Days 23 and 24 - Into the wild (Torres del Paine).

“There’s a rat in the kitchen
What are you gonna do…” goes the UB40 song. Only the rat isn’t in the kitchen; it just ran along my back on the bunk bed. I’m wide awake at 4.07am, wondering if the rat will now attempt to snuggle with me inside the sleeping bag for extra comfort. Maybe it’ll decide to nibble on my face!

Am having the worst night of the journey so far. At around 7pm, I staggered into the Refugio Los Cuernos, only to be met with blank stares from a staff member, leaning on the bar of the dark kitchen. Any thoughts of a nice hot meal evaporated instantly. The whole place was dark and the only other visible guest was a guy studying his Torres del Paine map and eating sandwiches. Another guy eventually showed me to a dark dorm room down the hall and gave me a bare bunk on which I laid my sleeping bag. Two cocooned forms were already lying prone on other bunks, asleep at that hour.

I dejectedly munched my way through my sandwiches, but as I warmed myself by the wood-heated stove, as my clothes gradually dried and my stiff muscles loosened up, I perked up a bit and spent the evening reading. The lights kept coming on and off, the staff pointedly ignored their two guests and I thought that I’d been to far cheerier cemeteries than that. What a contrast with the last time, two years ago, when I was here at the height of summer. I managed to do my knee in on the Valle Francés, the middle part of the ‘W’ circuit, which takes in the three highlights of the Torres del Paine National Park, and from Valle Francés I limped painfully for over three hours to the refugio (basic hostel) to camp, be served a delicious meal by friendly staff and then be plied with coca leaf tea by a bunch of Germans I’d met on the Navimag earlier. (The coca tea had no effect on the pain whatsoever, by the way).

By the time I'm ready to go to bed, just before 10pm, having been up since 6am and needing an early start the following day, the two cocoons came alive and out climbed two English girls. They later barged into the dorm at midnight, and without any regard for me or the guy who was also asleep by then, they turned on the light and proceeded to make a racket, talking and laughing, for what seemed like an age. Then just after 4am, the rat that I’d spotted darting under my bed earlier had decided to make my acquaintance.

The day starts auspiciously enough, with an early power breakfast at Erratic Rock (since most people who stay here are here for the great outdoors, Bill and co. always make breakfast for people leaving early for the park), even though there are fewer people around the table and the most common topic of summer conversation – “Are you doing the Circuit or the ‘W’”? – is absent; it’s the very end of the season, and the back half of the park is already closed due to snowfall, so it’s the ‘W’ or nothing.

Then a bus ride to Torres del Paine – two and a half hours along a bumpy gravel road through some of the most spectacular country ever. The sky at sunrise looks like it’s on fire, the rays violently breaking through the churned-up leaden clouds. The bus windscreen has a giant crack across it and what looks like a little bullet hole – all caused by the road surface. We hear the loud rattling of stoned against the bottom of the bus as it speeds through the great plains, covered with hardy tufts of prairie grass. More wildlife than I’ve ever seen on the way to the park before – large herds of guanacos (wild cousins of llamas) grazing everywhere, leaping out of the road to let us pass; flocks of ñandú (small ostriches), and when Laguna Amarga appears before us – a shallow lake of impossible turquoise, even on a cloudy day, ringed with salt and dotted with flamingos, we see the mountains behind it, shrouded with fine mist on which a rainbow is playing. Fantastic.

I don’t get off at the first stop; that’s for those hiking from east to west. It’s actually easier to do it the other way, because then you’re going downhill for steep parts of the middle section. On our way to catch the catamaran to Paine Grande Lodge, I see not just one condor, but many – close by and circling above something; some are even coming in to land. Both my previous times, I only saw tiny specks in the distance.

Since we have time to kill before the catamaran departure, myself, a British guy and a French girl decide to take a stroll up to a scenic viewpoint nearby to check out a waterfall. As we’re walking, a sudden gust of wind takes us by surprise, because its force stops us in our tracks, and then shoves us backwards. Turning our backs to it doesn’t help; it churns up a hailstorm of gravel from the path and it feels like we’re pelted with shrapnel. It stings, even through padded clothing and the French girl’s leggings are soon riddled with holes. After a couple of seconds of this, we have the sense to drop to the ground in a nearby ditch to avoid being dragged. Our hair is full or pebbles and dirt. I finally understand what Patagonian wind is.

I’ve been to the park twice: once for the ‘W’ and the last time to do the ‘Circuit’ with my friend Nikolai. We were lucky with the weather; when the time came to cross the famous John Garner Pass – the highest point in the park – we did so without a hitch. Now I understand why some people get stuck there for days, waiting for the wind at the top of the pass to abate; the pass is exposed and people have died there, blown off into oblivion.

The wind is stirring up mini-tornadoes of water vapour on the surface of the lake when we take the catamaran across. It’s a bouncy, exhilarating ride along the pale blue, glacial waters. It makes such a difference, being in a large, sturdy craft; when I took a little speedboat across the Beagle Channel. The waves were much bigger, the tarpaulin covering the front of the boat was coming undone, we were being hit with icy spray and holding on for our lives, knowing the capsizing meant death. On the catamaran, I practise the boat equivalent of a sport we invented in Jamaica – ‘bus surfing’ – which involved standing up in public buses as the crazy drivers took the corners at high speed, and seeing if we could keep our balance without grabbing onto the rails.

There’s a guy with a bandaged head and a badly-gashed knee sipping coffee. He’s a local guide who’s been unlucky; the same gust of wind that blew us over dragged him along until he split his head on a rock. The two gay Americans he’s leading have bandaged him up.

I set off from Paine Grande towards Los Cuernos. I did the Glacier Grey leg last year, and from what I’ve been told, there’s nothing new and the refugio has just been closed, so am doing the ‘U’ rather than the ‘W’. I still don’t understand how my backpack can weigh as much as it does, given that all I’ve got in there is a sleeping bag, camera, food, some clothes and a couple of books, but it’s significantly lighter than last year. “You’re a good hiker, but you can’t pack for shit”, was Nikolai’s assessment of me last time and I tried to take only the essentials this time around.

The trail towards the halfway point – Campamento Italiano – is a nice one: it winds up and down gentle hills, over small streams, through groves of native trees which are now a mass of yellow and red. Autumn is definitely here. There’s a little bit of drizzle, and some strong gusts of wind; I feel like I’m finally hiking in ‘proper’ Patagonian conditions; the first time, the weather was unseasonably hot and sunny and the second, it was also good, though it snowed one night. I’m finally battling the elements and I shout my challenge into the wind.

Some jackass hiker has left  - not just one piece of litter, but an entire bag of it, all neatly tied up - by the side of the trail. I pick it up. A curse on both their houses.
I was originally planning to go all the way up Valle Francés and make it all the way to Los Cuernos in one day (about 9 hours of hiking in total), but quickly realise that it’s an impossibility because the days are so much shorter now and hiking in the dark, even with a torch, can be a bit perilous. I pass only two little groups of hikers by the time I reach Italiano, whereas in the summer you can hardly move without bumping shoulders with other people.

My knee is beginning to play up. I don’t want to push it too hard, because this is just a light warm-up before the Inca Trail. In any case, at Italiano it becomes apparent that going up would be pointless, as it’s raining steadily now and the mountains are shrouded in fog. I carry on towards Los Cuernos, negotiating steep descents, and then climbing back up through dense vegetation. As the rain increases, it becomes a case of mind over matter. There’s nowhere to shelter from the rain, nowhere to rest. As I finally find myself on the stony shore of icy Lake Nordenskjold, I’m glad because I’m nearly there. I reach the refugio in the rapidly fading light and collapse in a dishevelled heap.

Then there’s the rat issue.

As I lie awake in the musty, not-too-clean room, I imagine drawing myself up to my full height of five-foot-nothing and throwing my weight around in the morning: “Don’t you know who I am?! Do you think it’s acceptable to charge CH$19,000 for a bare bunk in a rat-infested room? I want to speak to the manager!”

I hadn’t actually paid, and I decide that I’ll refuse to, because while I myself didn’t do anything girly like screech and jump up on my bed when woken by a rat, I was less than impressed and I know that that’ll be the case with our readers. In the end, it turns out that I don’t even have to refuse to pay; am up before daybreak and gone way before any of the staff deign to wake up. Will have words with Fantastico Sur, the owners of the refugio. Am not too bothered about the rodents themselves, but am concerned about the deadly Hanta virus, carried by rodents.

It’s a very wet slog towards my destination, Refugio Las Torres, from where I catch the bus back to Puerto Natales; there are several hills to negotiate, up and down, up and down, slipping on pebbles, pushing through wet tree branches. I don’t meet a single person. If something happens to me, they may find my body only days later, half-eaten by pumas and condors. When I hiked with Nikolai, even though I drove him nuts by tasting all kinds of unfamiliar berries that grew alongside the path and he threatened to leave me for dead if I poisoned myself, I knew that if something happened, he’d carry me to safety (or at least get help).

When I come to the part that I feared – a large stream that needs to bee negotiated by jumping from rock to rock – I’m glad to see that the water level is pretty low and hiking poles make it easy to cross, even though there’s still water sloshing in my boots. I’m a bit disappointed that I didn’t have to strip naked and ford the stream while carrying my rucksack above my head.

More stream crossings. More pauses to drink directly from the steams, coming directly from the glaciers – I can see a myriad little waterfalls running down the sides of the mountains. More pauses to admire the vast yellow-and-red growths of trees that cover the foothills. Then finally, I’m on a treeless, grassy hill, and cross a suspension bridge across an angry mass of churning muddy waters before arriving at Refugio Las Torres.

The staff here have a much better attitude; I dry off by the fire and have my first pichanga – chips with bits of meat and chorizo – the best thing ever after a hike.

You can’t even see the famous Las Torres; Nikolai and I saw them last time, but now they’re completely obscured by the mist and rain.

Back in Natales, I have enough energy to drag myself to the office where Carla, who used to do bookings for Erratic Rock, has now got her own office – a one-stop-shop for anything and everything you need while you’re here or want to go to Argentine Patagonia – activities, bus tickets, hostels – she’s the only one in town to do it all, so I ask her to sort out my bus tickets to Argentina.

Then I treat myself to dinner at Afrigonia, the fusion African-Patagonian place. Awesome ceviche with mango and seafood curry with spicy rice with almonds. Perfect end to the day.