It's been almost a month since my last post due to two factors: firstly it's really tough to get internet access here and secondly the fact that the longer I don't post the more I loose track of what has happened - which can make it hard to finally sit down and start writing. Anyway... "let's kill this bitch" (as we kept saying quite often for the past couple of weeks during long hours of hiking, hunger and frustration)
Both, the Chilean and the Argentinian side of the Patagonian Andes are really gorgeous!
We started out on the Chilean side with a 9-day trek in Torres del Paine Nationalpark. I think it's not exaggerated to say that we've had every possible weather condition you can get down here: drizzle, light rain, heavy rain, freaking strong wind, snow, blizzards and occasionally a bit of sunshine. This lead to hiking through swamps, 2-foot deep snow and sliding down crazyly steep mudslides (while trying not to break our necks). My boots were pretty much soaked after every day!
We spent the first 4 or 5 days hiking through the backcountry, which was pretty remote, and then after crossing the pass continuing on the "W", a part of the trek that is a lot more touristy and crowded with people doing day treks. I tried hard not clenching my teeth seeing all those people with their small, tiny daypacks that slept in the fancy huts and had awesome meals cooked for them! We used to call them "Wussies" or simply "W-Hikers".
We ended up with a pretty cool crowd of people: Chiara from Australia who drinks about 20 "cuppas" every day (she ended up being called the Tea-bitch), Dan and Clay, two hilariously funny Americans carrying around a 25 Kilo heavy FUN-BAG filled with Cigarretes, Journal, a box with freaking 20 different crayons (?!?) two bottles of Bourbon and boxes of Gato Negro (probably the cheapest wine you can get anywhere in Chile). Weight doesn't matter when you're hiking, right??? ;)
It was sad to finally split up after a couple last days together in Puerto Natales where we enjoyed an awesome meal, hot showers and real beds after all those days of camping.
Chiara and our plans were similar so we decided to stick together for a while and ended up going north and into Argentina to do another 5 days of hiking in Los Glaciares Nationalpark and finally got rewarded with some nice weather and plenty of sunshine.
We spent Christmas out there, preparing a pretty fancy meal on our camping stove followed by cake and lots of Whisky!
Back in El Chalten we had a hilariously funny night with 3 bottles of wine (split between 4 people) and a trip to the local supermarket at 2 in the morning to get some more! Not the best idea... the supermarket was closed but there were some guys doing construction work in there that happily opened the store for us to sell us two huge bottles of cheap wine.
The next day was spent hungover on a bus up north for about 15 hours!
We crossed back into Chile to hitchhike up the Carretera Austral, a really nice scenic road. Hitchhiking here can be tough but we've been lucky so far, hitching a ride in the back of a truck (sitting in the complete darkness and trying not to break any bones during the bumpy journey) It was tons of fun though!
Tomorrow we'll make our way back into Argentina, stopping in Bariloche (Argentina's chocolate-heaven) and slowly making it up to Buenos Aires where I'll catch my flight back home in less than 3 weeks!
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