Chile In Patagonia...
Late November, early December 2006
Crossing the border into Chile, the desert continued until we reached the little town of San Pedro de Atacama. As we got off
the bus, the rates quoted by the hostel hawkers at the bus stop were the first reminder of the fact that we had just moved from one of South America’s poorest countries to one of its richest. In fact, the price of everything in Chile came as a shock after Peru and Bolivia. However the standard of living had also risen correspondingly, and my first impression of Chile was that it was remarkably like being in Europe.
San Pedro was a cute little town, and a pleasant introduction to Chile but with little specifically to hold you there. After a day or two, I moved northwest towards Iquique on the coast. It was from there that I would hop back onto my round-the-world air ticket to cover some of the more unreasonably long South American distances, and cut out some of those 40-something-hour bus journeys!
However Iquique, a town sandwiched between sheer-faced, arid mountains and the sea, also had its own specific attraction – paragliding! Its geography lends itself to the business of walking off a mountain top wearing this kind of parachute thingy, finding thermals (rising columns of hot air) to carry you up into the blue,
eventually drifting down to land at the foot of the mountain or, if you get some strong thermals, the beach. The day before I did this I spent a few pleasant hours reading on that beach. It was the last time I would see a beach on this trip, and even though it was a bit urban, it was a nice place to lie and read for a bit. The sea was way too cold though!
So never having done this paragliding thing before I took a tandem flight, strapped to a Chilean
named Leo. It took a while for us to get going; it was a particularly calm day, and there was not much of a breeze on the mountain top to float our collective canopy. However, when one did come along we were ready, and off the edge of the cliff we strode. A good way to spot thermals is to look for birds, gliding and circling and doing the same thing you are trying to. Chasing the local avian life we managed to squeeze a creditworthy 35 minute
s out of the flight, although we had to land on the plains at the foot of the mountains; conditions were not good enough to carry us across the main road to the beach without considerable risk of us becoming road kill! So paragliding was a great feeling. It was beautifully quiet up there, except for the wind in your ears, and it was quite a kick to look beneath your feet and see nothing but thin air between you and the ground!
From Iquique I then flew down to the Chilean capital, Santiago. Here the feeling of being in Europe rather than South America was even stronger. It was approaching midsummer, and the weather was hot and sunny. In the evenings grassy squares in the city, such as Plaza Brasil near my hostel, would be full of people playing with their dogs or sitting on the grass reading or talking, and pavement cafes would be busy with locals. Lucy from Birmingham in the UK had compared Santiago to her
hometown, (for readers unfamiliar with Brum, this is not a compliment to the Chilean capital!), but I think that the comparison is a little unfair. Santiago doesn’t have a great deal of interest in terms of classic tourist activity, but it is a pleasant place to spend a few days just enjoying the vibe, and a few nice old buildings. And in terms of South American capitals, it knocks Lima into the proverbial cocked hat any day.
Santiago was also where I was able to indulge in something that I had been missing for the whole trip so far; going to the cinema. I went to see “You, Me and Dupree” which was actually pretty lame, but at least it had an English language soundtrack with Spanish subtitles which I found was a great way to work on my Spanish!
Then I flew from the capital way down to Punta Arenas in Tierra del Fuego, the southern tip of the continent. Even though it was still summer, I found a very different climate….. cold, with winds that whipped across the plains and had me digging for that thermal underwear again. After one night in a very cute little hostel run by a young Chilean woman in the flat vacated by her dead grandparents, (all original furnishings!), I headed up into Patagonia to Puerto Natales, the gateway to Parque Nacional Torres del Paine.
Not really knowing what to expect, I soon learned that Torres del Paine, (named after its huge granite towers), is a pretty big place. Most people
go hiking in the park for between five and seven days, usually doing “The W” or “The Circuit” paths around the mountains and glaciers. However, I wanted to indulge in no such strenuous activity, and set about seeking advice as to how I could experience the park with minimal effort on my part! One thing I did know was that I wanted to hike on the Grey Glacier, so I came up with a plan to do that as part of a three-day hike in the park which was essentially hiking one half of “The W”, (or a “V”).
Since it was high season the overnight refugios needed to be booked a few days in advance, which gave me a couple of days to fill. So I rearranged my schedule slightly and took off north into Argentina to El Calafate to visit the Perito Moreno Glacier, an expansive and very active stretch of ice in Parque Nacional los 
Glaciares. It moves very quickly, calving regularly into Lago Argentina with a thunderous cracking sound as the huge pieces of new ice floe fall off into the water. First we went to the observation area and caught this dramatic happening several times, then we donned crampons and spent four hours hiking on the ice itself. It
was amazingly beautiful. There were vivid blue lakes in the ice, deep sink holes where water gushed straight down to the bedrock, huge ravines and splits in the ice, and ice caves. On the hike I met Australian Samantha, who I would spend a few days hanging out with later on back in Chile.
Then I headed back south into Chile, and set off into Parque
Nacional Torres del Paine. On the first day I took a catamaran across a lake, then hiked about five hours to Grey Glacier in the company of some English people I had met. The park is just breathtaking, with pristine lakes, mountains and forests and its infamous “four seasons in one hour” climate which has you continually peeling layers off and putting them straight back on again!
One thing I had to get used to in Torres del Paine was having to carry my own backpack; unlike on the Inca Trail in Peru, there were no porters here to bribe into carrying my stuff for me! I think as a consequence of this, by the time we reached the refugio for the first night I had developed a mother of a stiff neck and was 
finding it hard to turn my head. Fortunately for me, that evening I met both British ER doctor Kath and German sports therapist Semira over a few glasses of wine. However, the strongest drugs that Kath had were paracetamol, (and also I learned that ER doctors don’t do sympathy!). As for Semira, she steadfastly ignored my clanging hints about a the
raputic massage, and fair play to her really… when you’re on holiday, the last thing you need is people leeching off your professional abilities! So I just drank…. a method tried and trusted through the years to kill all kinds of pain!
So the next day was the ice hike on Grey Glacier. Kath and I took a boat out with a group of people, including for some strange reason lots of doctors, and we all strapped on crampons and got our picks out for a few hours on the ice. To be fair, the Grey Glacier is beautiful but probably not as stunning as the Perito
Moreno Glacier, and not as dramatic either as it moves much more slowly and so calves much less regularly. However, when you hike on Grey you get to do ice wall climbing! This involves getting yourself up a vertical ice wall of about 25-30m, using only your crampons and a pick in each hand, and was quite a rush! I loved it.
The following day Kath and I hiked back down to the point of “The V”, then after a night in a positively luxurious refugio went up the other side of “The V” the next morning. We ate lunch in possibly one
of the most beautiful places I have ever had lunch, sitting on a log on a mountainside, sheltering from the wind and watching little avalanches constantly happening on the mountains in front of us. Then Kath continued onwards, (much more hardcore than me!), while I turned back to catch the last catamaran across the lake to leave the park and return to Puerto Natales.
Crossing the border into Chile, the desert continued until we reached the little town of San Pedro de Atacama. As we got off
the bus, the rates quoted by the hostel hawkers at the bus stop were the first reminder of the fact that we had just moved from one of South America’s poorest countries to one of its richest. In fact, the price of everything in Chile came as a shock after Peru and Bolivia. However the standard of living had also risen correspondingly, and my first impression of Chile was that it was remarkably like being in Europe.San Pedro was a cute little town, and a pleasant introduction to Chile but with little specifically to hold you there. After a day or two, I moved northwest towards Iquique on the coast. It was from there that I would hop back onto my round-the-world air ticket to cover some of the more unreasonably long South American distances, and cut out some of those 40-something-hour bus journeys!
However Iquique, a town sandwiched between sheer-faced, arid mountains and the sea, also had its own specific attraction – paragliding! Its geography lends itself to the business of walking off a mountain top wearing this kind of parachute thingy, finding thermals (rising columns of hot air) to carry you up into the blue,
eventually drifting down to land at the foot of the mountain or, if you get some strong thermals, the beach. The day before I did this I spent a few pleasant hours reading on that beach. It was the last time I would see a beach on this trip, and even though it was a bit urban, it was a nice place to lie and read for a bit. The sea was way too cold though!So never having done this paragliding thing before I took a tandem flight, strapped to a Chilean
named Leo. It took a while for us to get going; it was a particularly calm day, and there was not much of a breeze on the mountain top to float our collective canopy. However, when one did come along we were ready, and off the edge of the cliff we strode. A good way to spot thermals is to look for birds, gliding and circling and doing the same thing you are trying to. Chasing the local avian life we managed to squeeze a creditworthy 35 minute
s out of the flight, although we had to land on the plains at the foot of the mountains; conditions were not good enough to carry us across the main road to the beach without considerable risk of us becoming road kill! So paragliding was a great feeling. It was beautifully quiet up there, except for the wind in your ears, and it was quite a kick to look beneath your feet and see nothing but thin air between you and the ground!
From Iquique I then flew down to the Chilean capital, Santiago. Here the feeling of being in Europe rather than South America was even stronger. It was approaching midsummer, and the weather was hot and sunny. In the evenings grassy squares in the city, such as Plaza Brasil near my hostel, would be full of people playing with their dogs or sitting on the grass reading or talking, and pavement cafes would be busy with locals. Lucy from Birmingham in the UK had compared Santiago to her
hometown, (for readers unfamiliar with Brum, this is not a compliment to the Chilean capital!), but I think that the comparison is a little unfair. Santiago doesn’t have a great deal of interest in terms of classic tourist activity, but it is a pleasant place to spend a few days just enjoying the vibe, and a few nice old buildings. And in terms of South American capitals, it knocks Lima into the proverbial cocked hat any day.Santiago was also where I was able to indulge in something that I had been missing for the whole trip so far; going to the cinema. I went to see “You, Me and Dupree” which was actually pretty lame, but at least it had an English language soundtrack with Spanish subtitles which I found was a great way to work on my Spanish!
Then I flew from the capital way down to Punta Arenas in Tierra del Fuego, the southern tip of the continent. Even though it was still summer, I found a very different climate….. cold, with winds that whipped across the plains and had me digging for that thermal underwear again. After one night in a very cute little hostel run by a young Chilean woman in the flat vacated by her dead grandparents, (all original furnishings!), I headed up into Patagonia to Puerto Natales, the gateway to Parque Nacional Torres del Paine.Not really knowing what to expect, I soon learned that Torres del Paine, (named after its huge granite towers), is a pretty big place. Most people
go hiking in the park for between five and seven days, usually doing “The W” or “The Circuit” paths around the mountains and glaciers. However, I wanted to indulge in no such strenuous activity, and set about seeking advice as to how I could experience the park with minimal effort on my part! One thing I did know was that I wanted to hike on the Grey Glacier, so I came up with a plan to do that as part of a three-day hike in the park which was essentially hiking one half of “The W”, (or a “V”).
Since it was high season the overnight refugios needed to be booked a few days in advance, which gave me a couple of days to fill. So I rearranged my schedule slightly and took off north into Argentina to El Calafate to visit the Perito Moreno Glacier, an expansive and very active stretch of ice in Parque Nacional los 
Glaciares. It moves very quickly, calving regularly into Lago Argentina with a thunderous cracking sound as the huge pieces of new ice floe fall off into the water. First we went to the observation area and caught this dramatic happening several times, then we donned crampons and spent four hours hiking on the ice itself. It
was amazingly beautiful. There were vivid blue lakes in the ice, deep sink holes where water gushed straight down to the bedrock, huge ravines and splits in the ice, and ice caves. On the hike I met Australian Samantha, who I would spend a few days hanging out with later on back in Chile.Then I headed back south into Chile, and set off into Parque
Nacional Torres del Paine. On the first day I took a catamaran across a lake, then hiked about five hours to Grey Glacier in the company of some English people I had met. The park is just breathtaking, with pristine lakes, mountains and forests and its infamous “four seasons in one hour” climate which has you continually peeling layers off and putting them straight back on again!
One thing I had to get used to in Torres del Paine was having to carry my own backpack; unlike on the Inca Trail in Peru, there were no porters here to bribe into carrying my stuff for me! I think as a consequence of this, by the time we reached the refugio for the first night I had developed a mother of a stiff neck and was 
finding it hard to turn my head. Fortunately for me, that evening I met both British ER doctor Kath and German sports therapist Semira over a few glasses of wine. However, the strongest drugs that Kath had were paracetamol, (and also I learned that ER doctors don’t do sympathy!). As for Semira, she steadfastly ignored my clanging hints about a the
raputic massage, and fair play to her really… when you’re on holiday, the last thing you need is people leeching off your professional abilities! So I just drank…. a method tried and trusted through the years to kill all kinds of pain!
So the next day was the ice hike on Grey Glacier. Kath and I took a boat out with a group of people, including for some strange reason lots of doctors, and we all strapped on crampons and got our picks out for a few hours on the ice. To be fair, the Grey Glacier is beautiful but probably not as stunning as the Perito
Moreno Glacier, and not as dramatic either as it moves much more slowly and so calves much less regularly. However, when you hike on Grey you get to do ice wall climbing! This involves getting yourself up a vertical ice wall of about 25-30m, using only your crampons and a pick in each hand, and was quite a rush! I loved it.The following day Kath and I hiked back down to the point of “The V”, then after a night in a positively luxurious refugio went up the other side of “The V” the next morning. We ate lunch in possibly one
of the most beautiful places I have ever had lunch, sitting on a log on a mountainside, sheltering from the wind and watching little avalanches constantly happening on the mountains in front of us. Then Kath continued onwards, (much more hardcore than me!), while I turned back to catch the last catamaran across the lake to leave the park and return to Puerto Natales.
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