The Towers of the Paine

The Torrres (towers) in the distance...beckoning

I am glad that Jeff's posts are funny, because it is all business around here in Southern Chile where we just finished hiking a 20km trail in and back out of the last stroke (or first, depending upon where you start) of the "W," which is part of the most traversed sections of the Torres Del Paine.

Sang shows us that we will be going up, up, up.

Yesterday, as I said, the hike we went on was pretty easy so our guide really encouraged us to try the one up to the Torres...after which this whole area is named...Torres Del Paine.  Torres means towers and I am not sure what Paine means, but the important thing is that we hiked to the three tall spires that really dominate this whole region.

Ummm, ridiculous.

Our hotel faces the horns of the Paine, another iconic feature of this national park and yesterday we hiked between a couple of those when we went up the French Glacier.

But, today, we piled into a van with eight Chileans at 7 am to tackle the hike that one of the women we've met told us was "brutal."  I have to admit, I was a little nervous.  Brutal is a tough word to willingly sign up for.

At our hotel, they set out bowls of dried apricots, almonds, cashews, some granola bars and have a long trough of spigots to get water for the day each morning.  After our first short hike, I learned to take advantage of the snacks...especially because right at 6:30 am when we roll down to the dining room for breakfast, I am not exactly hungry...but 8 miles into anything (especially a drastic uphill climb) I am only thinking no matter how many snacks I grabbed that I probably didn't bring enough.

We were told this hike had a steep ascent, then a rolling terrain and ended with a very steep boulder ascent.  10k in and 10k out.  We were given trekking poles, which I am so glad we had.  They really helped us (me, Gillian did fine) especially on the down slopes.

I have spent years of my life on a stair climber/step mill, it turns out that was a good thing...good training without even knowing it for today's hike.  My hamstrings and calves really took it on the chin (if they have one) with each upward hoist.  But, truly, it didn't matter, the views of the river that emerged from the canyon were beyond explanation.  I don't even think pictures can do it justice.  We hugged that river most of the way, crisscrossing it so many times I lost count.  Most of the bridges looked as if they were put together by some kids in a low level wood shop class and a couple of them said "Only two persons at a time," but in Spanish.

I can't imagine walking across this bridge
with a tent, food, or any kind of
heavy pack...it was hard enough as it was

The river raged in some places and trickled in others.  We were rationing our water, somewhat because of the lack of toilets on the trail (exactly zero--unless you want to use the "Chilean toilet," which has a nice view of all of the outdoors since it is actually behind whatever rock or tree you find), but also because as the day progressed, we knew that it would get hotter and we would want water more.  But, our guide, Sang, the gentle, kind guide we'd had a couple of days before pointed to a couple of spots in the river along the way where it was safe to fill our water bottles.

On the way down, we did.  Cool, delicious, refreshing water, straight from the stream.

But, getting to the top during the last ascent was the toughest part of the hike.  Straight up, boulder after boulder, until we came to a short traverse and then emerged at the lake that is directly at the base of the glorious towers.  WOW.  Sang laid out our lunch (I will let Gillian tell you tomorrow/Monday about the graceful move I made getting to the rock where we ate lunch...she also wants still to write about the Cat Lady that I promised a few days ago.) and we ate and rested until it was time to head back down.

I won't bore you with any more details of our long hike, just that we arrived back at the hotel at 5:30 pm, which makes for a long day.  We are beat tired, but to be honest, truly and honestly sad to leave.  Patagonia has been my favorite part of this trip, I really do hope I can return and bring Jeff and the rest of our family.  It has lodged itself in our hearts.  We met such interesting people along the way as well, some new friends, exchanged emails and phone numbers, just like real camp, with memories for a lifetime.  No exaggeration there.










I could talk on and on about it all, and if you can't sleep one night and need someone to drone on about Chile and hiking in some of the coolest places I've been, call me.

It's late, and I will add more pictures tomorrow, maybe from the Santiago airport if I can figure out the wifi there, or even Monday morning when we are at LAX for that leg of the trip...we leave tomorrow morning at 7:30 am, drive four hours to Punta Arenas, fly to Santiago for three hours and wait through a 6 hour lay-over and then an 11 hour 30 minute flight to LAX and three hour layover and THEN home Monday late afternoon.  Phew, already tired thinking about it.

Done.

Wash, rinse, repeat

Well, my worst fears were realized when I was awoken at 3:57am by the feeling of one of those big red ants crawling on my neck.  In a beautifully executed ninja-ballet-gymnastics move I was able to swat, pirouette, half-twist, shed my covers, leap from bed all while transitioning from deep R.E.M. sleep to full combat readiness.  I am confident that when I landed on my feet (like a cat, mind you), I was in a wrestlers pose - one foot in front of the other, head low, hands out in front.

I know what my wife is thinking right now, "oh, I have seen that same move.  Only Jeff is always dreaming about seeing spiders in bed. Nay, they have never been but a dream."

Thanks for the confidence, Janna.  And exposing my kryptonite to all of Blog Nation.  

In fact, I calmly secured my phone from the bed stand and flipped it to flashlight mode.

There it was!  The devil himself! That darn ant was on my pillow! If it had eyes, I would say it was stunned from the athleticism she (worker ants are always female) had just witnessed.  But I think I had stunned her with my swat.  Well, I should have snapped a photo for Doubting Janna.  But instead I flung her off my pillow with a confident, masculine motion.

I didn't sleep much after that.

Ants use the pheromones of other ants to determine their pathways. 

Breakfast in the room, pool/hades, lunch in the room, surfing, pool/hammocks, dinner.

Surfing was a ton of fun today, apart from the Worst Dad of the Year Award that I won again.  We rented 3 surf boards for $25 from a beach vender.  All four of us went into the water. Aubrey and Shelby we eager to improve.  Quinn, on the other hand did not want to be there.  I could tell. Maybe it was the body language or the fact that she insisted that she "wasn't good at it" before we left.  That and she refused to wear anything other that a tanning bikini.

For whatever reason, I decided to get on her emotional roller coaster.  I haven't done that in a while, and it is not fun, let me tell you.  As she was walking her board into the surf, with it sideways, the force of the first wave took the board up and into her face.  It smacked her good.  My sympathies for her possible concussion were muted by her complete disregard for rule #1 in surfing, keep your board aimed toward the surf at all times.  We had covered this already. Basic stuff. At this point she started crying.  She was crying from pain mostly.  I saw her crying for other reasons.  

It gets worse.

I demanded that she stick it out and hop on that board.  She is 18, mind you.  The crying, adult Quinn took the next wave and it uprooted her and slammed her head into the sand.  Now she was a wreck and I was even more so.  I recall asking this question, "why can't you rally!"  Pretty sure I was yelling.  She was full poopy-pants at this point, crying, throwing her hands down. I suggested if she didn't want to be here she could leave.  

Yeah, that's in the Not Top Ten of encouraging things to say to your daughter.  

She sulked out of the water and had a miserable 2 hours while Shelby and Aubrey and I crushed surfing.  I have GoPro to prove it.

I did, of course, apologize to her immediately after getting back.  She was still crying.  I had cut pretty deep this time.  

So there it is. Beautiful Costa Rica.  Pura Vida.  Totally messed up by really poor parenting.  

Apart from that, we have had a good time here.  The volcanos and rainforests were amazing and worth doing.  There are better beaches around the world than Tamarindo.  Although the good food in town made up for it.  

We check out tomorrow at 11, a driver picks us up at 12:15, and we arrive at the airport at 1:45.  Non-stop flight home.  Looking forward to it.  

Hey There, Beautiful

I've been trying to upload this...here's a map of the region...Punta
Arenas is where we landed and Torres Del Paine
is where we are now.

More beauty...we are getting spoiled.  I asked our guide yesterday who has been here seven years if he ever gets tired of it...he looked sideways at me and grinned, "No, of course, never."

I can see why.

We just got back about an hour ago from our hike for the day.  Usually, I write these posts after dinner, but the deal here in Chile is that they don't usually eat dinner until 9pm.  So...in between the quirky and limited wifi here and how late we are done with dinner, I finished up last night at 12:30 am...and we had to be up and at 'em this morning at 8:30 so that was okay...but tomorrow, we hit the trail at 7 am and I just need a little more sleep.

on our way to the hike...the horns of Paine in the back right

Each evening, we sit down with a guide and choose what excursion we will do for the next morning.  We chose a hike to look at the Valle Frances Glacier on a well worn path of what is called the "W" hike of the Torres Del Paine park.  Essentially, there are four legs that run through the park and usually take about three or four days to hike and most trekkers camp along the way.  Or, alternatively, you can take the W one leg at a time returning to your beautiful hotel, as we have chosen.

We left by boat across the Lago Pehoe on which this hotel is set and began our hike on the other side. Our guide, Caru (a Brazilian from Sao Paolo) and a couple, Robby and Lily, who are from Argentina.  We hiked 7.6 km up the second leg of the "W" with ridiculous views of the Horns of the Paine, stopped, had lunch together under the French Glacier and saw three (!) small avalanches!  They sounded like thunder and awed us with the fireworks of snow.  After that show, we returned by the way we came.

even the sun wants to touch the Paine

The best part was when Caru looked at Gilly and I after lunch and said, "Hey, do you guys want to go ahead?"  The couple we were with had already stripped down to their t-shirts about 2km into the hike and I was still wearing my mittens and four layers.  It was the permission we needed to really go off and make the hike our own.  We finished about an hour before the rest of the group...so I took a little nap at the base of the trail and tried to soak it all in because we are going home in a couple of days.

Only pictures will do the rest of the work, as I keep saying, we've run out of words.

I haven't written about this, but in 2005 and 2011
Torres Del Paine National Park was
decimated by fires as a result of careless
campers...the damage is still profoundly evident in
many areas.

a suspension bridge to the Italian
camp before the French Glacier

Italian Camp...just a name, not only
open to Italians....

lunch...carrots and potatoes and chicken
almost as pretty as the view

the glacier and the stream that flows from it

Note the altitude...quite a difference from the
Atacama...

Lago Pehoe...brilliant blue

Another Lago on the hike...the blue is from the glaciers

a tent camp for the W trekkers...what a view

Tomorrow is our last full day here in Patagonia, so we plan do finish with a stellar hike...22km and "expert" level (whatever that means, I just hope we make it).  Caru suggested it, she believes in us.  So, I'll report back if we make it.  :)

Swiss Family Northrupson

There are a lot of ants in our bungalow.  I am trying to ignore them. Red ones the size of Carpenter ants.  Sugar ants too. And also a miscroscopic kind that gets in the pages of my book when I read by the pool.  (I have read over 150 pages of War and Peace) They are mostly in the kitchen, where we have a very large tree growing - a full sized tropical tree with a budding branch and about a 10-12 inch diameter trunk. It comes up thru the floor boards and leaves thru the ceiling and blocks the microwave.  Shelby is convinced that the Howler Monkeys were in this very tree the first morning.  My guess is that the ants could possibly be climbing up the tree to get in? Just a hunch.

Kitchen/treehouse/ant farm 

I have only found one of the big red ones on my bed. It was dead.  I wonder if they are Leaf Cutters?  Or Crumb Getters. Or. Not Awesomers. Or. For Pete's Sakes.

Every outdoor pathway here is paved with sliced, full diameter, tree trunk discs. They are set in cement - not very well tho.  My first image of Ilse was when she was coming to greet us and one of the wood blocks flipped up as she stepped on one side of it and her foot disappeared. It was like a booby trap.  Santos probably saw that too.

Shower. Wood floor.

The discs pave your way to the pool, the bar, and the rooms - there really isn't anywhere else to go.  The bungalows are "artisan" with a lot of stained and varnished wood.  Kinda cool.  Even our shower floor is wood.  I have never seen that before.  A wood shower floor.  Hmmm.

Termites are a major problem in Costa Rica to the point where most people build with concrete now.  I'm just sayin'.

So, with the monkeys, ants, wood-floor shower, four-poster bed, and organ, it really feels like we are in one of the Swiss Family Robinson rooms.  (There is no organ) It feels comfortable - almost familiar.  There is definitely a charm to these bungalows. They remind me a bit of our cabin.  And Nelson's Resort cabins.  The floorboards squeak like they are flawed and warped, and even slant in places, like the foundation has settled.  I know this type of living quarters well.

'Hallway' behind the bed.
Connects kitchen to bath.
Tight squeeze.

Same routine as yesterday: Howlers, breakfast, pool/hades, lunch, surfing, pool/nice, showers, dinner, stare at our phones.  Actually, I could put 'stare at phones' in between (and during) every event today (except surfing).

There is not much to do at the pool except watch for iguanas and lizards and read.  Quinn, the tanning goddess, thinks it's too hot to lay out - even tho it hasn't stopped her yet.  She has a point - it is 95 degrees and humid with no wind.  I wear a lite, long sleeved, water/sun-protection shirt I got in Belize.  One dip in the pool and it keeps me cool for about 30 minutes.

Surfing was a bit better (only one of us cried today), although our equipment was weaker today.  Some hotel guests ran off with all the good surf boards before 8:30am.  At 5pm they still had not returned them.  Lame.  Tomorrow we rent from a beach vendor.

Dinner was fabulous.  The owner/chef was really good.  Season's by Shlomy.  Go if you are here. A bit pricier than others, but worth it.

Nice lighting for your only signage.

Camp Patagonia

We are at camp.  It is a far cry, though from Camp Lake Forest Springs where I went in 4th grade and Peter Von Goren threw up all over the place.  Actually, if camp had been like this when I was a kid I would have moved permanently to live there.

This is the best camp I have ever been to.

our guide all day today,
a Belgian named Song

But first, where are we?  We landed yesterday afternoon on the Magellan Straight (discovered by the Spaniard in 1520 on his trip around the world) in a town called Punta Arenas and then hopped in a van that drove us to the hotel.  It was a four hour drive (our driver was awesome and flew over the roads).  As we drove out of town, we saw the Tierra del Fuego across the straight and then we hugged the border of Argentina most of the rest of the way until we arrived at the Torres Del Paine park in Patagonia (a broad description of the region that encompasses both the southern tips of Chile and Argentina).

The terrain and the feeling is completely different than what we've seen in the rest of Chile.  It feels almost like a Scandinavian/Swiss/Canadian place.  If you can combine those three.  The landscape was flat for the first two hours of the drive and was one sheep or cattle ranch after another (mostly by far sheep).  Then, as the outcroppings of rocks begin to show themselves, there were still sheep farms, but also with the added bonus of glimpses of the Torres Del Paine.  The gorgeous granite towers dominate this region that kept enchanting us as we drove further north.

We knew we were in for something special.

guanaco remains

Added to the visual beauty, we were lucky enough to see a puma (what??  yes, they are the major predator here) leap over the dirt road (the last two hours were by dirt road) in one hug fluid jump and pounce on something just to the side of the road.

I'm guessing by what we saw today that the puma was after the most common animal in this area, the guanaco, because we saw hundreds of them today and also saw hundreds, no thousands, of bones and half-eaten remains of this relative of the llama and camel.  (We also found all the flamingoes we were looking for in Atacama...maybe they decided to come to the most beautiful place on earth, too.)

live guanacos

Okay, so I've gotten off track--back to camp.  We are at a hotel in the Torres Del Paine park that has spectacular views, so much so that sometimes, I think I am looking out the window at a painting.  So, that's one thing that is awesome about this "camp."

Secondly, the hotel is an experiential hotel, which means that every evening we meet with one of the guides that work here and decide what we will do the next days choosing from nearly 40 options of hikes (with varying difficulty) and horseback rides.  (The hotel we stayed at in Atacama was similar.)

Last night when we arrived we chose to do a shorter (4 mile) hike in the morning across flat-ish terrain but through guanaco country...which meant we saw another puma this morning, again hunting. Very unusual, said our guide, no one sees two pumas in one week. Lucky us.

Gillian takes in the
view from Camp base
(our hotel Explora)

The best part about camp is meeting new kids, I mean people, and today we started out with a great family from Cincinnati. (last night at dinner, we met two women from Mountain Brook, AL, one of whom is friends with a darling friend of mine from Wake Forest...small world!!) But today, it was a mom and dad, their two kids (12 and 9) and their grandparents.

The grandfather reminded us so much of Jeff's dad, whom we call Lulu, because he was so into photography, a gentle guy, a cardiologist (close to Jeff's dad's profession), and so interested in what he was seeing.  He was awesome.  His son-in-law, another doc (an internist) was fun to talk to as well, our conversation ranged from the "old" houses both his family and ours live in (pluses and minuses, of course) to the privatization of health care.  So, we covered a lot.  His wife and kids were awesome, too, fun to talk to (as well as the grandmother, seriously we lucked out with this group!), and had traveled around he world together, a lot like our own family.

view from the saddle

After our hike this morning, we headed up to an Estancia (ranch) further into the park for a barbecue Gaucho style with more views of the towers.  We kept pinching ourselves.  This camp is awesome.

The afternoon brought structured activity #2, which for us and six others from all over the world, was an hour and a half horseback ride through some forested areas, across a grassland where the views made my heart hurt with the beauty.

I'm not kidding.

The barbecue, guacho style
two lamb, veggies, salmon,
beef...

We are never going home.  Jeff, get the girls and come to camp with us.  It has put us in the best mood and it sounds like the rest of our family could use this antidote to what ails them all up in Costa Rica.  

this is actually, in real life, the view from the window
in our room
Yeah.

Tomorrow, a 16 km hike...can't wait.

our hotel

     

The Pop Up - a surfing term

I stubbed my ring toe.  I heard a crack.  It is already purple.  I limp now.

If you look closely, you can see our oasis between the trees.
Across the gully. 

The sun was hot before 9 am.  We were already out by the pool.  We are all getting along well, but I am not sure we are the best versions of ourselves.  I miss my wife and my life back home.  Quinn bounces between 18 and 8 - I have no idea who I will get any second of the day. Aubrey is 14 and has a constant scowl on her face and emits annoyance - today she came out to the pool and said, in the most grouchy voice you can imagine, all of these words, "Did anyone get my towel? oh thank you."  Even the oh thank you was grouchy.  If she wasn't a likable, mysterious person, she would be very unlikable right now.

And then their is Shelby.  She is basically Timmy Lupus from Bad News Bears.  Everything she touches breaks or spills.  Example.  Today at breakfast she asked me to help open the new milk carton with one of those plastic pull plugs.  I did.  She poured herself some Cherrios and as I was coming around to the kitchen to get my own bowl, I grabbed the box.

"Shelby, when you put cereal away you have to scrunch up the bag inside.  Do you know why?"
"So bugs don't get in it?"
"Yes. And do you know why we even have to do it, every time, at home in Edina?"
"So it doesn't get stale?"
"Yes.  I want you to always do that 100% of the time from now until the day you die. Okay."
"Okay."

She kind of swallowed her okay, like she was ashamed.  Just then, I noticed milk on the counter, exactly where I had seen ants the night before (we are sleeping in a bungalow near the equator).  "Shelby, you can't leave milk out on the counter like this."  With her serious face on, and desperately wanting to get out of the spotlight, she grabbed a dish towel - not a sponge, rag, or wet paper towel, mind you, but a perfectly clean towel that we needed to dry the dishes with (we are not staying at a Four Seasons here) and in one of the most spastic movements in the history of the Special Olympics, knocked my bowl of cheerios all over the floor. Ilse's words echoed in my head "don't leave little crumbs out cause the bugs will come out - we live in a jungle, remember."  Shelby was not cleaning the milk (with a clean dish towel) in anger.  No, she spilled my cheerios trying to do right but failing miserably.  I didn't get mad, I just helped her pick them up.  She went outside and ate her cherrios, after offering them to me, and cried.

We sat in the sun for about 3 hours before lunch.  Then had PB&Js.  And then we went surfing.

I watched a tutorial online as I thought it would be fun to do this activity together, as opposed to farming this off to a trained professional.  Plus I am running out of cash and I can't imagine a surf instructor accepting Visa.  Anyway, they have boards you can use for free here.  Only a few have fins on them, of course.

We were out there for about 2.5 hours.  Aubrey was awesome at it.  Quinn, Shelby and I - not do much.  In fact two of us cried.  I have since watched two more YouTube videos and believe that tomorrow will go much better.  It's all about the pop up technique.

Not much since then.  Sun. Showers.  Dinner at the Green Papaya (they only took cash, which I am running out of.  Did I mention that?).  On the way to dinner we saw 8 Howler Monkeys in the trees.  They are super loud at 4:30am.

BTW. This morning was low tide. Notice all the rocks that are covered by the ocean.  Don't surf there!  High tide was in the afternoon. The ocean crests the beach and completely fills up our crocodile runoff gully.

Straight ahead. Rocks. 

Horseback riders at low tide. 

 Horseback

Gully at low and high tide.