Chilean Travel Blog - Patagonia (Torres del Paine National Park, Jan 14, 2018)
Allegedly, when the Spaniards arrived in this part of the world, in the form of Portuguese sailor Ferdinando do Magellanes in 1520, the first man to circumvent the world in 1522 after a 3-year journey [well, actually, he did not make it home, the natives in the Philippines killed him and his Basque 2nd in command, Juan Elcano, sailed the ships home], and who discovered the Magellan Straits between the glaciers, mountains and wilderness in this end-of-the-world region, they were amazed at the size of some of the indigenous people. So Magellan called the people Big Foot, [pata grande], and, voila, the name stuck, and it became Patagonia.
Slightly further south, one of the four indigenous pre-Columbian tribes, a nomadic people living in and moving about by canoe – an unimaginable feat once you have experienced the violent winds sweeping these lands on a daily basis – kept fire alive by moving it about with them in their canoes! So that part is now called, logically, Tierra del Fuego. Gotta love that etymology!
The port of entry -- only by air, as only the Argentinian side has an uninterrupted land-based route down here -- is not a harbor/port, but just a point of entry, Punto Arenas. A quaint beautiful town, which feels like the Wild West of the US must have felt at one stage, a pioneering frontier town, just more elegant, with French and neo-classical Italian town houses funded by the initial riches of the original settlers in the late 19th and early 20th century (Chile only claimed the Magellan Straight for itself in 1843, having gained independence from Spain in 18yy). A town from another era, located right on the Magellan Straight and across from the large island that is Tierra del Fuego, lurching towards Antarctica. Its quays have seen better days and are populated by flocks of kormoran birds, its pace is that of a long-gone, relaxed, contemplative time, with marvelous coffee houses; business men and women still dress like in the 1980s, and it feels entirely natural. The sun rises around 5AM and sets around 9PM this time of the year, so long days to contemplate and read the local papers and chat to the locals.
But the punto was just a day, a stop on the way. The bus took us northwards for three hours, past interminable estancias of tens of thousands of hectares, populated with thousands of sheep and cows like little dots on a far-flung map as far as the eye can see; the inequitable land distribution of the original settlement still evident and afflicting the Chilean success model to this day, with its Gini coefficient (of inequality) not much better than the dramatic Brazilian index [Chile’s dropped from some 56 in 1987 to 50 by 2013 (0 being perfect equality, 100 being perfect inequality), while Brazil’s most recent reading is around 52]. The sheep are guarded by the ovejeros, shepherds on horseback, a lifestyle that again most of us associated with the old Wild West, or grainy Argentinian black-and-white films about the gauchos. We did get to the port in the end, Puerto Natales, the capital of the beautifully named province of Ultima Esperanza – it was said to be the last attempt to find a west-ward way through by Magellan and his team after many false starts down one-way fjords – but they did not find it here and did not actually give up just yet. It is a colourful town with wooden houses, a laid-back atmosphere, full of backpackers and a view across the bay at snow-capped granite mountains and distant glaciers that make it easy to see why this is the port of entry to the famous Torres del Paine national park, and many other trekking and outdoor adventure opportunities.
Having come this far, we did not just want to do a day-trip, and settled on the W over the O, or the 5-day trek in- and out- of the valleys either side of the mountains that give the park its name, rather than the 7-day circumference trek. Probably both boxing above out weight, as we were to find out; but how can you come to frontier country and not be daring?
Like the Atacama fails you for words, so Patagonia leaves you gasping to find adequate adjectives and metaphors to describe its beauty, its variety, its uniqueness, its vastness. Famous for having four seasons every day, from rain and snow to sun to cloudy to unpredictable, the one constant that one is entirely unprepared for is the wind. Ranging at 40-50 km/h at its leisurely pace, its gusts (rafagas in Spanish) reach 100-130 km/h and easily throw you off your feet, raise the water from the many lakes and lagoons in huge violent sprays, and brings home its violent nature when you innocently go for a pee in the Valle del Frances and suddenly have the spray in your face. No country for squeamish people.
The Greeks have an evocative word for wine-filled jars, amphora. Well, mine were not wine-filled, even if of a similar dark red, but the ampollas (Spanish for blisters) on my Achilles heels spoiled the end of the first day and then accompanied us as a desafio (Spanish for challenge) for the remaining four. Horses were to come to the rescue, but in their absence it just meant soldiering on, for 6-8 hours/day and 11-20km/day, aided by fellow travelers, ‘donut plasters’, ‘second skin plasters’ and other contraptions we will spare the reader with. [For the inexperienced and naïve trekker like myself, a set of second skins, or compeed, are highly recommended as a lifesaver on the next trip.]
None of it could spoil the pleasure of being in a nature as original, as primary as one can only imagine. Glaciers galore (a mere 20,000 or so years old, remnants of the last ice age), flowing from Chile’s huge Hielo Sur ice range, lightly coloured granite rocks and mountains thought to clock in at about 15m years, young geological chaps really next to the sedimentary rock formations (usually darker going into black, and wondrously combined with the granite on top of the Cuernos del Paine), and which are deemed to be 120-150m years old. The lakes and lagoons seem like a potpourri of this nation of immigrants, with Indigenous (Paine, Pehoe), Norwegian (Nordenskoljd), Spanish (Sarmiento, Amargo), Swedish (Skottsberg), German (Ilse), Anglo-Irish (Grey, Dickson) and other names dotted around the park. The mountains appear more logical named to rational main, starting with Paine Grande (2884m), not the great pain as the trek around it might suggest, but the great blue (an indigenous word for the deep blue emanating from the ice of the glaciers), followed by Cuernos del Paine (the horns), El Almirante Nieto (2670m), and finally, at the end of the 5-day west-to-east W trek, the famous three Torres del Paine, three granite towers sticking up some 1,200m above the high valley rounded off by a green-blue lagoon that changes colours, like the mountains, depending on the sunlight and the clouds, and leaves you feeling very small and in awe.
As linguistic findings go, we finally also discovered that Calafate is not just the nearby Argentinian frontier town that we visited some four years ago to explore its main nearby attraction, the Perito Moreno glacier, but that it was the name of a blue berry, which makes for great beer and a welcome change to the Chilean drink of choice, pisco sour to calafate sour. Once you have had three of these innocent yet delicious-tasting drinks, you are a goner. (And no, Tom, I am not having another one!)
The prize of honour among the local flora and fauna goes to the ‘cojin de la suegra’, the cushion of the mother-in-law. A cute low bush with green leaves and small yellow flowers, it invites you for a rest along the path all the time. But beware: beneath its inviting flowers and suppleness are many sharp little spikes tormenting the unsuspecting trekker (or son-in-law). You have been warned!
PS:
Thanks to our friends Chris B. and Stefan E. for the inspiration, and to Kent H. for lending some of his Aconcagua-tested gear, which always made us feel confident that we could handle any weather conditions. Our trip was competently organized by adventure travel agency Azimut360.cl from Santiago. But it would have been nothing without our wonderful guide Daniela Matus [danimatus@gmail.com], who was ever-friendly, well-organised, and competent, always a step ahead of us, patient and graceful, had an answer to every question, knew every tree and animal and flower in the park, and loves these territories with an infectious affection; gracias! If you are going to do it (and when we come back for the O), only with Daniela! Finally, a big thank you to our 2nd eldest daughter, Natalia, who turned 18 on this very day and who allowed her parents to take off at this inopportune time; we shall do all we can to ensure that your life from here on shall be one eternal fiesta!
