Patagonia: Our group

The hiking tour we did through Patagonia was through an outfit called Mountain Travel Sobek. This was the second trip I did with them, and I highly recommed them. Even though their normal minimum for this trip was 6, they were willing to do it for just two of us. In the end, we were a group of four, which was a great size. Besides Dee and me, there were Sarah and Alex, both women who live in New York. All of us were in the same general age range, and we had a great time hiking together. Our guide, Pedro, was excellent. He knew everything about the geography, geology, and biology of the area, and he paid attention to the needs of everyone. He also spoke great English, had a sense of humor, and was willng to hike through the nastiest weather with those of us who were more hard-core, or crazy, as Dee would say. Pedro is thinking about going out on his own, so if you´re thinking of doing a trip down there, let me know, and assuming he follows through on his plan, I will give you his name.

We also had an amazing staff during the hiking portion of the trip. Pedro (different from our guide) was our cook, and he provided us with amazing, large meals every night. The others helped out Pedro, set up camp, and carried some of our stuff from campsite to campsite: Panchi, Pablo, and Viernes (Friday). Last but not least, Luis was our intrepid driver, and always got us safely from place to place.

Alex, Dennise, and Sarah

Martin, Pedro, and Luis

I got lost in the Patagonian wilderness, and all I got was this lousy story.

Okay, here's the situation: I got lost on our South American vacation. Yes, that's right, lost. It all started out fairly innocuously. We made an early morning start for a hike in Parque Nacional Los Glaciares, near El Chalten. We were staying in a lovely little hosteria named El Pilar, and the weather was gloomy and overcast, but I was excited because our guide Pedro said it was a pretty straightforward hike, a few hills but mostly flat, through forests and rivers. It was lovely and pretty easy, which sounded great after a few of our tougher hikes. Little did I know it would end up being my toughest day.

After about 2 hours, we moved into a really open and windy area. The rain that had started falling basically turned into ice as it hit the freezing, driving wind. Said ice then began pelting me in the face, and eventually, the eyes. I mean really, what the hell was I doing outside in that kind of weather? Pedro and our fellow hikers were slightly ahead of us, so I told Martin I was going to turn around and they could meet me back at the hosteria, where I would do some yoga, take a hot shower, and sit in front of the roaring fireplace with a book and a hot chocolate.

After about 1.5 hours, I started to notice that things didn't look very familiar. I suddenly realized that not only had I not been paying much attention on the way out that morning, but I also didn't have a map with me. I had just assumed that we were on the only trail (and as it turned out, it WAS the only trail on the map), and I had been daydreaming about my hot shower and the warm, welcoming fire and hadn't noticed any signs. I figured I would turn around and find the last familiar spot, and then there would be a sign or some other obvious item telling me the way to the correct trail. Wrong. I ended up back at a small stream, where the trail split and I went down the wrong way, because I heard the river and thought that was where I should be. I also thought that if I got to the river, I would be able to walk along the shore back to our starting point. Also wrong! I wandered around for nearly 5 hours, looking for the right trail. There may have been some tears involved. There was definitely some bargaining with whatever god or gods or other ruling forces might be part of our universe. Don't worry, I didn't make any promises I couldn't keep.

I finally decided to go back to the most familiar spot and wait for Martin to find me. Luckily, he knows me pretty well and when he got back to the hosteria several hours later and realized I wasn't there, he did indeed set out to find me. In fact, our whole group and a gaucho from the ranch were out looking for me! It was all very dramatic, with a pretty boring ending. Martin and Sarah found me, gave me some chocolate, and led me back to the van. We got back to the hosteria and sat in front of the fireplace for at least an hour, sipping hot mate and assuring everyone that I was indeed fine. I ended up having to tell my story about 5 times, which of course made me feel ridiculous, because I had no one to blame but myself.

The weirdest part has how quickly everything returned to normal. I was really lost, especially when I wandered down by the river and lost the trailhead. I honestly thought I would have to spend the night out there, and I was totally unprepared for that. Next time, I am bringing everything I need with me for a night in the wilderness - including my husband!

Day 12-15: Los Glaciares, Patagonia, Argentina

On Monday, April 3, we drove to El Chalten, a small town just inside the northern end of Los Glaciares Park. For four days, we hiked in this area, staying two nights at a place just outside of town and two nights in town. Unfortunately, the weather during this time consisted mostly of rain and occasionally very high winds. Fortunately, these were the nights we were not camping. We never did see the main attractions of the park, a mountain named Fitz Roy and a rock spire called Torre, but we still had some great hikes and enjoyed the glaciers and mountains that were close enough to see and the beautiful fall colors. The second day was a bit of an adventure, but I will let Dee tell the story from her side. Here are a few pictures:

Day 10-11: Perito Moreno Glacier

On the first day of April, our group ended our stint of camping and drove across the wasteland between Chile and Argentina, crossing the border and landing in El Calafate, a town that has clearly flourished with the influx of tourists flocking to see the glaciers nearby. The most magnificent of these is Perito Moreno, a massive field of ice that is unlike anything we've ever seen. It is one of the few glaciers in the area that is not retreating, and it regularly calved large chunks of ice into the lake while we watched in awe. Hopefully, the pictures do it justice. On the 2nd, we took a tour that included an hour of walking on the glacier itself, followed by whiskey served over ancient glacial ice.

Day 5-9: Patagonia - Torres del Paine, Chile

Patagonia is best described with some adjectives and a lot of pictures. Adjectives: harsh, desolate, windy, rocky, icy, stunning, unique, brutal, glacial, beautiful, lonely, awesome. We did four great hikes in Torres del Paine, an incredibly beautiful park on the Chilean side. Though we experienced some ridiculously high winds and some clouds and rain, the weather was amazing and we got to see clearly all the sights on our itinerary.


Our first hike took us to an overlook of Glacier Grey, a huge and long glacier flowing from the Patagonian ice field into Lago Grey, a large mountain lake where you can find stunningly blue icebergs. The wind literally nearly knocked us over, but it was a great view to start the hiking trip.


Hike 2 was a strenuous and long one, the goal an overlook at the base of Los Cuernos (The Horns), craggy rock formations intruded by a bubble of magma long ago and later carved by glaciers to reveal the different strata. The weather began poorly, with hardly any view at all, but we arrived perfectly at the top as the clouds parted and revealed an amazing display of mountains and glaciers.


The third day was a shorter, four hour hike that was basically a transfer to our final campground but had some great views of glacial lakes and Los Cuernos from a different angle.


The last hike was another long day with a couple steep climbs, including a last push up a rocky old glocier moraine to the base of the spires that the region is named after, the Torres del Paine. When we reached the lake underneath the glacier, we had what was probably our most stunning view directly underneath the Torres.





And now, more pictures:

Day 3-4: Santiago

Saturday morning, we walked around the different squares in Mendoza to get another look at a great city. We would have loved to stay longer, but we had a bus to catch back to Santiago. This time, we took a big bus that was a bit more comfortable. There were even movies during the ride, though they were Walking Tall, starring The Rock and with Spanish subtitles, and The Longest Yard dubbed into Spanish.


We arrived just as it was getting dark, and during our cab ride to the hotel, we got our first real look at Santiago. From our cab ride from the airport to the bus station a couple days earlier, we though the city might be kind of a hole. Apparently, though, we just went through the less desirable suburbs. Now, we were suddenly in a large city amidst some great old architecture.

Sunday was the first day of our Patagonia tour. We met our group in the early afternoon and went on a city tour with a guide. It's always a little tough being in a city for a very short time, so I guess this was a good way to sample some of the different sights.

The highlights for me were some of the oldest buildings around the main square and a trip to Cerro Santa Lucia, a hill overlooking the city that gave us a good idea of how big the place is. Half of the population of Chile lives in and around Santiago. At night, we also got a taste of the good food in the newer part of Santiago. Dee and I joined one of our tour mates, Alex, for dinner at a place called Como Agua para Chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate).

Day 2 - Mendoza

We decided to rent bikes and check out some nearby wineries, so we found a rental place in town and took off for Maipu, a town a few miles away that has many of the bodegas, as they are known in these parts. Our first stop was La Rural, which we had heard has a great wine museum. It was a little further than we had expected, and we had to pull out the map a few times to navigate the countryside, which isn't nearly as developed or paved as our own version of wine country, but in the early afternoon, we were tasting some great wine. Our favorite was the Rutini Malbec, which is apparently sold in the US under the name Felipe Rutini Malbec, so go find it and give it a try.


Unfortunately, this Friday was some holiday in Mendoza, and the rest of the wineries we tried to visit were closed. After biking to two or three more places only to find that there was no wine waiting for us, we started the long trek home. It was good to get some exercise after days of sitting in planes and busses, but if we had known, we would have drunk more at the first place :) Almost everything outside Mendoza seemed to be closed, but we did find one place close to the city where we shared a large beer.


At night, we decided to walk to Azafran, a highly recommended restaurant in our guideboook. When we got there, they were temporarily full, but they had a tasting room where they said we could drink and wait for a table if it was ok with the people already inside. Fortunately for us, the people inside were three Canadians who were so much fun that we ended up spending the rest of the evening with them. David and Patrick had come to South America together from Toronto, and they had been in Mendoza tasting wine for a week. They had just met John that night in the same tasting room, and it just happened that he was from Toronto as well. He had actually been in South America for almost 6 months. We all hit it off right away and began sharing the many excellent wines that were stored all around this tasting room. Pretty soon, we were getting a little drunk and talking about everything from travel stories to climate change. The others had already eaten, but they let me and Dee eat in that room. The food, wine, and company were all excellent.


At some point late in the night, drunk and full, the five of us all headed back to the street we had been on the previous night. We ended up back at the same restaurant, this time drinking wine inside. David and Patrick were taking a plane to Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuega early the next morning, but they weren't going to let that stop them. Dee and I finally left all three of our newfound friends around four in the morning as they got into a cab to go to a club in another part of town. We hope they had a great rest of the night.