THE W

(Sorry for the lack of blogging, o faithful readers! Down in Patagonia, there is poor internet connection, its slow, and expensive.)

THE W might not be the W youre thinking of. W3 and W4 are important people in my life (my dear uncle warren and brother, respectively), but alas this is not the W to which I refer. I am talking about the W trek which is in the Torres del Paine national park. The trail forms a W on the map and you have to backtrack parts of it. To get to the park, you have to get down to Port Natales. We flew on Sky Airlines, which was absolutely fantastic. We were served 2 meals and offered complimentary wine with lunch (and its a domestic flight!). The airport in Port Natales is so small, there is no baggage carasel. A guy gets your bag and hands it to you. We assumed there was a bus to town, but were wrong and had to wait for the guy to call a taxi. We stayed with Evelyn at her house, basically. She had 4 rooms she rented out to folks coming and going. She was very helpful and booked the bus for us to the park, explained the route, and what we would need. She has equipment to rent, if you like, as well.

How do you prepare for a 4-5 day trek? Well, we hit the grocery store to load up on food and snacks to maintain us. (Chef Boardie type Rav, sausage and cheese for sandwiches, granola, bannanas, nuts, breakfast bars, etc.). We had read that you can rent all the equipment that you need through the park, so we decided to pay more and trek without a tent or sleeping bags. We only took our small backpacks, loaded with food. I also purchased a hat, gloves, and a nylon pair of leggins to keep me cozy and brought all my layers.

Bright and early, we hopped on the bus to the national park. Its about 2 and half hours away and is full of trekkers. The weather was pretty crap for day 1. After paying our park fee, we were attempting to decide our route and one of the guys recomended doing the trek in reverse since it was not the best day for seeing the peaks. We hopped on a short ferry ride to get us to the start. The ferry drops you off at a large refugio, which is a place where they rent the gear, beds in a sort of cabin, and usually sell some food, as well as meals. It is possible to trek the whole way without gear or food and just pay through the nose for everything. The refugios even have flushing toilets, although I assure you it is the middle of nowhere.

Mike and I trekked up to Glacier Gray for day 1 through ugly rain. It was also pretty cold and I had all my layers on. It was not too difficult and we would go for long stretches without seeing anyone else. We decided to camp at Glacier Gray, which was mistake numbero uno for the trip. It was a chilly night, but we had managed to get 2 extra sleeping bags for free and were plenty cozy in our tent. We should have pushed ourselves a bit more and walked back to the camp where we had started off from the ferry.

Day 2: AKA Hell. We woke up early and trekked back down, thinking ourselves ahead of schedule and smiling at how well we were doing. We learned on day 2 that only certain spots on the map rent gear, and the 2 campsites that were the next closest were the ones that do not rent gear. Thus, we set out on this chilly and windy day to get across the park. Due to our poor planning, we had to skip the top of the middle line in the W since we didnt have gear to camp there and couldnt hike it up and then back by the time we arrived. We hiked clear across the park on Hell day going 35 KM. During the last part, I was unable to talk. I was so exhausted and in pain that I would let out a grunt every so often. When we arrived to camp, we first saw the hotel that is 200 plus USD a night and then had to wander our way for 10 more minutes up to the refugio to get dorm beds for $37. A bit ironicly, these were the most expensive beds we have paid for. (In the middle of nowhere, youd expect them to be cheap!) We fell into bed to exhausted to even fuss with eating dinner and slept for hours in wonderfully comfortable beds.

Day 3: The view in the morning, is of course exceptional. We slept in as late as possible (9:30) and made a lieserly breakfast. It was painful at first to get moving due to our exhaustive day 2, so we agreed to do a very short hike upward and make camp. It was St. Patricks day and was delightfully sunny and warm. I hiked in my tank top and shorts, while just 2 days prior I had on 4 top layers and 2 bottom layers and raincoat. I would like to think that St. Patrick or perhaps my mother or Emily were smiling down upon us with the beautiful weather.

Day 3: Finally nearing the end of our trek, we got to take off for the hardest part but most rewarding. We hiked up to see the Torres del Paine and found it to be sunny and cloud free. We snapped our hard earned shots and then the route was 95% downhill, literarlly. We cruised easily down the hill to catch the bus shuttle back to town. The bus was full of smelly, dirty folks like I have never been around in my life (including us, since we didnt get to shower either).

We arrived back to Evelyns and were welcomed back like family. Our packs were still there and she booked us on the next bus to El Calafate....