In the last hour of our flight from Santiago to Puerto Natales, people start standing up, craning to see the lakes and mountain peaks of Patagonia below them. When we get off the plane, we are greeted with the sight of mountains, and a cool breeze, and clean air.
The hostel in Puerto Natales is small, clean and light-filled. We have no plans aside from preparing for the hike for the day and a half we are here. Thankfully, the hostel has a 'free' corner with the exuvia of other hikers, including a pair of flip flops I snag as my 'shower shoes', a 2/3 full gas canister for our camping stove, and half a jar of peanut butter.
Early on the morning of our hike, we walk to the bus station for our shuttle to the Torres Del Paine national park. After having some breakfast, I fall asleep and when I wake up I'm startled and incredibly excited to see wide open fields and guanaco.
The first day's walk isn't too difficult at all - 15 kilometres through bucolic scenery. Fields of yellow and white flowers, purple grasses, and sections with moss covered trees. At one point, we see two hawks gliding through the air. After lunch, we round a corner to see mountains with a glacial blue river snaking through them, and when we get closer I realise the river water is not clear but milky like water after rinsing rice. The hardest thing about the first day is our backpacks, which are the heaviest they've been, because aside from our regular items and hiking gear they hold 7 sets of breakfasts (oats, raisins, chia seeds, soy milk powder, peanut butter) each, 7 sets of lunch (chocolate meal replacement powder), and 6 sets of dinner (cous cous and vegan bak kwa, wraps and marinara sauce with TVP, and instant noodles and TVP), 24 granola bars, and dried fruit and nuts. After we get to camp Seron Jacob suggests we write a haiku for our days walk and so in a light-hearted moment I write:
My pack is heavy
A mountain lightens my load
Hypnotised by awe.
Then, dissatisfied with that one, I revise it to the more 'poetic' sounding:
Turning a corner
The snaking river tells me
I'm on the right path.
The tents at the camp are suspended in air, and there is a sort of feeling of surreal-ness: "Am I really here?" Everything feels like a game - rolling out our sleeping bags, lighting the camp stove and heating up our dinner, washing up and showering. After dinner, we ask if we can share a picnic table with another couple. Their names are Benjamin and Camila, and they are from Concepcion in Chile. They happily join our card game, and Benjamin gives Jacob a sip of his beer. Our Spanish is shaky, but they are patient and Benjamin speaks English clearly. He gives us the excellent tip that when learning a new language, it works better to imagine the new word attached to its corresponding action or feeling, rather than equating it with the word in the language you know. There is a lot of laughter, and the warm feeling of meeting two truly kind people. Despite the heat that night, I sleep relatively well.
After breakfast the next day, I'm washing up in the soft dawn light when I hear a woman say "Puma!" and sure enough, a lithe, sandy coloured creature is softly sliding its way past the rangers' tent and into the camp. I run quickly into the ladies toilet so if it starts to run there's a door between us. But like a shadow, it moves quietly on, barely two metres away from Jacob who remains at the sink blithely washing our water bottles.
The second day's hike is longer, at 19 kilometres to Dickson camp, and includes a hill pass which is windy and rainy. Once we push through that, however, there is a beautiful rainbow which remains in sight for a large part of the walk. We walk through bushland, wetland, and always with the mountains and glaciers in the far distance. The final part of the walk is over a small hill and once we get around the top we see our campsite nestled amongst the mountains. When we get closer it is not quite so idyllic - the campsite is infested with mosquitos and dreadfully hot - and so my haiku for the day, written by the lake at the campsite, is:
The walker's nightmare:
It is hot but you must not
Get into the lake.
The third day is a short 13 kilometre walk over undulating terrain through forest to Los Perros. Jacob and I spend much of it playing a game of 'either, or', and I learn about Jacob's singing and dancing preferences, and when he'd rather be in a crowd or alone. The final few kilometres are over a rocky pass - I layer up, and have to use more strength than usual to make sure my camera isn;t blown out of my hands when I try to photograph the beautiful glacier that emerges after we get over the pass. Los Perros campsite is much colder than Dickson - hovering in the single digits or maybe a high of 10 degrees. When I am not in the cooking area, I have all my warm layers on and my thickest pair of socks. The day's joy involves getting to know some of the other trekkers in the group, since we all have to stop at Los Perros and the shorter walk and cold temperature means more time together in the shared kitchen. We play a game of cards with Benjamin and Camilla, Dimitri, a french traveller, and Kun Han and April, two fellow Singaporeans (it is a dead giveaway when their lunch involves bak kwa). Jacob wrote a fantastic travel sketch of many of the people we met, which you can read here.
Despite the easier day, on this day I am more tired than the previous days and feeling slightly apprehensive about the next day - when we walk over the notoriously difficult John Garner Pass to see the Grey Glacier. Ruminating on that informs my next haiku:
Blind, white, wind-whipped face
How old is a glacier?
Its blank stare chills us.
We wake the next morning in the dark. I haven't slept well, and it is cold and cloudy, but an immediate uphill means that soon we are stripping off layers. Forest gives way to shale, which someone later tells me formed when rocks layers shattered after being exposed from beneath an ancient glacier. The uphill is steep, but there are beautiful mountains on either side.
When we get to the top the glacier spreads out before us and I can't help but babbling, "Wow! Wow! Wow!" It's like the words are being pulled out of me. The glacier starts in the distance with snow so bright it hurts to look at it, then cascades down into blue and grey crevices. It stretches about 28 kilometres long. Perhaps even more unbelievably, the wind is docile and we crack open a granola bar to celebrate.
From there on, it's a continuous downhill, which is not my forte. Jacob distracts me by playing 'Izzy's game', in which you ask someone to respond to a question based on a number they hold in their head. For instance, if I was thinking '10' and was asked to name a colour, I'd say sunshine yellow, but if I was thinking '1' I'd say lime green. Another thing that helps is looking between the trees to see the stoic glacier still there, like some great white monster. Eventually we get to the first of a few suspension bridges. Only one person can cross at a time; you see a steep drop and a stream beneath you and the glacier on your right. At the final bridge, we catch up with Benjamin and Camilla. This is our last night with them, because they are staying two nights at the Grey campsite to hike on the glacier itself, whereas we are continuing on to the next campsite. It is bittersweet to end the hardest day with them.
It is oh, so, cold the next morning, and I am cosy in my sleeping bag and don't want to leave the tent, but we have a long day ahead of us. It is our longest yet, although less steep and technical than the day before. I tell myself to just get it done, one step at a time. And then I am surprised by joy and beauty. Today's walk is along undulating ground through the forest, then a ridge that opens out frequently to miradors that give us a view of Lago Grey and other lakes that reflect the brilliant blue of the sky.
We make surprisingly good time, and choose to take the route around Lake Pehoe that leads us past Guarderia Italiano. Feeling confident, we decide to add another 4 kilometres to the day's mileage by taking a detour to Mirador Frances. At camp that evening we bump into Kirk, a Scottish guy who set off at the same time as us that morning. He's had a bad day: having had to double back twice after forgetting his tent and hiking poles in different places he's covered almost 50km, and has just heard from the camp staff that he's not booked in there but in another one 3km away. "I'm so pissed," he says, shaking his dusty head. "I needed a smoke but I don't have a lighter. Lit the cigarette with my camping stove."
Our penultimate day of hiking is unexpectedly hard. We both thought the day before was the hardest, and are not prepared for the constant up and down of the terrain, all with the sun in our eyes. After the 15km we expected to walk, there is still no sign of camp Chileno. The road veers left into a valley, and the path is increasingly covered in horse poo. The valley looks over a snaking river, and toward snow-peaked mountains and dark green pines, but I am seething with tiredness, dusty and sweaty and hungry. We see horses approaching carrying packs of food and toilet paper; this camp is only accessible by hoof and heel. When we finally see the camp, I have a confused moment thinking we are entering Tolkien's Rivendell, as we cross a river on a wooden bridge and see horses tethered in a grove of trees. But it is not Rivendell but a restaurant that we stop at, setting our packs down and wolfing down our lunch.
This camp is known for its proximity to one of the most beautiful miradors in the park - the Mirador las Torres, a trio of spiky peaks. We'd planned to hike up the next morning to see the sunrise, but the receptionist at camp tells us that the weather looks bad tomorrow, and we'd best head up there that afternoon - meaning right then. With little time to think it through, we head swiftly up the trail, even though we're already exhausted. The whole day feels like we're pushing beyond our limits, and it's not good for us. The trail is crowded with day trippers and other hikers, and when we get to the Mirador, the peaks are covered in cloud. After a few 'we were here' photographs, we head down. Jacob is impatient with the other hikers, I am grumpy with Jacob's swiftness, preferring to move more slowly especially since as we head down the mountain and I look backwards I see, frustratingly, that the clouds are beginning to lift. But we are too tired to double back. We are both less grumpy and frustrated after a good snack, hot showers, and dinner.
We fall asleep lulled by the sound of the river, and wake again at 3.50am to hike up for the sunrise. I tell Jacob I don't want to rush it, remembering a sign in our very first campsite that Benjamin pointed out; it said, "If you rush it, you miss Patagonia." Setting out in the dark is exciting. Everything is quiet, and we match the silence as we move through the forest. It is comforting to know what is to come, and I feel the difference that makes to my internal rhythm compared to the rush up the day before. When we get to the final rocky scramble, the sun begins to lighten the sky and we get to the Mirador just before the sun hits the rocks. Today, the clouds have shifted and all three Torres stand visible. Unlike the day before, there are just a few dawn hikers and a low buzz of conversation. We eat our breakfast and watch as the light breaks on the mountain, soaking the grey stone with deep, red light that lightens to orange, then yellow, then to the translucent light of day that lightens rather than soaks the world in colour. We head back down and back at the restaurant we have a hot mug of tea and someone's breakfast leftovers of bread, olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
The final walk back is so happy and so easy. This whole week's walking siphoned us out of the world into a state of being where putting one foot in front of the other is the biggest choice one makes each day, and that is a beautiful freedom only enhanced by the beauty of the park.
