Torres del Paine… a name that slowly nestled itself into my subconsciousness due to the superb guerilla marketing appealing to worldwide travelers via blogs, travel magazines and the stories repeated by an average 150,000 visitors a year. There must be something about this place right? It wasn’t even an internal question, it seemed an obvious stop at the Patagonia trail. So I posted on the roadside of the carretera leading out of El Calafate with my thumb up, asking every stopping car if they could drive me back to Chile.

After 2 separate rides out of town I fetched a hitch with a man who drove his family straight to La Esperanza, at a mind-numbing speed that instantly saved me 1,5 hours of travel time. They left me at the crossing leading to Rio Turbio, where the exact second I stepped out of the car a truck instantly braked. The driver appeared to be a hunter, which is always an interesting combination with a vegan. To avoid talking about animals and life ethics I asked why those little altars with red flags were posted on the roadside, assuming the answer would be some memorial of deathly accidents. However, the explanation surprised me.

He smiled and told me about the legend of ‘Gauchito Gil’…

an Argentinean cowboy who lived in the 1840s and had an affair with a wealthy widow of the ranch. When her brothers found out they plotted to kill him together with the local police, upon which he subscribed for the army to escape his fate. He returned as a hero and was immediately recruited again, but he refused and decided to live as an outlaw. Helping the poor and needy he even got some ‘Robin Hood’ status and people claimed he had miraculous powers. However, the police tracked him down eventually and prepared to execute him. Just before the Colonel slit his throat Gaucho Gil predicted that the Colonel would receive news that night that his son was dying from a strange illness. Only if he would pray to Gaucho Gil he would save his son’s life. 

Of course, it happened exactly like that and since then Mr. Gil is an honored national folk saint with his own roadside shrines, pilgrimages and people honoring him for every miracle they asked of him that came true.

(Comment added by an Argentino: He is also worshipped in the slums as the hero of the criminals, people leaving offerings like money, bullets and car keys)

However, the little sanctuaries with hundreds of plastic bottles in front of them are something else. They’re not a sad demonstration of the human tendency to pollute their environment… no, they belong to ‘Difunta Correa’, a woman who attempted to reach her sick abandoned husband by following his trails into the desert together with her baby. She died of thirst, but when her body was found days later by the gauchos they noticed that her baby miraculously survived by sucking the apparently ever-full breast of his mom. Especially truckers are crazy about this mythical figure and leave water bottles to quench her eternal thirst.

At his destination I thanked the pleasure-killer for his beautiful story-telling and started walking to the Chilean border, during which I got picked up by Franco and Jorge: two young soldiers on leave bouncing around on their swirling hormones. The borders were temporarily closed due to some protests, but pedestrians could still pass… Honestly, I preferred walking the 20km to the town of Puerto Natales over spending another 3 hours waiting around with these young chaps tweeting and facebooking the photos they ‘secretly’ made of me. Life agreed with me, and immediately I managed to get one last ride with a Chilean couple returning back home as they couldn’t cross the border either, dropping me off at my next Couchsurfing address in Puerto Natales.

When Francisco, or ‘Pancho’, told me there would for sure be enough space for me in his big house, I didn’t fully expect to end up in his own hostel. Why would you take your own business away by hosting a Couchsurfer in an unpaid hostel bed? Because you’re an inherently good person valuing helping fellow human-beings out more than chasing cash, perhaps?

The park rangers that also inhabited this communal space immediately bombed me with questions about which trek I was going to do in their precious Torres del Paine, the O, the W or the Q? Euuuhh… I’m just going for a day of hiking in the hills, am I not? Nah-ah. I appeared to be the worst prepared visitor in local history, which defines my preferred travel style: just wing it! In order to get a full impression and spread the outrageous entrance price of $35 (SAY WHAT?!) I’d better go for the 5-day W-trek, leading me passed all the highlights. I just needed a waterproof tent, thick sleeping bag, mattress, carry-on cooking gear and a water bottle. In a daze I stared at my luggage and could confirm I only had that water bottle all sorted out. The boys laughed and immediately started throwing all my trek-necessities on a big pile, which I could borrow for free.

(interrupted with 2-hour ‘very relaxed’ breaks of course)   

Then they planned out my route and helped me to make the campsite-reservations… yes, not kidding, I said reservations: an absolute let-down of the wild quest for adventure of bold wandering souls. And most of them are paid too, unlike basically every other national park in Argentinean Patagonia (that also don’t have entrance prices). I granted myself a day to stock up on supplies and food for 5 full days, hand-wash my clothes (I won’t pay the $15 that laundry service cost here), buy missing gear, print all confirmations and go for a nice long stroll along the lovely coastline of Puerto Natales to shake the preparation-stress off.

… and these skies really do take all your stress away, don’t they?   

When I tried to lift my backpack it seemed to be about 25kg. [Enter some adult words here]. I could hardly lift it from the ground. It was a little hint of what was awaiting me the next days to come.

Torres del Paine would give me a bit more adventure than I bargained for.

 (Read: It was going to be a complete shitshow)   

DAY 1   

My alarm had no mercy at 6AM. A shuttle bus was supposed to pick me up. The emphasis is on supposed to, it never came (nor did my refund). After 45 minutes waiting in the cold I had to run with all my stuff to the bus terminal to still get my expensive $28-bustransfer, as hitch-hiking was tricky as I also needed to get a scandalously expensive $30-for-30-minutes-ferry that only went trice a day to start my trek. That’s already $100 to see nature, isn’t that communal? Honestly, you can’t really speak of a Budget Bucket List anymore like this, although I saved money by camping (hostel beds are $60 and an organized tour $2000, for crying out loud) and spreading out the entrance price over several days.  Well, it better be epic…

This is what I saw out of the bus window… not bad.   

I started walking to Glacier Grey, a 3,5-hour trek.

Easy-peasy, right? Normally, yes. NOT with 25 torturous kilos on your back though… and a 120 km/h frontal wind. Yeah, you read it now, but you have no idea what that means in reality. Remember those photos of people jumping out of airplanes? That’s how my face looked.

Source     

Like a fat guy of 150kg is constantly trying to push you back when you walk. I literally got blown off the rocks a few times, which looks funnier than it feels. The glacier looked alright. I mean, come on, it’s a glacier, that’s kind of cool, no?

However, I just saw Perito Moreno and it’s simply hard to be impressed after that one. I camped next to the glacier, which is as cold as it sounds. Also, it rained all night, which was the moment I found out my tent was leaking. Splendid. As the icing on the cake I also got sick that night and I had the pleasure of spending the whole night puking outside in the pouring rain. Maybe my stomach wasn’t agreeing with that ‘purest mountain water from the river’ which is your only drinking water option here? Great start, for sure.

DAY 2

Even though I hardly slept I felt better somehow. I ate my breakfast among people that obviously were way better prepared than me. Entire kitchen sets I saw coming out of those backpacks. For the record: I was eating my oats out of the pan with a fork, as I forgot to bring a spoon… and fire. I listened to their conversations: “Are there actually people who walk this trek alone?” – “Of course not, only die-hard seasoned travelers would do that”. Hm ok, is that my category now? I packed my tent and started walking back the same trail (uphill), plus an extra 2,5 hour to the free park-owned Italiano campsite. Sunny, clear skies were laughing at me, even though there still were winds you could lean on, and I was laughing back, suppressing screams of pain.

I thought it was a marvelous idea to buy some new hiking shoes in Chile… who pressed so hard against my feet one ankle had swollen up. I tried to enjoy the views over the lake and watched people with daypacks parading by while I was sweating my skin off and felt my back slowly break into a thousand pieces.

The little tortoise with her agonizing shield. Me and my broken body arrived just in time to set up the tent before all rain clouds poured down their staggering load. The campsite was as basic as it could possibly get. No showers, the most terrifying toilet (1 for 100 tents) covered in human feces and for water you had to climb down the rocks with a pan under your arm.

[Intermezzo] Some sufferings you never knew existed until you have to live through it. Imagine Patagonia in all its might: Those 120 km/h stormblasts, snow, temperatures far below zero. Right, now imagine sticking your bare hands into a freezing river formed by melted ice. Seriously, if you didn’t instantly die from a heart attack you will want to kill yourself for the tormenting sensation of a million needles sticking into you. And then you can’t wash your plates in the river, so you have to climb up and down and up and down and up and down those rocks with your sore legs, scrubbing the sticky food remainders out of the pan with your fingernails while your blue’ish hands are slowing dying off your body. FBI, take my word for it, you will get a whole lot of confessions out of people with this torture technique. [/Intermezzo]

I went for an early night, as I for sure needed it after puke-night.

It couldn’t get any worse than that, right?

Yes Stephanie, yes it could. It took a while before I could get to sleep but when I finally did I wish I never would…    

Cliffhanger. Tomorrow I will post Part II.