Torres del Paine, Chile – Day 2 (Post #107)
Michele here…writing about day 2 (April 11th) in Torres del Paine National Park.
We got up on our second day before sunrise and started gathering firewood to make a fire. As we were gathering wood, I stopped and took a few photos of the sun just before it came up over the horizon. Everything about Torres del Paine National Park is beautiful – even the sunrises! See for yourself:
We needed to start a fire to boil water to cook our breakfast of oatmeal, powdered milk, brown sugar, cinnamon, and raisins. It was extremely cold (in the 20s) and the wind was blowing, which made it difficult to get the fire going. In fact, we never got the fire going good enough to boil the water, even after working on it for over an hour. How frustrating! We decided to simply use the very hot water that came out of the outside faucet of the shower and toilet building – and yes, it is safe to drink. In fact, some people simply used the hot water from the outside faucet rather than take the time to boil water since it (the faucet water) was so hot. Hmm…maybe we could have learned a thing or two from those people!
Anyway, we packed up our stuff and at 9:00am we caught a transfer bus to Lake Pehoe (pronounced pay-hoe-ay). During our short bus ride, we pulled over to a lookout point where we saw several foxes. Technically, I believe they are something other than a fox but I don´t know exactly what their name is. When the bus pulled over, the foxes came running up to us, making it obvious that tourists feed these guys on a regular basis. Here is Mike´s award winning photo of one of them:
We arrived to Lake Pehoe at 10:30am. Since it is currently the low season, there is only one boat a day that goes from the east to the west across Lake Pehoe, which meant we had stand around for 1.5 hours in the cold wind. Then we paid an outrageous $20 USD each to take a 30 minute catamaran ride across the lake. On the positive side, we did get free coffee and hot chocolate once we were on the boat and the lake was a beautiful and strange blue color.
Once we got to the camp site, we quickly set off up the Frances Valley. It was starting to rain and we needed to get moving if we were going to make it up to the lookout point and back before dark. About an hour after hiking up the trail, I took this photo of Lake Pehoe. This is really the color of the water and the sky – no color tricks or enhancements are needed when you take pictures in Torres del Paine. As I´ve said before, everything in the national park is a wonder for the eyes.
We hiked 2 more hours before we started getting pelted with hail stones. We also couldn´t see anything since it was so cloudy. At this point, we decided to turn around since we started getting nervous we wouldn´t make it back before dark (and then it would be really cold since we were already soaking wet from the rain). A few hours after turning around it started clearing up and we were able to get some beautiful photos of the mountains as the sun was setting. This is one of those photos:
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Although our shoes were wet from stepping into mud that went over our ankles, our clothes actually dried pretty quickly once it stopped raining. (However, this is probably due to the fact that all our clothes are made of quick dry material.) Once back at the Lake Pehoe camp site, we decided that although our shoes and socks were wet, it was more important that we eat first. We had access to three gas burners in a kitchen building for campers. We used one of the gas burners to heat hot water and we had soup, noodles, and sandwiches for dinner.
After dinner we took a hot shower then went to our tent where we noticed a mouse had eaten a hole through the tent and chowed down on one of my candy bars. We got all the food out of our tent and got in our sleeping bags. Soon after we turned off our headlamps, I heard a mouse scurry around the inside of our tent. I turned on my headlamp and saw him run near the head of our sleeping bags and over our backpacks. Gross! Then I noticed that although we had duct taped a hole the mouse had previously chewed through the tent, he simply chewed through the duct tape in order to get back in the tent. Mike went to sleep but I was too creeped out. I laid still listening to the mouse working on some project in our tent. It was obvious he was eating through something but I hated shining my light on him because it only made him scurry around us. If it wasn´t creepy enough thinking that the mouse was going to get tangled in my long hair as he ran near our heads, I also noticed that there were many more mice running over the top of the tent and down the sides. I could see their shadows because there was a full moon that lit up the sky that night. I think I last looked at the clock at about 4:00am.
See the next blog on Day 3 in Torres del Paine for the continuation of the story.
Bye!
Tags: Category #27: Chile
Michele Harmon
woah…the pics are amazing. but the mice stories have me shaking in my shoes. i would have died! i’m impressed you stayed in the tent with them!
You two will never be able to simply visit Giathersburg or Rockville any more after this adventure.
Any interest in contacting Cesar who runs the adventure races down there? I think you might have met him at John’s last year. info@questpatagonia.com
He runs lots of trips in Patagonia.
John and Iris were married last Saturday. I ris will be accompanying John (or perhaps crewing) as he will doing his 10 day Colorado Kayaak trip shortly.
See you all.
great stories and pictures.
Ed