Torres del Paine

The weather in Patagonia is notorious for changing without warning, going from sun to snow and back within minutes; from stifling heat to hurricane force gusts of wind; and probably most common, the rain that starts and then ends just as you finish unpacking and putting on your raingear. My travel plans in Patagonia have proved equally unreliable. The trek and boat trip I planned at the bottom of Chile (which would have set me back a week) fell through, turning into a flight, a different trek, and a different boat trip which actually put me ahead of schedule.

Instead of trekking in one of the most remote parts of Chile, I found myself in Torres del Paine National Park, which is probably second in South America only to Machu Picchu in terms of numbers of vistors annually. It is a park made for hiking, and made generally accessible to almost anyone; you can camp for free, you can pay to camp and get hot showers (or not pay and hope to go unnoticed, as me and my trek companion Tine did), you can stay in little hostels right on the trail, or you can stay in lodges on the edges of the park. You can hike carrying 50 or more pounds of gear, or you can hike the majority of the park carrying only a water bottle (and if you forgot a bottle, you can drink water straight from the park´s countless pristine streams). The western edge of the park is dominated by a glaciar, the eastern edge by almost desert-like conditions.

The constrast is most apparent in Valle Francais, the section of trail that forms the middle of the `W´shaped hike the park is famous for. Approaching camp at the base of the valley, the terrain looks like somewhere in Arizona; blue sky and red sandstone, massive blocky formations and sheer faces over a green treeline. Enter the valley and you´ve crossed into Alaska-- black jagged rock buried in snow and ice, shrouded in menacing clouds; how these extremes coexist in such close proximity is totally beyond my comprehension.

The last full day of hiking, after after four days of sweating and shivering, sore feet and sunburn (apparently the park is right under the hole in the ozone-- making fair skinned people like myself quite vulnerable), boring food and bad sleep, amazing wilderness and amazingly friendly people, you reach the pinnacle of the trek-- los Torres del Paine, the Towers of Paine-- for which people from all ages and countries scramble up a seemling endless pile of boulders to see. And it´s worth everything. After so much climbing, you nestle into a little concave depression in the mountain; the three granite spires looming over you and the small lake that you never see in the photographs of the towers. The setting is so powerful visually, so dignified and almost ceremonious, that you just sit in awe watching the clouds drift past; but for the wind and cold you scarcely notice the passing of time.