The Making of a Trekking Junkie

At 3 PM on a Wednesday afternoon, I arrived at the Erratic Rock Base Camp in Puerto Natales, Chile to get some information on trekking the popular “W” circuit in national park Torres del Paine.

By 4:30 PM, I had three, possibly four (if Ben retrieved his new passport in Argentina in time to meet us before the bus to the park in the morning) trekking partners and a decision to make on which bottle of bottom-shelf whiskey was to keep us company during the cold nights in the park.  (In the end, we purchased both available bottom-shelf brands, reasoning that at about $6 USD, it was a wise investment.)

At 10 PM, after hours of securing rental equipment, finding the right gas for our cooking gear, and grocery shopping with three guys hailing from different European countries (James, England; Colin, France; Dan, Sweden), I was finally ready to pack my bag for the trek.   Personally, I didn’t bring much, for after dividing up the camping supplies and food, I knew I wouldn’t make it through Day 1 if I insisted on wearing clean clothes everyday.

What follows is a run-down of the things we carried:

-two two-person tents (ok, so we were trying to save a buck, but we also weren’t 100% certain that Ben, also from England, was going to make it in time)

-five sleeping bags

-five sleeping pads

-four trekking sticks (these were highly recommended at the info. mtg as a way to stabilize when that famous Patagonia wind threatened to knock us over)

-two cooking stoves and three gas tanks

-six bars of chocolate (these would end up being rationed out painstakingly along the course of five days)

-four packages of cookies (“This is not the time to think about getting in your five food groups.  You want sugar.  Lots of sugar,” the Erratic Rock speaker emphasized, and so we grew accustomed to having “cookie breaks” along the way, though we would have done well to have purchased double or triple the amount.)

-matches

-Instant coffee (and tea for the English boys)

-dehydrated milk

-oatmeal

-manjar (in the dulce de leche family, perfect stirred into a steaming bowl of oats)

-two bags of rigatoni pasta

-three cans of tunafish

-countless packages of soup

-sauce for the pasta: bolognese, basic tomato, and mediterranean (to mix it up a bit)

-two cans of mushrooms

-two packages of cheesey pasta

-a kilo of rice

-three packets of orange powder that when mixed with water supposedly replicates the taste of orange juice

-the aforementioned bottles of whiskey

-a mess kit which included five bowls, five spoons, five cups, two cooking pots, and two sponges

-a box of matches

-toilet paper

-garbage bags (We’d been instructed to place all of our clothes and our sleeping bags in plastic, waterproof bags so as to have a nice dry sleep at the end of a day of trekking.  Who knew that we’d never feel a drop of rain in the park which is said to offer you all four seasons in just one day?)

-personal food items (James must be credited with generously sharing much of his private stash.  It was his special, spicy sauce, after all that added another dimension to every meal, be it cheesey pasta with tuna or minestrone soup.  Oh, and I mustn’t forget the mis-purchased bacon, which to the luck of the group, was not the smoked ham that James thought he was choosing.  Everybody knows that bacon makes everything taste better, and when you’re camping and surviving on processed, packaged foods, bacon tastes like three miracles in one.)

At 7:30 AM the following morning, the boys reunited with Ben, who, with new passport in hand (his previous one had been stolen in Mendoza) had hitchhiked and taken a cab to make it across the Argentine-Chile border, and I met him for the first time before we all set out to do the “W”, which, I might mention, is so-called because the route the circuit follows in the park forms the letter W, mas o menos.

I could now describe to you the amazing landscapes witnessed on every turn, tell you about Glaciar Grey, the French Valley, and the Towers themselves, but as I doubt I’d be interested in reading about someone else’s perspective on the wonders of the natural world, I’m going to assume you’re not much interested either, so I’ll keep it brief.  I’ll tell you that Patagonia, specifically Torres del Paine, is the most spectacular place I’ve ever inhabited, that the potable water in the park is the freshest, tastiest water I’ve ever had, that there were moments when I stopped in my trekking tracks (not because I was flat-out exhausted and needing a break, though surely that happened plenty of times) to stare at a body of water surrounded by snow-speckled mountains or a group of bare trees which appeared to be leaning all in one direction, listening to someone or thing in the distance but actually shaped thus from years of spending time with Patagonia’s ferocious, unparalled wind, that I didn’t think it was possible to be moved by nature like this the way I’d been touched by the sites in Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni.  But, my amazement was genuine, my excitement very real.

And yet, although the stunning beauty of Torres del Paine had me fumbling with my camera again and again and uttering how incredible it all was, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that what enhanced, but moreover completed, the five days was the company.   It cannot be the easiest thing in the world for five people to share cooking and dish-washing duties, to set up camp at the end of a six or seven hour day of trekking, to agree on what time to wake up to get to the Torres mirador (3:30 AM, in case you’re interested), but I think we did it better than any other group out there.  Am I biased?  Por supuesto.

On the other hand, I talked to a number of people who’d completed the same trek as us, who’d experienced the same perfect weather (we only experienced one season, and that was summer), and no one expressed as much joy as any one of us five.  ”Some of the best five days of my trip,” we all agreed as we sat back on day 5, knackered but accomplished and proud.

“And you just went up to them and asked them if you could trek with them,” more than one traveler/backpacker has asked me after I animatedly told of our journey in TDP.

Indeed, I had.  Bold, ballsy, and ready for rejection, I marched up to these strangers and asked if I could join them on their trek.  Having no knowledge of their skill level or their names, I’d taken a gamble, and in just a few days time, that gamble would prove to have paid me most generously.

By the end, I had acquired the trekking bug, and as I began thinking about all of the treks that lay before me–Huarez in Peru, Cotopaxi in Ecaudor, Ciudad Perdida en Colombia, and Roraima in Venezuela–I also realized that I’d never be so lucky again to find a group as solid and amazing as the group I found in James, Dan, Ben, and Colin, even if I did want to kill them all (well, all but James who unconvincingly reassured me that he was happy to take it at a slower pace with me) at 3:45 AM on the last day as they barreled up the ridiculously steep ascent to claim a prime spot for watching the sun rise above the Torres and turn them red as we’d seen in many a picture and postcard.

So Help Me God…

if I wake up in the middle of the night to pee, I said to Jane before we buried ourselves in our rented sleeping bags on night 2 of our three and a half day trek to Machu Pichu.

It was bitter cold out, probably several degrees below freezing, and the night before, when we were camping at a much lower altitude (3800 m), we’d been cautioned by our Lares trek (an alternate trek to the excessively popular and overpriced Inca Trail trek) guide, Puma to cover our faces and our heads if we needed to exit the tents in the dead of night.  In comparison, it had been so much warmer the night before.  I was worried about the cold.  Very worried.  Plus, to make matters worse, I’d lost my head lamp (as I’ve lost so many things in 2.5 months!) and would be relying on Jane’s reading lamp to assist me in the pitch black, freezing cold night.

As I added layers of clothing to my body, I thought how grateful I was that this was our final night of camping.  I thought warm thoughts of the hot shower I was going to take when we arrived at the hotel in Aquas Caliente the next night, and I envisioned the hot springs I’d be soaking in after spending hours climbing the many steps inside of Machu Pichu. 

I’d read excellent things about Peru Treks, the company leading our trek, and from our 6 AM pick-up the first day, I hadn’t been disappointed.  The trek, some 38 km total wasn’t easy, and in fact, my sister suffered from such severe altitude sickness that she had to forfeit a majority of the trek and meet us a couple of days later in Ollantantambo, a town not far from Aquas Caliente. 

If I hadn’t experience the amazing heights of Bolivia, I might not have made it either.  Fortunately, there were a couple of other women in the family (so-called by our gregarious guide) who opted to go slow up the steep passages and take in the scenery.  I often stuck with them and even had the pleasure of riding a horse up one incline for about five minutes.  As I passed the family on horseback, Phil, a quirky Australian, wondered if I couldn’t at least pretend to breathe heavy.

Because we got a late start on the first day, part of the trekkking was done in the dark.  Most of the family had head lamps or flashlights, we we managed to make it the camp without anyone getting injured.  I had some fun practicing my Spanish with Puma, our guide, but I find it better to practice the language with people who don’t speak English than with those that do.  It forces me to find the words, whereas with Puma, it was all to easy to fall back on Spanglish when I gew tired of searching for the right palabras.

I haven’t done much camping in my life, but after the first night roughing it, I was ready to sign up for a trek a week!  South America is made for this kind of experience, and I slept like I had jet lag that first night–better than I had in days.  I imagine the warm alcohol concoction they offered us after dinner helped lull me into a deep sleep. 

Although the family maintained a pretty steady pace all together throughout the trek and stopped together in the villages (ours was a culturally rich trek filled with extras like visiting Andean families in their homes and stopping to meet children along the way), the group bonding time occurred over the amazing meals prepared by the cook, Willy.  It was on this journey that I ate better than I’ve eaten all my time thus far in South America.

Each meal began with a soup, absolutely necessary for those bone-chilling evenings, followed by steaming plates of meat such as lomo saltado, a traditional Peruvian dish, delicious side dishes like papa de pastel, and a postre.  My favorite was a rich chocolate pudding served warm.  We finished the meal with hot water for tea or cafe.  I took to having my Nalegene bottle filled to the brim with the hot, hot water and used it as a source of warmth for the night.  I held onto that baby the second night, and I’m convinced the forty minutes of sleep I got was due to the proximity of the hot water bottle.

I don’t think I can call myself a trekker after this trek, especially noting the fact that the anti-social French couple in the family said it “wasn’t a trek,” but I felt a sense of accomplishment at the end of each pass and on the final day of the Lares trek, before we were to make our way to Machu Pichu at 5:30 AM to beat the crowds coming from Cuzco by train, I felt that I deserved every bit of the warm, happy feeling I had lounging on the grass as we waited for our cook to prepare our final family meal.  (I think the French couple was unaware that our expedition included multiple village stops, a favorite for many of us in the family but apparently not for them.)

Chewing coca leaves helped, although the catalyst I used with it per Puma’s instructions, briefly damaged my gums.  At one point, before a steep passage, we were each given a drop of some concentrated solution which we rubbed into our hands and put to our noses to breathe in deeply.  It was supposed to clear the internal passageways, but mostly it just smelled lovely, and after two days of not showering, I couldn’t be sure that I did!

My sister, who had been experiencing her own authentic Peruvian adventure with the help of the assistant guide while we remained on route, asked Jane and me what the best part of the trek was.  When she saw that we couldn’t answer right away, she pressed us for highlights.  There were many, and as we began filling her in and listening to her stories of returning to Cuzco and hanging out in the hot springs of Lares, we all recalled the first morning together.

Our first stop outside of Cuzco was a market in a small village.  Encouraged to buy coca leaves, oranges, and school supplies for the young children we’d meet along the way, Stephanie, Jane, and I, who had arisen at 4:50 AM traded looks and snuck off to the section of the market that serves cafe and te.

Ordering three cafe con leches, we were delighted to see the glass bottle of very rich coffee sitting before us.  As the woman behind the counter ladled steaming milk into our mugs, we grinned widely.  It was what we’d been waiting for all morning.  Breakfast was to be our next stop–with the group–so I suppose we could have waited for the cafe, though Stephanie and I are self-professed coffee addicts and were craving our morning beverage, but I’m sure glad we didn’t, for the cafe offered at the official breakfast spot was instant.

I couldn’t help feeling slightly smug that we’d been wise enough to wander away from the family in the market for all of three minutes to find the good stuff. 

As far as highlights go, that one is right up there.

I cannot end this post without saying a few words about Machu Pichu, and yet, I am processing the experience still and don’t know that I’ve found the best words to describe the magnificence of that historic place.  Was it worth waking at 3:45 AM (after five hours of sleep on top of the previous night’s almost zero hours) to be one of the 400 people allowed to climb Wayna Pichu?  Absolutely.  Was it worth sitting outside the bus station at 4:30 AM in an attempt to board one of the first buses to the site and find ourselves practically alone at the Inca Bridge?  Heck, yeah.

Our time at Machu Pichu went quickly, and my only dissatisfaction with the trekking tour was not having more of it at Machu Pichu. 

 

Perhaps after a couple more nights of solid sleep, I will have more to say about Machu Pichu, but then again, I am heading to Chile tomorrow and likely will have a new story soon.

Oh, and by the way, for all you curious folks, I would like to report that I did wake up to use the bathroom in the dead of night.  I felt the cold intensely, but worse than exposing myself in that brutal wind was attempting to calm down once I returned to the tent and my sleeping back.  At 4500 m, my breathing was short, and I felt exhausted from the energy used to put on my sneakers and unzip and rezip the tent’s flaps.  Once again, I burrowed my body and my head in the sleeping bag, and I tried to catch my breath and not wake Jane, though the next morning I would learn that she had not slept either.