Torres del Paine - AT LAST!

Early Monday morning we flew out of Santiago to go on our fieldtrip to Torres del Paine, the famous national park in southern Chile, Patagonia. They started picking us up at 12:15 am, and our plane left at 2:40 am. We got to Punta Arenas, the main city in Patagonia around 6 am, and then took three buses to arrive at Puerto Natales around noon. The rest of Monday was spent exploring the town and sleeping. We were just a little bit tired. (^_^) Tuesday we headed to the National Park and to see the mountains.

They were even more breathtaking than I ever could have imagined. They were unreal – too perfect, too gorgeous to be anything but a masterpiece painting: jagged peaks, straight drops and deep valleys, and gigantic glaciers hovering in the crevices and slopes, all with a light dusting of delicate, white snow. Clouds hung to their tallest peaks and the glaciers had a blue hue to them that made them seem to glow. I wish I could have stayed there for a week hiking, sleeping, eating, and all the while gazing upon them with awe and wonder. And the colors! Greens, blues, purples, and bits of orange and red decorated the trees and shrubs while brown, yellow, gold, gray and black covered the mountains and hills.

We spent most of the day on the bus and hiking. Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t raining so we were happy. First we went to the Milodon Cave and then traveled through the beautiful countryside to hike and have lunch in the National Park.

We saw several herds of guanacos (they are related to llamas), a gray fox (whose boldness showed that she had probably been fed by past humans), a huemul (a kind of endangered deer that is one of the national animals and is on the national seal), and a condor (the other national animal that is on the seal).

Our walk before lunch was on these cute trails that wound over the magnificent hills across from the awesome mountains. They were covered in small, rounded shrubs that made it seem that we were walking through someone’s well-tended, if not giant, garden. And where the rock peaked through the vegetation, you could see the amazing diagonal, horizontal, vertical, and wavy lines of sediment in them.

It was so beautiful. My friend Kelsey, who I knew before the trip from pep band at AU, immediately thought of the quote from Pride and Prejudice that goes something like this: “Oh the glories of nature! What are men compared to rocks and trees.”

We had our “box lunch,” which consisted of a chicken sandwich that took up the whole plate, and our choice of a drink, in The Grey Lake Hotel which sits right on the edge of Grey Lake with a clear view of the glacier with the same name. It was a spectacular view of not only the glacier, and the lake with some small floating icebergs, but also of the stunning mountain.

After lunch we walked down to the beach that went out to the lake and had fun taking pictures and enjoying the view, before heading back to Puerto Natales (the small town where our hotel was). It was funny – the guide told us that he would point out a few more things and we would have another photo opportunity, but we all (Paola, our program coordinator included) fell asleep on the bus and our guide didn’t want to disturb us.

The next day we went on a boat up the Fiord of Last Hope from Puerto Natales to Serrano Lake to hike to the glacier there. It was really fun to be on the boat. It was about a three hour boat ride but we got to see a colony of sea lions, many waterfalls, two condors, several small ranches that were on the banks of the fiord, and even had a rainbow that kept us company on the fiord all day!

Serrano Glacier was absolutely mind numbing. Just seeing all that hard, packed snow, with its blue glow, stacked all the way up the mountainside was quite humbling. It was SO BIG! But it was also extremely sad to realize how fragile it was. This is what we are trying to protect, this is the biggest proof that we are harming the environment in which we live. It was sad to see such beauty and know that it was being destroyed right before our eyes. Already we could see the change in size from the pictures in the brochures to what we were seeing. The glacier used to fill up most of the lagoon, but now we had to hike a ways to get closer to it.

On the boat, one of the tour company guys offered us a deal to take a boat so that we could get closer to the glacier and actually touch it. I didn’t want to touch it, and I didn’t want anyone else to either! Why would I want to help it melt even faster?! It might just have been my cynical frame of mind, but it seemed that all the tour company cared about was making money – not about the state of the glacier. While on the boat, I had figured out how to replace certain colors in whatever picture I was taking so at the glacier lookout, I took a picture that made it look like the glacier was bleeding – just to express myself.

The hike to and from the lookout and the boat was very beautiful. All the fruits and leaves of the plants and trees were all miniature due to the extreme temperatures that they have to live through during the year (Patagonia is a micro-climate, so things are changing constantly). Back on the boat they served us pisco (the Chilean liquor) with ice from the glacier. I politely refused mine as I didn’t want to take part in destroying the glacier, but the nice guy that worked on the boat that I had been talking to earlier thought I didn’t like pisco so brought me a glass of orange juice with glacier ice, instead. Despite my reasons, I didn’t want to offend so I gave in and drank it. They had already gathered the ice anyway, so it just would have been wasting it.

Lunch was at the ranch of the family who owns the tour company. They had two adorable puppies that we enjoyed playing with while waiting to use the bathroom. We had BBQ’d sheep, sausages, and peeled potatoes along with some delicious soup and fruit for dessert. While we were eating, I glanced out the window and saw all their sheep being herded back home! It was cool. Apparently they were outside when people started heading back to the boat, but were gone by the time I got outside. After lunch we started the 2-hour trip back to Puerto Natales. Everyone except for me, Paola, and the guide slept. I enjoyed practicing my Spanish with Paola and the kind guide – much more interesting than sleeping, anyhow. =)

The next day we headed back to Punta Arenas (the city that has the airport) and flew back to Santiago. It was an amazing trip! I hope to be able to go back there again, some day.

Torres del Paine