viernes, 21 de diciembre de 2007

Yes! back on the road...but just through my blog.


Yes you've guest...I am back home. It's been more than a week that the most fabulous trip of my life has come to an end and what a nice end! But first let's go back to where I had stopped writing not by laziness but more because I wanted to enjoy every single minute of the trip rather than passing them on the net...you understand of course.

Well a few weeks ago, on the 14th of November (yea it's far away more than a month ago but thanks to my little journal or diary of course updated I know exactly what we've done), we had arrived in what was a lost fishermen town and that is now transformed in one of the most touristic end of the world town. All the chilean patagonian cruises pass and stop a few days in this small and still unstructured port. The reason of this place being touristy is its location of course, settled at the southern end of the Andean mountains and northen begining of the end of the world (tierra del fuego), and its beautifull natural surrounding greatly contribute in making this place unique. It's there that the ultimate part of chilean land, crumbling, forms many small islands in between which fjords and small rivers are forming a natural infinite labyrinthe.


We were in this town, for it was going to be are base camp where we would prepare for the next 5 days. A 5 day walking/camping, trek between the most impressive and famous moutains of south Chile in the national park of "Torres del Paine".



On the 14th of November we gathered as much information as possible in order for our trek to go fine. We found out that buying food was a good idea, that taking appropriate backpack was not optional, that renting a mini stove was maybe going to help us cook and a few other detail like this. Finally we left at two in the afternoon arrived at the park entrance where, although we were well informed, payed a surprising high entrance fee of 30$ each, leaving us with very very little money for unexpected situation.


This first afternoon we walked a few hours uphill before arriving in our first camping site. We settled down our tent and led by our excitment continued toward the point of view from where we would discover the famous, emblematic moutain: "torres del paine".














That's us, we were alone for a nice sunset in front of those little rocks.


We started our second day by a good poridge breakfast, than folded our tent and walked till one time at which we had lunch. Portions where strictly being splet by Nadja who was also making sure that Alex but specially me would cook/eat only what was plan and not more. After a total of an 8 hours walk passing between light green lakes and high rocky mountains covered by low clouds we finally entered the cold and hostile "valle francès". The camping site was nestled in between the "glaciar francès" emerging out of the clouds covering the top of the sharpened moutain, and on the other one the famous "cuervos del Paine". We happily rested and cooked our favorite diner...pasta of course! =)
The next day we again walked another 8 hours to reach our second glacier, the Glacier Grey. We slept unofficialy on the shore of a lacke and the next day headed back to the entrance walking 28km!
This trek was on of the most exciting part of this trip since we were lost in nature with no other choice than walking and enjoying the wild landscape!
I'll go on talking about our Tierra del fuego experience in the next post.