Patagonia!

Let me start this blog post by saying this was probably the most amazing trip I've been on!! Of all my vacations, this one was the most work, the most traveling time, the most incredible scenery, the most exercise, and the most expensive. But totally worth it. To see my favorite frame-worthy photos go here:

http://brittasphotography.blogspot.com/2011/01/w-trek-torres-del-paine.html

I'd like to share more personal experiences on this blog.

It took us 36 hours just to arrive in Puerto Natales, Chile to begin our trip. That's including an eight hour layover in Santiago and a three hour bus ride from Punta Arenas to Puerto Natales.
It was December 25th, and we were lucky enough to see Santa in down town, Santiago:

Todd enjoying an airport nap:


The next morning we took a three hour bus ride from Puerto Natales to Torres Del Paine and began our adventure by hiking the "W trek." It takes three to eight days to hike and camp around Torres Del Paine National Park, depending on how much area you cover.
One thing we didn't foresee was the lack of, and high prices of food there. Here's a $5 can of soup:


So on our hike we'd wake up, eat a packet of instant oatmeal, hike 10 miles with our 40 pound packs on, split one can of palm hearts for lunch, hike 7 more miles to our destination, then eat plain boiled noodles and a can of tuna for dinner. Oh, and split a $10 candy bar.
Did I mention I lost some serious weight on this trip?

Here we are at sunset after a very long wonderful day:


And our view from this sunset- beach:


By the third day of this I was getting pretty sick (try having a fever and cold with no medicine while hiking 10 hours a day) and Todd's knee was bothering him. We decided to skip out on the last day of the trek and miss out on Glacier Gray to hunt down some medicine and a real bed to sleep on. The next morning we left an amazing camp site and took a ferry to a bus stop, passing the most incredible view ever, and then had to wait two hours for a bus to head back to Puerto Natales.

Our campsite:


The view:


I was still feeling pretty sick on the ferry:


The next day we took a seven hour bus ride, crossing into Argentina, to the City El Calafate. And then a 1.5 hour bus ride to Perrito Moreno, the most photogenic beautiful glacier I've ever seen. We paid our entrance fee to Glacier National park with a $100 US bill (this is important for later in my story.) And got Argentina dollars back for change.

The glacier:


We hadn't eaten all day and so we spent some of our money at the glacier gift shop on food.

More glacier photos:




The glacier is 250 feet tall! And 650 feet deep under the water. And three miles long. It advances, pinching off the "L" shaped lake every few years. Because of this natural ice dam, one side of the lake rises up to 90 feet before exploding through the ice dam. When we were there there was an ice "bridge" left.

The bridge:





We left the glacier and made it back to the bus stop 15 minutes late. 15 minutes after our next bus had already left for El Chalten, our final destination. When we ran into the bus station and asked the employee what to do, he convinced us to take a cab and chase down the bus, "Because buses are slow, and people do this kind of thing all the time."
So we hopped in a cab and took off after the bus. We zoomed down the freeway nervously watching the cab fare rising. (We only had 120 Argentina dollars after getting change earlier that day from our park entrance fee and spending money on lunch.) When the fare reached $130 we told the driver our predicament. And he pulled over in the middle of nowhere. And we got out. And he drove off without us...........

I want you to ponder this for a moment, because we were 200 miles from our destination, and 25 miles from the city we'd just left. In the middle of nowhere.  With no way to get ourselves anywhere except by walking........

See for yourself- here's the view:


We probably could have convinced the driver to take us back to town to a bank to pay him for the return.  But we decided to hitch-hike 200 miles to our destination.

We sat for an hour hoping someone would stop, and one lady did, but could only take us half way.  That would leave us even further into the middle of nowhere so we turned her down.  With only an hour or so of daylight left we decided to walk the 25 miles back to El Chalten, hitch-hiking along the way.
After an hour, we calculated that this walk would take us about seven hours, and we'd arrive in town between three and four AM.  We watched the sun set and got more nervous the darker it got, when no small miracle occurred: someone pulled over!!  We'd had TONS of cars pass us, and I'd lost hope of getting a ride from anyone, when this local guy who didn't speak a word of English stopped for us.

We got in his car, and Todd noticed buckets of blood and guts at his feet.  And behind his seat were skinned bodies partially wrapped and covered in tarps.  To our relief, he was a hunter and had just shot some sheep.  Fewf.

We made it to town and wandered around till we found a hostel, and shared a room with a couple of guys from Israel.

The next day we bussed to El Chalten, Argentina.  It's like the Emerald City- having more amazing gorgeous views than I'd ever seen!



The city:


There's a campsite (with showers!) at the end of town, and we set up there for a couple days. It was December 31 and we tried really hard to stay awake until midnight to celebrate, but could hardly keep our eyes open. We counted down at 10 PM and celebrated, figuring it was midnight somewhere in the world, lol, then went to bed. We got up ad midnight anyway because the celebrations and festivities woke us up. We both resolved to live life to it's fullest.

The next morning we got up early and hiked to Laguna Torre- just below Cerro Torre. From here we did a Tyrolean traverse where you pull yourself across a rope to get over a river:


And made our way to the glacier below Cerro Torre.


We then strapped on crampons and trekked along the Glacier Grande, jumping over and making our way carefully around crevasses. (If you fall into one your body heat melts you deeper and deeper until you suffocate.) It was sooooo cool!! And the scenery looked fake, like we were in front of a green screen. It was so beautiful it didn't seem real.






Man, it was hard to leave! A quick side note- the perfect weather brought with it huge biting flies that would swarm us in groups the entire hike, but they left us alone in the cool temperatures on the glacier.

We hiked back to camp (I was still feeling pretty sick) and barely made it! This was probably the most exhausted I'd ever been from a hike, and we limped through town and basically collapsed at our camp site, then didn't move for a long time. It was only 16 miles, but after however many miles we'd gone the previous few days I was totally spent.  Here's our awesome tan-line or dirt-line:


What a way to start 2011!

The next day we decided to trek up to Fitz Roy and stay overnight. We made our way (VERRRRY SLOWLY) up the trail, stopping for an hour for Todd to boulder:




Eventually we made it to camp and dove into our tent to escape the flies. They're relentless! They get the best of you even if you kill them-- instead of having fly bites you're smeared with fly guts. Gross!

Fitz Roy:


After a delicious lunch of rice-a-roni we hiked to the Piedras Blancas Glacier.  You hop along stones in muddy shallow streams for a few miles, and then up over and around enormous granite boulders.  These boulders ranged from the size of my toe to my house!  It was pretty fun hopping and scrambling over these things.



The glacier was incredible!  There were icebergs floating all over and Todd grabbed a small one for the most glorified finger-icing experience ever.  Ha ha.  (He's always icing an injured finger, but not usually with ice as old as time.)


Icebergs:


We sat and watched ice fall and avalanches for a while.  It sounds like cracking thunder.  So cool!


Hiking back with the setting sun:

After eating dinner we walked in the dark to a lookout to photograph Fitz Roy.  Some animal watched and stalked us for a while.  We could only see it's green eyes reflecting in our headlamps, which made us nervous- maybe it was a puma hoping for a feast!  It turns out it was a huge fox, not exactly man-eating but pretty cool anyway.

Fitz Roy at night (notice the climber's headlamps in one of the gullies:


And the Southern Cross in the sky (it can only be seen from the southern hemisphere)


We woke up to a rainy overcast Fitz Roy, but it still looked beautiful:


We hiked down and left El Chalten by bus, stopping in El Calafate again for the night.
We shared a hostel with 20 or so crazy Israelis- they were up ALL NIGHT drunk and partying, singing yelling, laughing, and coming in and out of our room.  I was VERY grumpy after being kept up most of the night listening to their jabbering, and gave them a piece of my mind when we left the next morning!  Rude people!!

On a lighter note, we made it back to Punta Arenas and found a nice hostel where we didn't have to share our room with anyone, and took it easy for the last days of our trip. It was Todd's birthday and we celebrated by doing whatever we felt like.

We kind of traced Ernest Shackleton's footsteps through Punta Arenas, as it was an important city in his miraculous story of endurance and rescue.

Here's the ad (literally!) that he posted when looking for a crew to be the first man to cross the South Pole:


Todd touching the "Lucky Toe" in the Plaza:


Todd preparing to see penguins outside Punta Arenas:


Meditating in the Cemetery, which looked like something out of Willy Wonka's factory:


Todd pointing at our location, and the South Pole at the bottom of the plaque:


The next day we visited a penguin colony!  And a sea-lion/seal colony!  The first island we visited is home for over 150 thousand penguins that raise their young there.  It was pretty smelly (we found out what penguin poop smells like) but so neat to see the birds.  They're not afraid of humans, but watch out because they're very protective of their young.  Todd and I received a few bites and pecks while on the island.

Short video of the penguins honking and sqwaking:


Todd on the island:


This is my leg receiving a nibble:


And a close up of a penguin in it's burrow:


Some tourists taken in by the penguins (this photo wins the funniest picture award from our trip)


And the light house on the island.  The black specs are all penguins:


You've got to watch this video of the sea lions yelling and snorting at eachother. It was pretty funny:


And a photo of the sea lions and seals:


And that pretty much sums up our trip! We flew into SLC which was covered with nasty inversion-smog, but it sure looked beautiful from the sky.

Here are a couple volcanoes in Chile we saw from the plane:


The smog in Utah County wasn't too bad:


But SLC was just gross.


And for the final picture, our cat was so happy to see us! She wouldn't leave us alone for about a week straight. Here she is smiling with her nose in my armpit (strange choice of location.)