Puerto Natales: A Patagonian Fairytale of a Town Part 2

Believe it or not, I managed to stay pretty warm throughout the night.....it also helped that I slept in the middle! We woke up early the next morning to hike up to the base of the Torres del Paine, where we immediately proceeded to scream like buffoons and drink glacier water. The hike back to the pickup spot was a lot easier because our packs were lighter and the majority of the trail was downhill. I was a little disappointed that I didn't see any pumas, but I think that was probably for the best.

Doing this trek was such an amazing experience, I knew as soon as I left that I had to go back...........And now I am!

This time I am doing a seven day trek full of camping, hiking, beautiful scenery, and dried fruit. I am going to do a trek/hike called 'The Circuit' with my friends Merrette and Carly. I leave next Friday! Here is our itinerary:

Friday Night:
Arrive in Natales- Buy food- Sort gear

Saturday:
7 - 10 am bus to Hosteria Las Torres in Torres Del Paine
HIKE Hosteria Las Torres to Campamento Serón (4 hours, 5.5 miles)
CAMP Campamento Serón

Sunday:
HIKE Campamento Serón to Refugio Dickenson (6 hours, 11.8 miles)
CAMP Refugio Dickenson

Monday:
HIKE Refugio Dickenson to Campamento Los Perros (4 hours, 5.5 miles)
CAMP Campamento Los Perros

Tuesday:
HIKE Campamento Los Perros to Campamento Los Guardas (9 hours, 11 miles) * This will be the hardest hike but it will have beautiful view of glacier grey.
CAMP Campamento Los Guardas

Wednesday:
HIKE Campamento Los Guardas to Campamento Italiano (7.5 hours, 14 miles) *A lot of miles this day, but it will be on easy terrain.
CAMP Campamento Italiano

Thursday:
HIKE Campamento Italiano to Campamento Británico & Lookout then back to Campamento Italiano (6 hours, 8.5 miles)
CAMP Campamento Italiano

Friday:
HIKE Campamento Italiano to Campamento Torres (10 hours, 14 miles)
CAMP Campamento Torres

Saturday:
HIKE Campamento Torres to a lookout of the towers (1 hour) and then back to Hosteria Las Torres (3.5 hours) Total miles= 6.

FINISH!!

¡Besos y abrazos!

Keeley

Puerto Natales: A Patagonian Fairytale of a Town

Before coming down to Chile I had thought that I would literally have to navigate my way through forests and glaciers, fighting off wild dogs and befriending penguins in order to get to school let alone a grocery store. Hah! Ok, so maybe I didn't think it would be that adventurous, but I did think that there would at least be hiking trails that I could easily access from my house and that I would have many handsome gauchos/lumberjack-esque men ready to hike them with me.

Needless to say I was surprised to be living in a town of 150,000 people, many restaurants/bars, paved roads, and a duty-free shopping district. And even though I love my Patagonian metropolis by the sea, it was time to get out and start getting dirty (and burn off the pan and chocolate I have been eating non-stop). Insert Puerto Natales, home of the the world-renown Torres del Paine national park. Paired with two lovely members of Team Magallanes, Megan and Brooke, we took off one Saturday afternoon for a whirlwind of a trip. The bus ride to Puerto Natales from Punta Arenas is around 3 hours, stopping to pick people up alongside the highway (who seem to come out of nowhere, there is literally nothing but great expanses of land between the towns) throughout the trip. After arriving in Natales, we quickly checked into our hostel, and figured out our game plan.

Erratic Rock, the name of our hostel, can be summed up in two words: buena onda. The employees are highly knowledgeable about the park (they are guides), funny, can cook a mean breakfast, and are pretty easy on the eyes....Since we decided to trek through the park during the end of winter, only a few routes we available and in order to make the most of our time in the park we decided to camp overnight at a site about 9 kilometers in the forest. We also had to rent, hiking poles, backpacks, a cook stove, sleeping bags, a tent as well as buy gas and enough food for 4 meals. In order to have a good meal after an entire day of hiking, we precooked chicken, peppers, and onions the night before as well as made sure that our bags were well-packed with plenty of dry clothes/layers.

Sunday morning at 8am we took a bus to get to the park, which is about an hour/hour and a half outside of Natales. Due to the various breaks that the driver took for coffee, to chat with other drivers, and the unexpected 30min stop at the cueva del milodón (which we didn't know was going to happen) we didn't get to our starting point until 12:30pm. Trying my best to 'lighten the mood,' I decided to inform everyone in our bus/party every time I saw a guanaco (like a deluxe llama) by shouting 'GUANACO!' (guah-nah-ko) which happened pretty much every 2 minutes. Try shouting this at home, it's a pretty fun word to say/yell. Here's what's not as fun to say: Ñandú (lesser rhea in English, like an ostrich). Moving along.....

As we were walking the 7 km just to get to the start of the trail, I noticed that I couldn't see guanacos anymore....After going through every possible option as to why they had disappeared, it finally clicked. There could only be one reason why there weren't any guanacos in this region.....PUMAS. The combination of my active imagination and the fact that I was hungry for lunch led me to create a scenario that would have made the writers/cartoonists behind the 80's GI Joe cartoon proud. I won't share all of the details because I intend to capitalize on them one day in the future, but I'll tell you it involved a puma mafia that has their headquarter in a puma-shaped dome on a hill looking over their turf.....and all the pumas wear berets.

We briefly stopped for lunch and began the second and hardest leg of our hike. I was so grateful that we had rented hiking poles (even though I did look like a short non-stripey version of 'Where's Waldo') because they helped carry my weight up the vertical climb and took some of the tension off of my knees when we ascended the other side of the hill we had climbed. We stopped briefly at a refugio to get more water and relieve our backs from the weight of our packs, the surged on to our campsite. We arrived right at dusk and immediately set up our tents and prepared for dinner. I wasn't cracking as many jokes on the last leg of our hike the first day because I was pretty tired, sore, and a little grumpy at myself for wiping out and accidentally tossing my camera in a stream (it turned out to be ok). Due to a huge wildfire set my a camper a couple of years ago in the park, fires are not permitted so we had to use flashlights/head lamps in order to be able to see anything. Night closed in and we braced ourselves for the dark and the cold of a Patagonian forest in the winter.........

Stay tuned for Puerto Natales: A Patagonian Fairytale of a Town Part 2/I can't walk without pain

Photos in this blog:
-Guanaco!
-Me wearing my trekking gear...I bought new waterproof pants that you can make into shorts! Sweet!
-The Torres del Paine reflected in a laguna before we got on the trail
-Me posing on the bus ride to the Torres

¡Besos y abrazos!

Keeley : )

The man, the myth, the legend: Papa José

One night while we were sitting down having a glass of wine (or was it pisco.....) José asked me, "After seeing all of these decorations in my house, what did you think I would be like?"

Without hesitating I replied, "Ridiculous."

I really nailed it with my predictions of what José would be like, although I believe he prefers to be considered more as a roommate than my Chilean father. Papa José, who informs me that he prefers to be called 'José Carlos,' has been a great host and constantly keeps me entertained simply by his unpredictability. When he first came back from his vacation, José informed us that he kept a very strict routine and liked to have everything in order. Five minutes after that spiel we started drinking pisco.

One Tuesday evening after declaring that he was going to karate practice for two hours, José packed up all of his karate gear and took off.....only to return an hour later with several bottles of wine and two friends, and proceeded to have a party until one a.m.

Wanting to take full advantage of his situation (having a gringa living in his house), José has decided to learn English. As I was sitting down trying to write one afternoon, he dropped 18 'Let's Learn English!' CDs on the table in front of me and asked me to review them for him so see if they would be helpful. Fortunately, he has settled for me writing down words and expressions for him.

After flipping through his 'cuaderno' (notebook) the other day I realized I am teaching him the English equivalent of the Spanish that a restaurant employee can learn from native Spanish-speakers in the back of a restaurant. José is going to be fluent in 'dirty English' in a couple of months. I think I have created a monster. And it only gets worse when my friends come over...they all want to see the expressions and words that he knows and then give me even more suggestions (which are always hilarious and always dirty). José did buy a great book (I forget the name of it) that includes a self-monitoring system so he can give himself tests and quizzes on the material he learns. In fact, he has already taken one quiz, although he informs me he could have done better. My favorite part is when we sit down and he repeats and practices his pronunciation, because we usually end up yelling the word.

me (normally): January
José (normally): Jan-u-areey
me (slightly louder): January
José (slightly louder): Jan-u-ary
me (a little louder): January!
José (same level): January!
Together (yelling): JANUARY!!!!

I have a feeling that the neighbors don't like it when we do that........

José has been very great to not only me, but my friends here as well. He has let 3 different people come stay with us and is always going out of his way to make us feel comfortable. He gave me rides to school a couple of times when my back was hurting, helped me find an open ATM one night so I could get money to travel, and even dropped my friend's huge travel backpack off to her yesterday so she didn't have to haul it around Punta Arenas until her bus left at 5pm. José is a very sweet man, and even though he claims to be like Charlie Sheen's character in 'Two and a Half Men,' it's obvious that he is a softie. I'll have to just include all of his hilarious expressions as they come along, but they are mostly about beautiful women, alcohol, and bathroom humor......I'm such a great influence!!!!

Picture: José giving the shaka this weekend while eating an empanada and dancing with his niece (my cutie-pie chilean cousin) Natalia (la Nati)

Besos y abrazos!

La Keeley

Brokedown palace aka MY LIFE

Bah! After my tragic fall down the waxed stairs in my house life got pretty poopy for yours truly. I thought that everything would be alright and that I could go back to my normal routine after applying a pack of frozen corn to my back, but lord was I wrong! I tried to do my exercise routine the next day and was in such incredible pain that I had to leave the gym. I went to a clinic that night and had to get an injection in my butt (all of the female nurses seemed to disappear when it was time for the shot) and some x-rays taken but got nothing for the pain. I couldn't/didn't work for a couple of days to get some rest and relax (called a 'reposo') but when the pain didn't get any better I had to visit a back specialist who informed me that I had fractured the cartiledge around my ribs. This specialist also gave me a perscription for more effective medicine and told me that I needed to wear a back brace for a month (which is as you can probably imagine, muuuy sexy). I have been a little sad about my stupid accident and have kept a pretty low profile. I haven't been able to walk without discomfort until yesterday and that paired with the poor weather has prevented me from getting out around town. I'm not supposed to go back to the gym until next week but after a weekend of emotional/bored eating I returned to the gym yesterday (I'm only doing cardio this week and it's VERY necessary).

I have a very fun two weeks ahead of me, Chile's bicentennial is coming up and I am traveling to Puerto Natales and Porvenir/an estancia (farm) outside of Porvenir. I am going to try my darndest to keep current with the blog this week, so keep your fingers crossed with me. I would write more write now but José keeps talking to me and telling me to focus on what he's saying/showing/playing. He is absolutely ridiculous and so funny, I had it right on the money when I said that he was going to be an amazing host dad. Here is a little teaser for my next blog:

A couple of words and expressions that I have taught José (that he has asked me to teach him):
-foxy lady
-Beer me!
-Sometimes I am a bad boy!
-I can't wait for Halloween!

Blogs to come:
-A Chilean is born/Papa José: the man, the myth, the legend
-My hilarious students/I work with hard knocks (wannabe hard knocks)

Pictures in this blog:
-The stairs where I had my tragic fall
-My distractor aka Papa José!