one day was the birthday of Ushuaia so we got to watch a huge parade downtown and eat choripans on the sidewalk. Choripan is an amazing invention of the Argentines including chorizo (spicy sausage, bread, mustard, and spices). The Argentines are obsessed with two things, Choripan and Mate, which is an herb tea that they drink ALL THE TIME. I think it tastes mildly like horse poo - but Cortney and Lucy Page have grabbed on to the trend and are enjoying it wholeheartedly.

On out last day in Ushuaia, we went to the Parque Nacional del Tierra del Fuego and went on a great hike next to a lake where we eventually ran smack into the Chilean border. The only thing there was a pyramid made out of steel but the book said that if you crossed over the border illegally, there were Chilean border guards hiding in the hills. We didn`t really want to test out our luck and see what they would do to us, so we just turned around. Good thing we had that info though because the park map said nothing about it. I wouldn`t really want to have a Chilean dude dressed in combat boots running at me with a machete.

We made some great friends at our hostel, Freestyle, in the week that we were there. Rasta Max got us free passes to a club one night and Emilio taught us some good card games. Also, we made friends with an Israeli named Omri who played about 20 games of Backgammon (Shish Pish) with Amy and informed us that it was the national game of Israel. You learn new things every day.

Buenos Aires

Sometime last week, we arrived in Buenos Aires to rain and dark skies and I felt perfectly at home. I said in the taxi that I could certainly see myself living in Buenos Aires sometime and Amy was amazed since the weather was so nasty that I could say that. The feeling, however, did not subside over the next week. We spent our first two nights in the trendy trendy shi shi district of Palermo - where we went out for a lovely dinner for Cortney´s birthday.

Then - on Wednesday, we met up with Cortney´s host mom´s family. Cortney studied abroad in France but her host mom happened to be Argentinian. Sr. Villafañe picked us up from our hostel at 10am in the car and drove us to their lovely little house above a vegetable store where we spent the next week wrapped up in family time. We saw so much of Buenos Aires - we went to each neighborhood, visiting the parks in Palermo including the Rose Garden, Japanese Garden, and Botannical Garden. Then, in Recoleta we visited a museum dedicated to Evita Peron, a beloved actress and political figure, and saw an incredible cemetary full of gorgeous tombs built like houses complete with Italian sculpture. El Centro houses the main pedestrian streets, la Casa Rosada (presidential palace), and theatre district. We saw an indy Argentinian film called ¨Soñar no cuesta nada¨ (It costs nothing to dream) which was really great. We went to San Telmo and La Recoleta on the weekend for two great artisan markets and also visited the MALBA (Museo de arte latinoamericana de Buenos Aires). On Saturday night we went to the Night of the Museums where buses were free and museums were open until 2am. Saw some great artwork and dancing before heading home to wake up early the next day to go with the Villafañe family to see La Boca, the working class district of Buenos Aires that is full of colorful houses and tango in the streets. We had a party with the Villafañe family to celebrate Cortney`s birthday and also the birthday of on of their eight daughters on Sunday afternoon and felt like we were just another part of the family. I almost forgot to mention and we went out with the daughter whose birthday it was during the week to a stripper/trannie/dance club where we got dinner, watched the show, and then danced our little hearts out. To say the least, it was an interesting experience. All of our Spanish skills improved to have people speaking to us all the time and their hospitality was uncomparable.

SO CLOSE!

I haven´t fallen off the face of the earth... but I´m close. Yesterday we flew from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina. I´m looking out the window of our hostel right now and huge flakes of snow are falling. We´re still thinking about camping at some point since the weather is supposed to take a bit of a turn soon. We´ll see...

Being in BA with the Villafane family was wonderful and I will write much much more about our time in Buenos Aires when I don´t have a clock ticking down my seconds left on the computer.