Baby Kitten!!!!!

Back in Marblemount at last! Almost exactly 24 hrs of travel later, suffering through the airline losing our bags and a rude reacquaintance with this thing called "winter," we are met by our Baby Kitten. She shows her excitement at our return by turning her nose up at the stuffed Patagonian sheep we bought her for her amusement.

After six straight weeks spent in each other's constant presence, for every meal, every night's sleep, every bus ride, restaurant decision, tour, Rosemary's spontaneous gelato stops, internet cafes, dusty trail miles, set-the-tent-up then take-it-down, stargazing, stream hopping, glacier watching moment, we are pleased to say we took this picture together on our last day in Chile, and are still smiling. Call it the magic of Patagonia, but you can't help but leave this place feeling thankful for being alive and able to see this world.

Final Stop Spain, err, Santiago!

The last stop on our journey was in Chile's capital of Santiago. Everything went so smoothly on the rest of the trip that we ended up having an extra couple of days there, which turned out to be a very good thing.

This city of five million, by far Chile's largest city, is set in a dramatic basin below the Andes to the east and a coastal range to the west. Well, it would be dramatic if you could see the mountains, but there is an awful smog problem and visibility usually isn't much over a couple of miles.

That's about the only bad thing we can say about Santiago, however. The city turned out to be wonderful: beautiful, leafy neighborhoods that felt like Greenwich Village; historic center of town with grand old buildings and museums; amazing restaurants and sidewalk cafes everywhere we went; live music, dance and theater in the outdoor plazas, wineries nearby and fine wine and drink flowing. Basically, it was summer in a very vibrant capital city. We felt like all of a sudden we had been transported to Spain for almost a week.

And it was hot! Blessedly so, given the chills of Patagonia and the damp winter awaiting us back home. We slept with the windows open and bemoaned the lack of ice in our cold drinks, a problem that seems to inflict every city outside of the U.S.



In the lobby of our colorful, funky, art-bedecked hostel in Santiago.

We stayed in the Bella Vista neighborhood, which was full of wonderful sidewalk cafes and bordered on a large park (the hill in the background), from which a large white statue of the virgin Mary always signaled which direction our neighborhood was in.

This little plaza was two blocks from our place. There was live music / theater / dance in the plaza every night.


There are several beautiful parks in Santiago, but this one, Cerro Santa Lucia, was our favorite. Set in the middle of downtown, it is a complete world unto itself. Crazy pathways, stairs, plazas, statutes and flowering vegetation spill into more pathways in a never ending spiral of exploration, like a living Escher painting.


Rosemary stands on a bridge of the fanciful architecture of the park, with modern downtown Santiago as a backdrop.


This is taken from the big park right behind out hostel. The green hump just off Rosemary's left shoulder is Cerro Santa Lucia, the park from the previous pictures. Note the smog!


On our last day, before our 11:30pm red-eye, we went on a winery tour! Perfect. Chile is well known for its wines and we learned a little of the lore of the country's vineyards. This one is Concha y Toro, the largest winery in Latin America. The tour was at the original family estate, where we got to taste a couple of vintages, tour the orchards, and even go underground into the wine cellar. There's an old legend about the cellars being haunted by the devil -- a rumor started by the winery's founder to supposedly keep the locals from stealing his bottles. Nothing scary happened to us, except perhaps for me two-fisting the booze.


Rosemary checks out the cabernet grapes. There's only one harvest a year, usually around April (their fall). Concha y Toro sells wines ranging from cheap boxed wines, to special reserve wine that goes for $100 a bottle. Sadly, the USA's fixation on terrorist liquids kept us from bringing home a stash to share.


We took a day trip from Santiago to the port city of Valporaiso, about an hour to the west. Valpo, as it's known, was the most important city in Chile for quite sometime as it served as critical port stop servicing ships going up the coast during the California gold rush. It was declared a UN World Heritage Site a few years back, due to its history and it's fascinating human and physical geography. Much of the city is built on very steep hillsides, with brightly painted houses and winding streets. Old cable cars, or funiculars, ply the hillsides to deposit people in various neighborhoods.


I consult our bible in a futile attempt to make sense of the crazy streets in Valparaiso.


Good company.

The Cutest Things You´ve Ever Seen, Punta Arenas, Chile

There are several colonies of magellenic penguins near Punta Arenas, our southernmost stop in Patagonia, and just across the Straits of Magellen from Tierra del Fuego. We took a trip out to see this colony, of about 500 breeding pairs of penguins. They are the funniest things you have ever seen, and they are tolerant of your presence within a few feet.

Here is a family portrait--the chick is in the middle. The chick looks big because it has fluffy land feathers, and the adults have sleek water feathers. A close-up of an adult penguin outside its burrow. They walk in from the ocean and make burrow-like nests in the grassy hillocks nearby. They return to the same burrows and with the same mates every year.

Two penguins in their native habitat. We heard them making calls, where they would throw back their necks and make a noise very similar to a donkey braying. They also made clucks and warbley, more bird-like noises. But it is still hard to accept that they are actually birds.

A line of penguins heads inland to the colony, from the nearby sound. They looked ridiculous all in a row on their little path. I think they think they look quite diginified, however.

Michael gets up close and personal with the penguins. Quite an experience.

Torres del Paine -- Life on the track

The "grand circuit" around Torres del Paine National Park in Chile is often listed as one of the top hikes in the world, so we were full of expectations and trepidation -- we had high expectations for seeing something quite amazing, and were trepidatious because ¨What if the weather is bad? What if we didn´t pack enough food / clothes / duct tape for a nine-day trip?" and other such questions which plague the mind leading up to a big trip like this. Once we hit the trail, though, all of those issues melted away and it became about just that day´s hike: when are we going to eat lunch, what will camp be like, etc. The big stuff was in our favor too: We had the winds, but they lessened to almost nothing by the end of the trip; we had rain, snow and hail, but the sun was dominant and it felt like summer; the trail was crowded at times and more developed than we are used to, but we found solitude and felt lost in the immense landscape.

Torres del Paine (PIE-nay) translates into either ¨towers of light blue", which could refer to the bluish-tint of many of the glacially-fed lakes, or ¨Paine¨ was the name of an early Welsh explorer. No one seems to know. It´s not the ¨towers of pain," although it´s not hard for that association to keep popping into mind both while looking at the severity of some of the peaks and also while contemplating how many damn miles until camp!

Well, we weren´t disappointed in the trip and if there are treks even more scenic than this one somewhere in the world, I'd be surprised.

So, on to the pictures. We´ll start with some pix of ¨life on the track¨ (as trails are often called down here):


Rosemary sorts out our food as we pack. We measured exactly how much we thought we´d eat each day, but knew we had a little wiggle room because we could buy food at the refugios, if necessary. Somehow, we managed to do all this packing, measuring, sorting and stressing out and still be talking to each other at the end. Just barely. We managed to still be packing at midnight...


Getting off the shuttle van with our heavy packs and ready to go. We knew right away that we weren´t going to be alone on this hike!


On our second night, I´m already trying to dispense with the cooking and just eat right through the bag. A bad sign.



Seron was the name of our campsite on our second night. Cute place set among daisy meadows; oh, and there was also some strange dead-bull thing on the wall, but that didn´t really take away from the ambiance.

They had a scale at Camp Seron, so of course we had to know how much we were trucking around. I had about 50 pounds and Rosemary had 42 -- we were actually pretty happy with that given the length of the trip. Rosemary adds--I actually thought my pack felt lighter than this, so was quite weary to know the true weight. Note: This is not the recommended way to carry a pack.


Camp Paso: RM refuses to leave the warmth of the tent until Michael has the stove going and the hot tea waiting.


Camp Grey: About half-way through the trip, we entered the really popular part of the trail, with loads of people on shorter trips. It was a bit of a shock to go from camping with about 15 other tents around to camping in this sea of nylon.



IT REALLY DOES EXIST! We found the elusive Patagonia Tree, a native species that produces very well-made but really overpriced outdoor clothing. Rosemary was able to just pop out of the tent and pick some new fruit to wear that day!

Torres del Paine -- The Torres and the Meadows of the East Side

This section covers our side trip to see las Torres (for which the park is named), as well as our trek through the east side of the park (days 1 - 3 of our hike).

We approach the park under blessed conditions--here you see Las Torres (the towers) in the center, guarded by many other peaks, looking out over the dry, east side as we arrive by bus. We also saw flamingos in this lake! Our first day was to a camp just below Las Torres, where we spent New Year´s Eve. On New Year´s Day we awoke to mist and drizzle--not too surprising in this land of changeable weather. We hiked up to the lookout point and were happy just to see the Torres out, even in the mist. As it turned out, this was one of only two nights of rain (and the second was sleet...just below Jon Garner Pass...so I´m not sure it counts, but that is getting to the west side and is Michael´s tale to tell.)

Our second day was spent traversing the side slopes of the Patagonian steppe. Here the Rio Paine comes into view...and in the valley the start of the many fields of daisies, meadows, and fine views of the milky, glacial fed river.

A close-up encounter with another Patagonia local--a very curious and friendly horse. We were an hour from camp at 8:30 at night, and we so wanted to throw our packs onto the horses and let someone else bear our heavy loads. Instead we trudged onward, but our spirts were lifted by our meeting.

Typical east side vegetation--puffy looking clumps of light green bushes. Don´t be fooled--the plants of the dry east side are frequently spiny, and must be very tough to put up with the dry and very windy conditions. The little speck in the background is Michael cresting this little pass. On the other side awaited awesome views of Lago Paine and many peaks, but we were also assaulted by massive wind gusts here, as if Patagnoia was saying,¨"You want to see these views! You are going to work for it!!" If you have ever had the snot and spit blown from your nose and mouth, if you have walked on the side of a slope leaning downhill and not fallen over because the wind held you up, if you have almost suffocated on your own breathe until you learned to hold your hand over your mouth so that you could breathe out...then you will understand what the wind of Patagonia is like. And don´t forget about the spiney plants--you´d better make sure you are not near a cluster of that when the wind knocks you off your feet...

Our third night´s camp lies in the valley below... a welcome sight after another long day. This camp sits on Lago Dickenson, with the Hielo Sur (southern continental ice field) beginning just in the valley to the right. The next day we would turn left up the Valle de los Perros (Valley of the Dogs, so named because a sheep herder´s dogs once drowned in its turbulent waters) and leave the meadows and dry east side vegetation behind.

Torres del Paine -- John Garner Pass and the Grey Glacier

Days 4-7 took us into the heart of the park with the much anticipated crossing of John Garner Pass. We knew that it would be the highest point on the trek and that it could be a formidable obstacle if the weather was bad. At the very least, we were told to expect winds so strong that we wouldn´t be able to stay there for long.

The night before crossing the pass, we went to bed listening to hail and ice hit the tent and watching the trees bend in the wind. But we kept telling ourselves to trust what we had learned about the weather in Patagonia: it changes all the time, and if it´s hailing tonight, that means it will be sunny tomorrow. Well, not sure if we were delusional or lucky, but we awoke to sunny, calm skies. The winds at the pass were strong, but not so much that we couldn´t enjoy it for awhile. And there was much to enjoy, as we got our long awaited view to the Grey Glacier, a 15-mile long valley glacier that spills down from the massive ice field. On to it:


Rosemary enjoys the sun on our way up to the pass.


My feet are actually off the ground as I get my first look down the other side of the pass. Glacier Grey looks like a white lake in the background. We are so happy to be at the pass on such a day! We are lucky.


The view of the Grey Glacier from below the pass. It may be hard to get a sense of the scale, but it is about 2.5 miles across and about eight miles to where it disappears into the mountains to the right. The peaks across the valley are about 6 - 7,000 feet.

A long-awaited photo!




One of the most memorable moments of the entire trip to Patagonia will be our excursion down to the edge of the glacier. There wasn´t really a trail, but we thought we saw an easy way down and scrambled to the side of it. I don´t want to sound too corny here, but I really had a feeling of entering some forbidden, sacred world as I approached the edge of the glacier. We´ve spent time on glaciers before and know their risks and power, but this was a whole different story. The Grey Glacier is so large that it finally made clear to me how glaciers truly carve the landscape, creating everything from what we were seeing to our home Skagit Valley to the Great Lakes and so many other areas of the world. Looking under the side of this glacier and seeing where the ice met the ground felt like looking back in time, at one of the most elemental processes that have shaped our planet. Rosemary stayed up high for awhile and got this shot of tiny me, in orange, at the edge.


The polished blue ice at the bottom of the glacier.


Rosemary standing on relatively brand new terra firma and touching the dirty edge of the Grey.



We hiked along the glacier from about its mid-point to past its end. Here´s where it calves off into Grey Lake.

Torres del Paine -- Los Cuernos and Valle de Frances

Our last 3 days completed the grand circuit and took us back to the south and east of the park. You could say we had saved the best for last, but in a park as varied as this one, how do you compare massive glaciers to turquoise lakes and Los Cuernos? In any event, this side of the park is by far the busiest, as well as the most accessible, and Los Cuernos, which means "the horns", are definitively this park´s signature vista.


Our first views of the sparkling waters of turquoise Lago Pehoe (pay-ho-EY), with the famed Cuernos behind, nearly dropped us to our knees with the beauty and brilliance of it. This was also my 35th birthday--being in a place I have dreamed about, with my partner, was quite a birthday gift. I will let the pictures speak for themselves...

Heading up Valle de Frances, a steep side valley reknowned for its hanging glaciers and close-up views of the Cuernos, as well as a hidden amphitheater of other granitic peaks and towers. This is looking down the valley, back at Lago Pehoe. Other lakes are also becoming visible beyond.

Michael, dwarfed by Los Cuernos.

The other peaks in this valley were awesome granitic spires and walls--we soaked in the views from this rocky viewpoint for hours, not knowing which way to look first or longest.




Our last day on the trek, and almost done with the final 12 mile leg that will complete our Circuito Grande--the Grand Circuit, as it is known, covering 123 km (about 74 miles). The park ranger called us "muy fuerte" (very strong!) for completing the circuit -- mainly because of the weight you have to carry in food, because the truth is the distances we hiked each day were neither long nor hard. The day of the most elevation gain was John Garner Pass, but that was only 2000 feet, and although the pass has a mystical reputation as the hardest day, it is more due to the potential winds. I think we can attest to this fact --the winds of Patagonia are what make or break you.

In any event, our last day was blessed with sun again, and only a light breeze. We were--dare I day it? -- hot! Behind us Lago Nordenskjold unfolds--or, as we called it, Lake Nor(mumble)(mumble). A happy day to complete a grand trek. For anyone who has ever picked up a pack and felt their spirits rise as they hiked, we think you should come see this magical place.