Puerto Natales & the W Circuit

I thought I'd reached scenery saturation after visiting Antarctica, and that no vista would ever awe me again.  But I was wrong: the W was also sublimely, breathtakingly beautiful.

Rose and I flew from Ushuaia to El Calafate, then took a private transfer to Puerto Natales, our first stop in Chile.  Even though the operation ran seamlessly, it was still a pretty long travel day, especially due to the border crossing.  We rewarded ourselves with a great dinner.  Then, after we ran several errands the following morning (including my purchase of a new, cheaper, inferior camera), we rewarded ourselves with a fantastic lunch.  Unbeknownst to us at the time, it was the last good food we would eat for several days.

We spent the afternoon busing to Refugio Central in Torres del Paine, where we relaxed and rested up in preparation for beginning the hike the following day.  We'd opted for "full board" when we arranged the trek, meaning that we had prepaid for: (1) welcome pisco sours, (2) dinner, (3) breakfast, and (4) boxed lunch.  Dinner: dry chicken breast with no sauce accompanied by watery rice, with over-gelatinized orange Jell-O for dessert.  Blech.

The actual walking portion of the trek began the following morning, when we hiked up to see the eponymous Torres del Paine (Torres: towers in Spanish, Paine: blue in Mapucho).  We were pretty lucky with the weather and could see all of the towers, though there was a bit of fog preventing perfect postcard shots.  This particular section of the circuit reminded me quite a bit of El Chalten: hiking up through rocks to reach a glacier lake at the base of gorgeous mountains where the wind gusts so ferociously it'll take your hat off if you aren't careful.  We reveled in the natural beauty while we ate our lunch: an enormous sandwich of shredded dry chicken breast, mystery cheese, and crumbly bread that resembled foccacia in look though not in taste or texture.  Blech.  Afterwards, we descended to our second (and worst) refugio.  Dinner: dry chicken breast with mystery sauce accompanied by sauceless, overcooked pasta.  Blech.

Our second hiking day was pretty short; we spent four to five hours walking through a beautiful valley brimming with firebush and other flowers.  I rediscovered my pre-Antarctic love of vegetation, exclaiming over all the gorgeous flowers and trees.  We ate our lunch (sandwich of shredded dry chicken breast, mystery cheese, and crumbly bread -- blech) by the waterfall at our next refugio, where we'd upgraded to a private cabin (instead of beds in a dorm room) with access to a hot tub.  Hot tub, under these circumstances, means a wooden tub filled with water that is heated (unevenly) by a wooden stove.  Although the water was a bit murky and questionable, it was a pretty pleasant way to spend the afternoon.  Dinner: dry chicken breast with mystery sauce accompanied by pasta with mystery green covering.  Blech.

The next day, French Valley day, was both our longest and our best day.  There's no way to describe how amazing it is to be surrounded on all sides by insanely beautiful heterogenous mountains.  I took a few photo spheres, hoping they could communicate some of that feeling, but no dice.  You'll just have to take my word on it.  (Lunch, however, was not amazing: the same dry chicken sandwich with mystery cheese and too much mayo on crumbly bread that was now also stale.)  We spent the following night in a refugio run by a different company.  Dinner: Pork chop and pink mashed potatoes.  Definitely an improvement.

On our last day, we fought through high winds spraying rain horizontally into our faces to reach the Grey Glacier.  We rewarded ourselves by ditching the terrible sandwiches and buying hot lunch at the refugio near the glacier.  That bean soup with meat was far and away the culinary highlight of the circuit.  Bolstered by the meal and with the wind at our backs, we arrived back at our refugio with plenty of time before our 6:30 catamaran trip out of the park.

A few minutes before 6:30, we joined the queue for the boat.  At 6:30, no boat.  At 6:35, no boat.  At 6:40, a park ranger arrived and told everyone the boat had been suspended due to the winds and we would have more information in an hour.  An hour later, we were informed the boat had been cancelled and we were stuck in the refugio for the night.  Most people started scrambling for places to sleep on the floor or on the couches of the public spaces, some others were able to find tents and camp (though camping in that wind would likely have been worse than the floor).

We were extremely lucky.  Earlier that day, we had run into some friends from Antarctica who were hiking the W in the opposite direction, and they had a double room at the refugio for the night.  After learning of our predicament, they generously offered to let us crash in their room, and we gratefully accepted that offer.  Although it was a bit crowded (poor Rose slept on the outside of the upper bunk), it was certainly far more comfortable than a floor, a couch, or a tent.  The boat arrived on time the following morning and we were able to make it back to Puerto Natales by around 4:00 p.m. the next morning -- by which time our flight had already left Punta Arenas, around 2.5 hours away.  After some lengthy phone conversations, we each managed to change our flight to one that left around midnight.  So although dealing with the glitches in our transportation schedule was irritating, it didn't wind up being overly burdensome, either financially or temporally.

Takeaways: Everything was awesome except the food and the logistical issues with our departure.  Many, many thanks to our friends for giving us a place to stay for the extra night.

A few additional comments:

(1) We refilled our water bottles directly from glacier runoff.  Glacier water is delicious.

(2) The cloud formations in Patagonia are out of this world.  Also the wind.  The wind is ridiculous.

(3) Before we arrived in the park, we had to watch a video about respecting the park's rules (no fire, don't litter, etc.).  The video included some shots of miniature skunks.  While we were staying in our private cabin, I had a pretty terrible nightmare that ended with those miniature skunks clawing and biting at me.  Even after I awoke in terror, I could still see them in bed.  In that fuzzy, irrational, half-asleep state, I screamed to Rose: "THERE ARE ****ING SKUNKS IN HERE!"  Rose, herself also not fully awake, didn't think to question the veracity of my statement but instead asked practical questions, such as: "What?" "Where?" and "Did they spray you?"  Luckily, after she complied with my hysterical requests to turn the lights on, the skunks were nowhere to be seen.