PREPARATION
We spent the entire day before the trek comparing prices, attending an information session, planning a menu, grocery shopping, and renting and buying equipment. Prepping for a five day trek is no small feat for a group of eight and to say it was chaotic may be the understatement of the century.
After the information session and comparing prices we actually started making moves in the right direction at about 5pm. We decided to rent most of our gear from the hostel with the information session.
After two hours, we had finally set up our tents in the park across the street - both to make sure we knew how and make sure they didn't have holes - and settled the argument over how many pots and stoves we needed to rent (we decided on four, one pot for every two people.)
Worried that the grocery store and equipment shops may close we split into four groups: two people renting the tent, two renting sleeping bags, two buying sleeping mats and walking poles, and two going food shopping.
Nadav and I were in charge of the food situation. We were a good team to go together and kept each other balanced. Nadav kept me from buying too much and weighing down our packs while I convinced him to keep everyone from starving and buying more food. We got into small arguments about comical things - like whether to splurge the extra dollar for the ham that wasn't purple (I won,) or how we'd be able to keep fresh bread rolls soft for three days instead of buying whole wheat bread in a package. In the end we came to a decent menu - though there wasn't much variety - always keeping in mind that our goal was to be full, not to eat gourmet meals.
Our menu was as follows:
DINNER
1: Spaghetti and tomato sauce
2: Spaghetti and tomato sauce, vegetable soup
3: Rice with ketchup, boxed mashed potatoes with ketchup, cream of chicken soup
4: Spaghetti and tomato sauce, tomato soup, and ketchup
LUNCH
1: Ham and cheese sandwiches
2: Trail mix, and peanut butter and manjar (Dulce de Leche) on a roll
3: Peanut butter and/or manjar on a roll
4: Manjar on sliced bread, remaining bits of peanut butter with peanuts on top
5: Trail mix
BREAKFAST
1: Instant oatmeal
2: Instant oatmeal
3: Instant oatmeal
4: Instant oatmeal
SNACKS:
Chocolate bars, cakes, cookies, crackers with raisins on top (desperate times), vanilla cake
Knowing what we'd be eating the next five days we had a HUGE dinner the night before the trek and then came back to the hostel to destroy our rooms and attempt to pack for the Torres.
In addition to clothing, each person had to carry a sleeping bag, sleeping mat and 3 kilos of food and each team of two had to carry a cooking stove, pot, and gas can.
Packing was extremely stressful. We finally managed to get to bed at 3am with a total of three hours to sleep until our 6am alarms.
THE TREK
We had decided to hike the W trek from West to East which meant taking a ferry over to the West side of the park to begin the trek.
Immediately the scenery was among the most gorgeous I'd ever seen. From the boat you could see dramatic snow covered mountains and jagged outlined peaks. The water of the lake we crossed was a pristine shade of aqua marine that you've only ever seen on a paint pallet and the mountains reflected mirror images in the still water.
Though I was stunned by the scenery, I embarrassingly didn't realize at the time that I was staring directly at "my mountain." THE mountain that brought me to South America. I spent the rest of the five days hoping it would be the day I saw my mountain. I knew I was looking at my mountain from a different angle on days 3 and 4, but I wanted to see it the way I had always pictured it. The view that is the wallpaper background on this blog. On day five, I finally saw my mountain... From Mona's camera screen on the bus home. Everyone kept asking me if I could have missed it. "There's no possible way," I told them. "It has an incredibly distinctive landscape. I've been staring at it for years." I was wrong. My mountain was the first thing I saw and though I was astounded at its beauty, I failed to recognize it at the time.
Throughout the park there are jagged, snow capped, slate covered mountains. There are copper and amber stone mountains with an almost round facade that recedes layer upon layer into one another. The are the beautiful towers that define the Torres and stand tall and erect, made from granite that has consistently resisted the forces of nature over thousands of years while everything else around them has been worn down. In the park you can literally be standing in one place and turn around for a 360 degree view and see amazing, yet completely different scenery in each direction.
On our first two and a half days we walked through many acres of burned forrest. Last year, 17 thousand acres of the park were burned down in a fire started by a tourist's stove. There is a stark contrast of the burned, dead trees and the more resilient bushes that have come back to life and grow around them.
Because of fires like this the park has very strict guidelines about using gas stoves and it is only allowed in small, confined areas. We quickly realized what a blessing these rules are as one of our own started a fire in the designated cooking area on the first night.
I was in the bathroom changing and cleaning up when a man ran in with a bucket, turned on the shower and frantically ran back out spilling half of the bucket on the floor. "Fire!" he screamed. Knowing our group was in the kitchen cooking dinner, I asked Shani, "That can't be us, right?"
By the time we got out of the bathroom 30 seconds later there was a crowd on the deck outside the kitchen. The fire had been put out by a fire extinguisher and the entire room was now covered in the white foam remnants. Shortly after, Nadav and Sahar walked out. Both looked shocked.
It had been our stove that started the fire. Unbeknownst to us, one of our gas cans didn't fit the stove properly and when they turned on the second stove it ignited the leaked fluid. As Nadav later retold the story he was "holding the fireball in his hand," and as he went to drop it he realized someone was below him so he held onto it for a couple seconds before throwing it onto the ground.
Luckily there were the proper safety tools at the facility and someone was quick to find and use the fire extinguisher. Except for some burned arm hair, eye lashes, a bit of hair from Nadav's head, everyone was safe and there were no serious burns. After our first evening, our cooking adventures went more smoothly.
On the third day we hiked to a beautiful mirador. The view was 360 degrees of unbelievable panoramic scenery. On one side was a beautiful glacier with waterfalls and ice avalanches, the next side was a beautiful valley with lakes, if you turned even further there was jagged, snowcapped mountains. Depending on the direction you looked, you felt as if you could be in four different quadrants of the globe.
The colors in Patagonia are spectacular. The sunsets, the lakes,the glaciers, the mountains, and the rivers are all incredibly vivid, they proudly boast colors I never realized existed in nature. It is as if Crayola came to Patagonia when they decided to make the box of 540 Crayola Crayons and needed to create new colors.
As we'd walk by different lakes we'd create our own names for the colors we saw. "Patagonian blue," "Roswell grey," "The color of a dream," were some of the ones we came up with.
The Torres are known for unpredictable, dramatic weather, and very strong winds, but we were extremely lucky with the weather. While the nights got chilly, we spent the days sweating in tank tops. One day, Sinead and I even braved the
freezing temperatures and went for a swim in the lake for as long as our bodies would allow us, which was about one and a half minutes.
The hole in the ozone is directly over the Torres, so we were extra paranoid about sunscreen and reapplied almost every hour. Somehow, I managed to make it out of the park five days later without a sunburn.
On our last day we woke up at 4am to see the sunrise from the towers. (Torres literally translates to towers.) It was freezing cold. I layered on my tank top, my thermal shirt, my fleece, my wind breaker, two hats, gloves and a neck warmer. We began walking in the dark, and joined the other gringos as they walked the same path. In the dark it looked like a line of ants, each person indistinguishable - a dark figure - headlamps lighting the path ahead.
We walked quickly and soon enough we were peeling layers of clothing off. By the time we reached the top we were sweating and had to quickly change out of our tshirts and layer all of the warm gear back on. Within minutes we were freezing cold again. We had brought our sleeping bags with us and crawled into them as we waited for the sun to rise.
I had expected the sun to rise behind the towers, but as we reached the top I realized it was rising in the opposite direction.
Grumpily I wondered what the point of waking up at 4am was to see the sunrise from the towers if you ended up turning your back away from them the whole time.
Soon enough I had my answer. As the sun begins to rise in the sky, there is a quick moment when the first light of day reaches the tip of the towers. As this happens, the peaks are illuminated and for a brief time, the Torres appear to be on fire. When this happens, it's magical. You feel lucky to be able to experience it, and then realize how amazing it is that this spectacular occurance happens on a daily basis. We were truly in awe.
Walking out of the park later that day, I was sad. To me, the five days we spent hiking flew by. Though we walked all day long, there was never a point where I got bored or wished to be at the campsite quicker. The Torres had been my number one travel dream for the past four years,and the reason I ultimately came to South America on a trip that has made my life infinitely more amazing.
In total we walked more than fifty miles with our packs. By the third day we were all in pain and we felt old. We had bruises on our hip and collar bones where the straps on our packs were tightly fastened to keep the weight off our backs. Our knees and ankles hurt. Our backs hurt, both from carrying our packs and sleeping on uneven, rocky ground.
But I relished every minute I spent in the park, every step I took. I raced along the paths conquering uphills that I would have thought challenging when I arrived in South America a few months ago. As Sinead says, I was "high off Torres adrenaline."
Though the trails varied from grass to rocks to pebbles and gravel, my favorite trails were the dirt paths. As I walked along the loose dirt, I could see the imprint of my shoes, and for a brief moment, before the wind blew or another traveler walked the path, I left my mark in a place I had dreamed about over and over.
Pictures:
1: Me at the Torres right after sunrise
2: Day one before we started hiking. The group "before" picture.
3: Day five after we finished the trek
4: Scenery from the trail
5: Me in my gear
6: More scenery
7: Me with "my mountain" in the distance
8: The Torres on fire with the first light of day
9: Sunrise
10: Sinead, Mona, and I conquering the mountain
11: The Cuernos (horns,) my mountain from a different angle
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