The Big W : Torres Del Paine National Park

Ben and Anna F´s "W" track story. (By Ben).

Ben in mountaineering pose, complete with two inches of hair.

Clouds.

Not stopping to rest the aching muscles after five days hard riding into the wind, we were off to the national park for some tramping so we could be back in civilisation for christmas. After hiring some packs from our hostel and abandoning our bikes in favour of a bus and our own two feet we were off! We didn´t even check the weather as we assumed we would get at least three seasons on this trail (summer was not really likely to be a feature here).

Things got off to a good start when just after boarding the bus at 7:30am we realised that we had forgotten our food from the hostel fridge so our hamburgers which were dinner for the first night were going to be short on meat patties.

Gauchos with the horses used to transport supplies through the park.

After three hours of bus rides and a short trip on a boat we were at the start of the track, a short four hour walk to Refugio Grey was planned for our first day. Some "light" Patagonian gales and rain welcomed us to the mountains. The glacier Grey was pretty impressive but is a baby one compared to the glacier we will visit next week.

Typical view from the track

The next day dawned with heavy rain and we were glad to be able to sleep in before the day walk we had planned to look down on the glacier from the ridge above.

Mountains behind the glacier

The heavy rain continued most of the day so we did not go to far above the first camp as we would have only been able to see the inside of the clouds anyway not the Campo del heilo that we were hoping for. We instead returned to the refeguio to dry out next to the fire before the masses from that days ferry arrived and filled the place. As we warmed ourselves and others arrived we discovered we were better equiped than some to deal with the heavy rain as a couple of groups arrived soaking wet (including wet sleeping bags and cotton clothes) they were forced to spend the night in the overpriced hut instead of their intended tent. There was even one guy on jeans and gumboots.

Avalanche!

We awoke to finer weather and headed out and around the ridge to valley Frances which would be our daywalk for the next day. This valley was possibly my favourite part of the W with small glaciers complete with avalanches and huge mountains all around. We were up fairly early (well compared to most) and headed up the valley in fine weather. We made it as far as the next camp before it began to close in so the upper viewpoint was not attempted to ensure that Anna did not get to cold. returning to camp at around three we picked up the tent and shifted to the next camp.

Another big avalanche

..and another..

The tent wind shield we wished we´d had.

We arrived in calm but wet weather and pitched our tent in what for the current conditions was the perfect spot: sheltered under a large tree from the rain with views of the lake and nice and close to the refugio for the hot shower (at $5000Cp a night it was hardly a cheap shower). As we discovered about 1 hour later the location of our tent was not so perfect after all.


The wind did not rise as it was really calm between the 150kph gusts that you could hear coming like a freight train heading up the valley from the lake directly accross our tunnel tent. Structural repairs were required at 11pm, 2am and 2:40am as pegs ripped from their sandy foundations. These pegs were replaced by rocks the size of CRT computer screens and even these were getting moved in the gusts. Anna was on the upwind side and was beaten a few times by the tent pole as it was flatterened on top of us. We at least had a small bush to shelter half of the tent, there was a couple of chinese girls just next to us that did not have that and we heard them up half the night banging in pegs and collecting rocks to weigh down their dome tent. They had quarried quite a collection by morning and they even shifted closer to us to try to get out of the wind in the middle of the night. I found one of their pegs on our tent the next morning, a good three metres from their tent. Our tent survived but the lashing but was a bit asymetric in the morning, nothing a wee bend over the knee did not straighten out.

Wildlife.

Anna on the trail

The tramp to the base of the Torres we was pleasant as we chatted to some American women who had cycled accross the states and a German guy. We arrived at Refugio Chilano and were talked into a beer by the german, despite still having an hours tramping left. He was all talk about getting up at 3am to go and see the Torres at sunrise from the refeguio. We made the one and a half hour trip further up the mountain to the next camp to make the sunrise a 5am start instead. (sunrise on the longest day of the year was not the best timing for a good nights sleep). After a breakfast of porridge (our tasteless cereal of choice) we were off up the mountain following the tracks of those up at 4am. This did not prove to be that wise an idea as we should have followed the track markers and ended up scrambling up a boulder slope to the bushline where there was no track, so we made one untill the trees got so small and dense that I did not really fit through anymore. As the trees shrunk and I could see over them we discovered we were on the ridge above the lookout we were aiming for and we had climbed too high. We scrambled down and accross to the actual track and arrived as the rest of the dawn risers were leaving. A band of cloud was preventing the sun from striking the Torres so they were all disappointed and cold. Setting up our cooker for the second breakfast we took photos as the sun broke above the clouds and we got the pictures the others missed out on. As we were finishing breakfast we were visited by a Zorro (fox) who was snooping around for some food. When we were heading down Anna tried to take one last photo of me in mountaineering pose and was blown clean off her feet which was a sign of things to come. Definately time to head down. When down we went into the refugio for a hot chocolate and who should we find but our german friend just finishing breakfast after being too lazy to get up for the dawn!

The wind was really howling down the valley now, one waterfall appeared to be going backwards during the gusts. The track was really open across a scree slope and I had to hold onto Anna so that her sail like backpack did not get her swept to her doom at the bottom of the slope.

Once down we rewarded ourselves with a platter of meat, (beef chicken and pork) chips, avacado and tomato at the hotel before heading out on the bus to get organised for christmas. The bus was choc full - 8 people in the aisle without seats. This the bus driver was not too pleased about but with little options and a few curses under his breath we headed out. About 15km from town shreeks and screams and yells to stop were heard in about 6 different languages as one of the doors flew open and the some bags proceeded to be thrown onto the verge by the massive crosswinds. The bus driver was a little embarassed but it was all taken in good sprits as he ran back to collect the fallen bags. It was probably payback as earlier he had tooted and laughed at another buss with a similar open door (no bags lost from that one though).

Christmas was relaxing with lots of lounging around in our nice hostel and cooking roast chicken and apple crumble for dinner. Leaving this town is proving to be an issue though as the first bus we could get on is not untill Wednesday, which means 3 whole days of waiting around trying not to spend money on snacks.

More wind news: Punta Arenas to Puerto Natales

After three unexpected but welcome rest days in Punta Arenas (which translates to Sandy Point for those Invercargill readers) we headed north to our next target: Puerto Natales. This was an intimidating 250 kilometers away to the north west with one particularly concerning stretch going due west - straight into the wind!

The local military parading around like they owned the place in Punta Arenas.

Our bikes on the ferry across the Strait of Mellagan. Thats not how its spelt either, sorry.

After what we had considered a capitulation on Tierra del Fuego we hopped on the internet to hear about how other cyclists had fared on the same route, where we discovered that almost no one ever makes it without catching a ride, which made us feel much better. We were also very interested in what lay ahead and after reading some wind horror stories thought it prudent to allow five days to cover this distance, breaking it into five 50km days based around towns on the way.

A typical Patagonian cycling scene. Usually we are riding the bikes very slowly, not pushing.

Our first day took us out of Punta Arenas towards the turnoff towards the north where we had heard there was a petrol station that we might be able to camp behind. We ran into a group of older French cyclists cycling south who told us stories of staying in estancias (large farms) and being fed great food and wine, but also warned us of how hard we were going to find it biking into the wind in the days ahead, and how hard some of the roads ahead were going to be for us. We chose mostly to forget about these warnings and to ponder the stories of wonderful estancias instead, which was nice as by now it was both windy and raining and we slogged the remaining 25km to the petrol station at the lightning speed of 10 kilometers an hour. We arrived in the rain at lunchtime and went inside for coffee, where we met a group of French motorcyclists (it was a day for meeting French people it seemed) who were holed up waiting for a member of their group. They were good company and told us how they had been blown off their bikes the day before and how the guy at the petrol station told them that the wind was the strongest it had been in 15 years yesterday. The weather is a big conversation item down here. Some Dutch cyclists pulled up whilst we were gasbagging inside, they had come south from Peru and had covered 100km with a tailwind already that day. We were envious of their effortless cycling. They gave us some tips on the road ahead and were off again, which made us look a bit lazy just lounging around drinking coffee at 2pm in the afternoon. This spawned the one of the greatest quotes of the trip so far when their guide arrived and asked how far we had come today and upon hearing of our dismal efforts stated "Well thats a bit lazzzyy New Zealand..." He verbalised what probably most people had been thinking but were too polite to say. We reluctantly carried on in the hope of making tomorrow easier, covering 20km and passing a mine field before setting up camp in what looked like an uninhabited gaucho (cowboy) camp.

Mines! No roadside camping here.

The next day dawned sunny with strong winds but we were cocky as we "only" had 30kms to Villa Tenchulches, the next town and goal for the day. Within 10 minutes we were in our lowest gears and moving at a glacial pace. We eventually resorted to pushing our bikes before finding shelter in a bus stop about 500 meters from town at the top of a hill. Never has a bus stop been so appreciated. We sat there for about 10 minutes looking at the town at the bottom of the hill wailing that there was no way we would ever make it there. Eventually we channeled our inner Willie Apiata and hardened up to make the final walk into town. It took us a good 20 minutes. Nevertheless it was still quite early in the day so we once again set up camp in a cafe and wondered how long we could sit there without really buying anything before we got kicked out. This turned out to be about 6 hours in which time the cafe had one other customer apart from us. After enquiring about a place to camp the lady in the cafe directed us to the police who in turn directed us to the local rodeo stadium. It was weird that a town with barely 200 people could have such a rodeo stadium but we guess rodeo is big here. It turns out that north-bound cyclists get stranded here all the time and the town directs everyone here. The police even let us fill up our water bottles in the station which was awesome.

Our sweet gig in the rodeo arena. The ground was frighteningly hard to put the tent pegs into though.

We were sitting up in the stands having dinner that evening when a couple of slow moving shapes came into town - more cyclists! New Zealand cyclists as it turned out! we jogged down to the street to greet them and discovered that they had been relying on a hotel here and had no tent. Luckily we were overprepared and had a spare we could lend them in the rodeo stadium, where in return they shared some of their chocolates with us. We definately got the better deal, the chocolate was fancy and wasted on our unsophisticated palates.

Anna G and Ben in the police shed at Morro Chico. The pizza oven is behind Anna. Other furniture included a new bed and couch that we were very tempted to take advantage of, but good manners pervailed. You don´t want to make the plice angry, after all. We have seen their guns.

The next day we all up early to try and get some distance in before the wind got up and got to Morro Chico by lunchtime to begin the now embarassing pattern of sitting in a cafe for 8 hours buying nothing. This one had a fire and appeared to serve food but no one offered us any until we asked, then all they could give us was the soup the staff seemed to be having for lunch. Once again we were the only customers and when they stopped stoking the fire we cycled to the police station to ask for a place to stay. They let us spend the night in their shed, which came complete with a functioning pizza oven! This would have been great if we had pizza, but alas it was pasta sauce again for us so we didn´t light it. This turned out to be a terrible mistake as the temperature plummeted that night and we all woke up at 5am freezing with a frost outside and the wind blowing. Until this morning we thought those two weather conditions were mutually exclusive but alas, not here. Due to our wind anxiety heading west we hit the road at dawn to cover the dreaded westerly stretch wearing pretty much all the clothes we had. Anna F used her emergency toe warmers for this cold weather emergency. It was so cold the lighter wouldn´t work when we stopped for a warm drink! There was alot of bus stops along the way thankfully as a big snowstorm came through in about 10 minutes with the snow falling parallell to the ground - the second time we have seen this in Patagonia. Thanks to the energy providing powers of a packet of biscuits we made it to the Hotel Rio Rubens where we called it a day after a warming lunch. This place actually had customers which was nice too. We spent the afternoon lounging around, having our first shower in 4 days, and playing ludo. We covertly cooked pasta in our hotel room with Ben lighting the cooker on the roof to avoid setting off the smoke alarms.

The next morning dawned calm and we had a comfortable 65km ride into Puerto Natales, mostly downhill. For the first time we experienced what it must be like cycling in the other direction and spirits were sky high. We went back to our old ways of unsoliticted waving at every vehicle that passed us, including a police car with lights flashing speeding to some emergency, which tooted hello as it zoomed past. Not even emergencies get in the way of being friendly down here it seems.

Heroic arrival in Puerto Natales. The downhill behind us added to our effortless look as we rode into town.

This is a Molidon, a prehistoric gaint sloth and town mascot. We felt it had a distinctly ninga pose, and we were in the mood for posing. Hilarity ensued.

From Puerto Natales we have lurched straight into the Torres del Paine National Park, aiming to complete the 5 day "W" track in time for Christmas.

Land of fire? Land of wind is more like it...

After kicking around in the quaint town of Ushuaia for a couple of days it was time to start our journey north through Tierra del Fuego. It started with us doing our first hill of the trip (not counting the "undulations" in Uruguay), climbing up over the 400m Paso Garibaldi.




It snowed as we got about half way up, and with us ladies freezing our fingers off we stopped in at a roadside restaurant to eat our lunch. After some inappropriate drying off techniques in front of the fire we continued up and over the pass and cruised down the other side to camp next to Lake Fagnano, and also next to a horse skeleton. The next day we had overcast weather and undulations into the town of Tolhuin where we indulged our sweet tooths at the local bakery for a couple of hours before pushing on for about 10km to camp behind some bushes for the night. So far so good, as we had yet to encounter the infamous winds of Tierra del Fuego.


The next day was a different story, when after about 20km we got hit with them and took relative solace behind some bushes for lunch. Well, at least it wasn't raining! The after lunch diagonal head-cross winds were trying, so when we found a spot by Rio Ewan Norte we grabbed it (even thought it was about 1pm and in full view of the road) and set up camp. The next day the wind was a little better but it got really cold, so after some emergency cup-a-soups on the side of the road we were very glad to come across a strange restaurant/function centre in the middle of nowhere. The very kind proprietor gave us free coffees and let us warm up and eat our food inside. We decided to camp just out of Rio Grande for the night to give ourselves a near-full half day off the next day.


As we left Rio Grande, the sun was shining and spirits were high, so after fooling around (somewhat historically insensitively) at a Falklands War memorial we cruised out of town for a nice 15km or so until the storm rolled in, causing us to hunker in a ditch for a bit. But it passed and we continued until another, more fearful hail-laden storm came by. This prompted us to break into the ceiling spaceof an empty building to eat lunch and debate how long until hypothermia set in. We decided we had to hitch hike out, or we would possibly die of cold. After an hour or so with no luck with a ride (except for the nice truck driver who offered to strap our bikes under his truck on top of the spare tyre) the weather cleared up and the hypothermia fears dies down a bit so we carried on. We had the closest thing to a tail wind we had had so far, so going was good for a while, but our poor cold bodies forced us to stop soon enough and we camped in a ditch on the side of the road.


The next day we finally had a good run on the wind and cruised into the Argentinian immigration at San Sebastian just before the rain came. Another 10km to the Chilean immigration on our first gravel roads was not too bad and we were pretty happy eating lunch (OK, second lunch) at the cafe at Chilean San Sebastian. We reckoned we had 43 km left to go until the junction to Onaisin so thought we should go like crazy with the lack of wind on the notoriously windy westward stretch of road. The wind found us eventually so we stopped at about 8pm in an even more dubious ditch to batten down our tents and fear the next day.


Sure enough, the next day the wind was the worst that we had seen so far, and blowing right into our faces (as well as throwing us some dirt and grit too). After cycling a whopping 5km in an hour we found a small refugio (hut) where we made the crucial decision that with about 100 km to go until Porvenir there was no way we could make it, with the lack of water and fearful winds. So we mulled over the possibilities, bike back to San Sebastian and catch a bus, sleep in the refugio for the night and deal with it in the morning, or hitch. After about half an hour of this contemplation a ute rolled down the rolled which we ran to, frantically waving our arms and beggin for solace. Turns out he was headed to Porvenir so we strapped the bikes on the back and cruised the hell out of Tierra del Fuego and were in Punta Arenas by nightfall.

The wrong way to bike in Tierra Del Fuego

As You may have read from Anna G´s previous post Tierra del Fuego was not and easy journey with the wind in our faces. Below is a few more pics from that windy cold island.


The ferry in had waves breaking over the bow and some steady footwork was required to stay still on the deck

Lookout over the Usuaia national park

Anna still managing a smile after a puncture that ended her ride in the park. (maybee it was the cake and hot chocolate at the cafe). I left her to negeotiate her way onto the bus and another hot chocolate while I biked the rest of the way down the road to the end of the world

Largo Rocha

End of the road. Northbound from here

Snow Goose (really me just playing with the zoom on the camera)

The other end of the road sign

Mirrored Usuaia the calmest we ever saw it the whole time we were down there and that only lasted a few hours

Ushuaia

Ushuaia Fin Del Mundo

The top of the first pass the snow had stopped falling but there was still some on the ground

Our second campsite well hidden from the road

Less HiddenGiving up trying to hide from the road in sight of Rio Grande but the crosswind depicted by the tropical palm in the anything but tropical climate stoped us in our tracks

You could see the storms coming
Guanacos checking out the crazy cyclists

Waiting for our ferry after our rally driving Rancher ute ride to provineer