Day 503 - Torres del Paine, Chile
Torres del Paine National Park
We awoke to gaze at the great towers outside our Hosteria Lago window. I found it difficult to tear my eyes away from their dramatic crags and so simply goggled. The evening before, we had returned from our horseback ride to settle into our new digs. Avis had taken our broken Symbol away and replaced it with an identical Symbol that had even more mileage on it than the previous version. We could only hope it would take more battering. We checked the connections, which were tight, and we were provided a pair of pliers just in case the roads rattled the battery loose again.
For dinner, the hotel provided one Prix Fixe meal, and one only, for anyone who wanted to eat it; 30 Euros. Apparently every patron did because the small dining room was packed. We tucked into trout and the ever present Chilean potatoes and bread and watched the sun drop into the mountains, surrounded by horses peacefully grazing between the Grey and Serrano Rivers.
At the table nearby, five beautiful people were enjoying a raucous dinner. They seemed to bounce between French and German which made me think they might be Swiss. They were all strapping – the women, tall, cool, blonde, and blue-eyed; the men with thick heads of auburn hair they would unconsciously toss back through their hands above beards tough as sandpaper. They seemed to be having such fun while Cyn and I struggled to keep our eyes open after a day of horseback riding and shuddering car repair. A little sourly, I took this to mean that these people were on vacation, swooping in for a good time before returning to work while we were traveling all seven continents without the benefit of modern air travel. Of course, it might also simply mean they had better genes than us and therefore more energy. Or maybe I was a little cranky. How I could possibly BE cranky made no sense, even as I thought about it. We were on an absolutely unique journey. Who else could say that? But then when one is cranky, one rarely makes sense. Either way, while everyone else helped themselves to another glass of Sauvignon Blanc, Cyn and I soon retired to our room. And that was fine because it was spacious and comfy the way your own house is comfy. After settling in, we opened the windows to let the cool, Patagonian air chill us and crawled among the bed’s warm blankets. We fell asleep assured we would have a fresh car in the morning. My last memory as I nodded off was hearing the exultant whinny of one of the horses outside.
After breakfast we bounced into Torres del Paine Nacional Parque. A boxy building and museum for the park stood at the entrance brimming with rangers requiring our passport and a small fee. From there Renault #2 took us toward the peaks.
The road that runs through the park circles the cordillera and the glaciers, lakes and rivers that surround it. We rolled left along paved and unpaved roads so close to the the deep blue Pehoe River it looked as if it might spill its banks. I hadn’t seen water that color since we explored Yellowstone’s hot springs in Utah the previous winter - a pale color of lapis lazuli that looked almost synthetic. Like Yellowstone it is unique geochemistry that creates the color. “It comes from the Serrano Glacier,” Domingo had told me the day before. “It’s in the rock beneath the ice and when it erodes the floury dust mixes in the water to create this color.”
An hour of serpentine driving brought us to a trailhead. We piled out and took a path that quickly rose into foothills pocked with rocks and the Nothofagus antarctica trees that time and the fierce weather had twisted and turned to bone.
We ran into Robert and Emily, a 30-something couple from the states who pretty much traveled all the time. They had been on the road, working remotely on a variety of consulting and real estate projects for the better part of six years, proof that you CAN make a living and travel at the same time. They had been to six continents, and loved hiking back country locations like Patagonia, but they had also spent lots of time in Laos, Cambodia, Africa, Vietnam and China. A house in Northern Portugal was home, for now, but they mostly rented it out through AirBnb. That's what paid for much of their travel, they said. We talked longer than we intended and then promised we’d stay in touch because we were pretty sure we’d run into them somewhere!
The path's switchbacks carried us upward until the hill shot abruptly to rock cliffs that split down the middle. I climbed into the cleft and the moment I did wind gusts knocked me sideways. The air that swept down the mountains clearly funneled into this notch and turned it into a wind tunnel. I circled the cleft, saw a narrow path to the left that led another 150 vertical feet or so to the summit. It was so windy, and the path so narrow and steep, I hollered through the gusts and suggested to Cyn she wait. I would run to the summit, take in the view and come back. She nodded. Once to the top, I stood and took it all in.
I have rarely seen anything as arresting as the Torres del Paine. Your eyes can’t help but lock onto their three stoney claws. They look simultaneously stately and angry, gargantuan igneous rocks that emerged 60 million years ago when the magma beneath the surface formed an immense bubble. The bubble never broke through to form volcanoes, but eventually cooled and settled like the hump on the back of an enormous animal. Later, ice ages did the work we see now: massive glaciers that once covered all of this land to the tip of Antarctica repeatedly gouged the hump, tearing anything soft enough to move away from the granite below. Torres del Paine is what remains, spectacular fingers of impermeable stone that seem unmovable. Far above me I saw a condor circling the pampas in search of food, hardly once flapping its wings as it silently sailed the cordillera.
As I turned to move down the hillside, I passed three other hikers and then saw Cyn coming up the path!
“I thought you were going to wait,” I said. “I was, but then those people (she pointed at the three hikers who had just passed me) said that you hiked off beyond the hill.” They had apparently seen another hiker who had a black hood like mine and assumed it was me.
“I wouldn’t leave you behind.” Cyn shrugged. “I figured you’d eventually come here, and if you didn’t, well, I have the keys to the car.” She grinned.
The hikers kindly took a picture of us at the summit and we threaded our way back to the trailhead. A small restaurant was tucked along the roadside not far away and we helped ourselves to a lunch of chicken and more potatoes, the french variety this time. From there we drove onto one more trailhead our map had revealed. This one took us a mile into a low prairie of succulents that absorbed the wet mists and rains the glaciers created. We were close enough to the towers now that we thought they might topple onto us. The view of the Rio Pehoe with its deep blue water against the stark outcrops left me with an unearthly feel. We crossed another troop of hikers and all the group of us could do was congratulate ourselves on being in such a unique and breathtaking place. What else was there to say? I’ll let the pictures and video do most of the talking.
Torres del Paine Recommendations
“Torres del Paine National Park, in Chile’s Patagonia region, is known for its soaring mountains, bright blue icebergs that cleave from glaciers and golden pampas (grasslands) that shelter rare wildlife such as llama-like guanacos. Some of its most iconic sites are the 3 granite towers from which the park takes its name and the horn-shaped peaks called Cuernos del Paine.”