Let's Get Outta Here

I finished writing a song a little while back that tried to capture the mindset that we were in before we went on this trip. I've been going through a lot of these pictures and videos, and am definitely going to be picking this up where we left off, since it's leaving out about half of our trip. I guess that doesn't quite count as travel blogging, since it's been almost two years, but I'm only going to forget more and more of it, so I figure now's as good of a time to pick it back up as any!

Also, I don't usually swear in songs, but sometimes it just feels good to do it a whole lot. Here's the song:

Parque Nacional Torres del Paine: Day 1

The central piece to our Patagonia trip was to complete the famed W hike through Torres del Paine. It's probably the most well-known hike you can do in Patagonia, and for good reason. The W is about 54 miles, can can take anywhere from 3-5 days. My personal advice would be to really take your time, since why on earth would you come to a place this beautiful and then just blast through it as fast as possible. We elected to spend 5 days hiking, and stay in the park for a total of 6 nights (our first night just camping, and our last night after we completed the trail).

There are a lot of different ways you can enjoy the park, ranging from pure luxury to completely roughing it. There's a hotel that offers rooms in the region of $1,000 USD per night, there are refugios that offer dorm-like rooms filled with bunks if you'd prefer to sleep on a bed (cheaper than the hotel, but definitely not the cheapest option), but the vast majority of people on the trail elected to camp. We'll go into more detail about the specifics of how we planned this hike later, since there are actually surprisingly few resources online about how it all works. For now, we'll go through all of the awesome stuff we saw on our specific hike.

Night 1 consisted of us getting a bus from Puerto Natales to the park, followed by another bus from the park entrance to Las Torres, a refugio with a campsite. There are two times that buses leave from Puerto Natales during high season, 7am and 2:30pm. Since we were just planning on setting up camp on night 1, we went for the afternoon bus. The drive was actually very beautiful, we drove through several herds (not sure if that's the right word) of guanaco.

I should have gotten a video, they have the goofiest walk.

We had a pretty good feeling about it when we realized that our campsite already had a great view of the famed Torres.

The white tents to the left are the beginning of the campsite. There are companies that will set up tents for you in a big tour, in case bringing and setting up tents isn't your thing.

Once we set up our tents, we headed straight for the refugio to grab a beer, because I mean, beer in a beautiful place just tastes better.

We were lucky to have a pretty clear night that night, so after the sun finally went down (it took until about midnight for it to be dark enough for this picture), I took a long exposure picture of the stars. I'm definitely no expert on the constellations, but it was definitely weird not being able to recognize most of the stars. We could spot good old Orion (not in this picture), but it was upside down, which took us a second to work out in our heads.

The next morning we set off to hike from camp to the mirador at the base of the torres and back, leaving our big bags at camp, and only bringing cameras, lunch, water, and rain clothes in our day bags. The whole hike there and back takes about 8-9 hours, depending on how often you stop for pictures. It didn't take long at all for the views to get incredible, this is probably only 45 minutes into the hike:

The slogan for this trip was "nope, that's not real"

We had to stop every now and then due to the huge wind gusts, which were beyond impressive. We heard stats that they were up to 90km/hr that day. The craziest thing about it is that you could hear the gusts of wind coming from miles away, maybe 30 seconds before they hit. We would hear the sound or rustling trees careening across mountains until it finally hit us like a ton of bricks. The gusts let up long enough at a local peak for me to grab a picture of the river in the valley below.

Going down, but not for long. This is maybe 1 hour or so into the hike.

At this point, we aren't far from the next camp/refugio, Chileno. Since we left all of our stuff at the campground at refugio Torres, we wouldn't be stopping at Chileno.

Nikki looking like a badass, Chileno in the distance.

I started taking pictures of the trail signs around here, they compress the trail in a way that makes you look awesome as hell, so I think I'm going to include them. The only one I missed was between Torres and Chileno.

At this point, seeing this sign was pretty crushing. We started at an elevation of 150m, were currently standing at 480m, which, after some very challenging math, meant that we had done just about half of our climbing for the day, and we were both beat at this point. We stopped here to get some lunch, which definitely boosted morale. We also needed to refill our water bottles, which was actually one of the best possible tasks. All of the water you need comes in the form of amazingly delicious glacier water trickling down the mountain.

The last part of the climb up was very rocky, but of course beautiful.

We finally made it! It honestly wasn't as bad as I was expecting, we made it up with zero issues.

This is the point where the story starts to get really interesting. After taking in the view for a while, I realized that there was no better possible time to ask a question that I was planning on asking for quite some time:

Both of us legitimately to not remember this moment.

She said yes! If she didn't, it could have been a very uncomfortable 5 nights in that tent...

So, some background here: I bought this ring back in NYC, in late October. On the advice of my good friend, I hid it in a pick case until the right moment presented itself. I had a ukulele with me on the trip, but I actually left it back in Buenos Aires since if I had to shove everything in a backpack, I needed to be as light as possible. There was only one close call where Nikki discovered it (while buying a bus ticket, not super romantic), but thankfully I dodged the bullet and kept it secret. This first day of hiking was definitely a challenge, there was even a point where I silently contemplated the idea that we might not make it and have enough time to get back to camp before dark. But we kept going, and the reward of that sight at the top just completely melted any doubt I had in my mind that this was anything less than the perfect moment to pop the question. There is this kind of reverence that people have there, people have some kind of awe-induced reaction, and then usually just stand and soak in the sight/sound/smell in complete silence. After doing this for a bit, I found a fellow hiker, Tae, who seemed to have a good photographic eye, and asked him if he wouldn't mind taking a picture of us. I didn't tell him anything beyond that. Then I pretended like I needed to fix my boot, as I frantically tried to fish the ring out of the pick case (it was IN there). After essentially breaking it open, I completely blacked out for about 5 seconds and have only flashes of memory of what I said. Luckily, Tae was able to capture this exact moment. Nikki also doesn't remember putting her hands on her head, so kudos to Tae on that awesome timing! I couldn't have planned it better if I tried.

I knew people would wonder about who took the pictures, so I made sure to grab a picture with Tae.

Afterwards, we just explored the area around the lake, because we were in absolutely no hurry to leave.

We stayed up there for probably an hour or or so, and would have definitely stayed there longer if we didn't have half of our hike ahead of us still. Going down was definitely faster, and it also felt like a completely new trail.

The trees just decided to stop growing right on that line.

We rented poles for this trip, and I'm glad we did, because my knees were already starting to feel it on day 1, but they really did help. The way back was amazing, since the low sun on the horizon really made for some stunning views.

It felt like we had the trail to ourselves.

Looking back up towards the end of the hike.

This got a bit long, but, well, it was a pretty huge day. Not a bad start, I'd say!

Reserva Nacional Magallanes, Punta Arenas

First off, we're a bit behind, so we're going to do a couple blog posts of catch up. Stay tuned for Torres del Paine pics!

We needed to keep our hiking game up, since we still had our 5-day hike through Torres del Paine ahead of us, so we found a pretty nice park to hike through about a 20 minute cab ride from our B&B, Reserva Nacional Magallanes. We arranged a cab through our B&B, and arranged for the cab back from the ranger's office when we were ready to leave.

The park itself was HUGE. One of the rangers asked how long we wanted to hike, since apparently you can easily spend days going through it all, so she was able to give us a good suggestion for a 4-hour hike.

The tree canopy that shielded us from the wind and rain.

View from the top. Punta Arenas in the background to the right. Straight of Magellan on the horizon.

Puma tracks. I learned that pumas, mountain lions, and cougars are all the same animal. Who knew!

It was a lovely hike for sure, if you find yourself in Punta Arenas with a day to spare, it's definitely worth heading up to the Reserva.

Cambio Cambio Cambio!

Inflation here is a pretty real thing, to the point where there's a huge market for actual physical US dollars. I knew this going in, but it's kind of surprising to see it in the flesh. Here's what my last two trips to the "blue market" looked like:

Give Nicole everything of value I have (other than the USD) just in case I get in over my head.
Go to Florida Street.
Wait approximately 15 seconds for someone to yell out "cambio!"
Ask the dude what his rate is (this is the one time where not knowing much Spanish has actually paid off, if you're going to do some shady, pseudo-legal transaction, it helps to be a man of few words).
Let him know how much I want to change.
Follow him into some empty shopping mall into an emptier corner.
Some scruffy looking dude counts out pesos in front of me (13 pesos per dollar is what I got, banks give you 8.4:1 currently).
I inspect each $100 peso note he gives me, having read how to spot a fake on the internet (this is normal practice here pretty much everywhere).
I give him a wad of US Dollars, he inspects them as well.
We exchange a quick "gracias" and I'm on my way.

So far I've done this twice, and the first time I felt like some kind of ultimate international badass. The second time was more of a "goddamn it, we need to go to the bank, and there's only one, and it's a mile away" feeling, so that didn't last too long. Also, the first time, the dude I talked to on the street waited there with the money dude while the whole transaction happened and escorted me out when it was done, and the second time, he just went back out immediately. I think Nicole might have gotten a bit of a shock when he saw the dude come out without me that second time, haha.

It's a pretty crazy situation, the fact that there's this level of inflation here right now. From reading online, I saw some first-hand accounts of people doing this exchange back in February this year, when this "blue market" rate was 7.5:1. At 13:1 (I've heard you can get closer to 13.5:1 right now if you actually shop around and haggle), that's a pretty insane difference in just 9 months.

I definitely feel like an asshole taking advantage of the situation, but you can see why there's serious appeal to bring in USD into Argentina. And to be honest, Argentina isn't actually that cheap unless you're getting this exchange rate, otherwise I'd say it's pretty on par with US prices. Well, except for wine, that's cheap in pretty much any currency. Seriously, we've been getting great bottles of wine for like 45 pesos, which is $5.30 at the official exchange rate, and $3.46 at the blue market rate. So yeah, pretty much cheaper than water!

So in conclusion, this whole process is definitely shady, but not as shady as I would have thought.