Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
I’m not sure sometimes how my wife comes up with these ideas, but I thank my lucky stars that she does. It’s probably because she, unlike myself for the most part, has always been a list maker, and with the advent of the internet, anyone who is a maker of lists can always go online to help facilitate ways to scratch off items on a list.
So, years ago, when she wrote Patagonia on the running list of places she wanted to visit, I kind of figuratively rolled my eyes a little and thought, “Yeah, right. Not sure when that’s going to happen.”
In addition to being a list maker, she’s also a collector of information. And so, little by little, via the internet and talking to people with first-hand knowledge of the place, she began to collect tidbits of information until all the pieces fit together with enough information for her to make a plan. If you know my wife, you would know that she would come up with a plan that is seamless, or at least as seamless as international travel can be when one has at least three airplane connections and an overnight stay.
And that is how we came to be in the southern part of the South American country of Chile in late March of this year. Our flights from Casper to Denver, Denver to Houston, and Houston to Santiago, Chile happened just as one would hope, with no glitches or hitches.
As there is only one daily flight from Santiago to the small town of Puerto Natales, in southern Chile, Gayla booked a hotel room near the Santiago airport so that we could be well rested for our last flight, early the next morning.
On the final leg of our trip, as the small commuter jet flew over the glacial-fed lakes and jagged mountains of Torres National Parque, my wife and I looked at each other and smiled. This is what we had come to see.
Soon we touched down on a single asphalt airstrip outside of Puerto Natales and taxied to the tiny terminal, reminiscent of the small terminal at the Riverton airport many years ago. Here we were met by our freelance guide for the rest of that day and the next day.
One can instantly determine if a mountain guide is authentic. They are fit, with no extra pounds where they don’t belong, and they wear good quality outdoor clothing that is faded and worn. Raul passed on both measures.
In his mid thirties, he was swarthy with a dark, full beard and dark eyes, white, nearly perfect teeth, and a black braid down the full length of his back. He looked the part of a mountain guide.
As we came to know him on the drive into Puerto Natales, he told us that he only recently learned English. Recently, meaning in the past three years. When he chose to make a healthy portion of his income in the tourist trade, he knew that speaking English was a necessity.
Truly, his English was much better than my Spanish, but even as good as his English was, he lacked the knowledge of American figurative language, and because of that deficiency, he encouraged us to speak figuratively whenever possible. If he didn’t understand their meanings (and he didn’t understand many), he would type that particular phrase into his cell phone to keep and possibly research later.
We, of course, would enlighten him in the moment as to figurative meanings as these phrases arrived in our daily conversations, which he appreciated, but he wanted to keep them stored for easy access.
That first afternoon, Raul led us on a couple of shorter hikes around the national park, I’m sure to gauge our hiking capabilities, although he didn’t say that. Even though we assured him that we were experienced hikers, he needed to make his own evaluation, as the nature of the hike on the next day would be challenging.
On the morning of the second day, we met Raul headlamp-early outside our hotel, where we started our thirteen-mile out-and-back hike to El Tres Torres or the Three Towers. I’m sure he was still a little unsure of our capabilities, especially since the elevation gain of that day’s hike was about 3,000 feet, with the last half mile being extremely steep.
Gayla and I were carrying daypacks with our snacks, lunch, and water, but the pack that Raul carried must have weighed 40-50 pounds, which he carried all day seemingly without effort. The trail, as you might expect in a world-renowned national park, was busy. Most hikers were not from Chile; mostly Americans and Europeans, by my guess.
Raul was friendly with them all, but he reserved his most brilliant Pepsodent smile for the young ladies.
We left in the dark, but within the hour daylight arrived, ushering in one of those diamond days that people who use the outdoors appreciate. Southern Chile, known for its hurricane-style winds, was surprisingly calm and wonderfully sunny on that day.
Prior to our trip, I watched a few YouTube videos filmed by other folks who participated in the same hike, and in each one, the wind was screeching down the canyon leading to the Three Towers, especially over Windy Pass.
On the day of our hike, Windy Pass did not live up to its name.
Being from Wyoming, where a calm morning can turn into a raging afternoon, I was expecting the same pattern from a Patagonia fall day. However, that change did not occur on that day, or really on any of the four remaining days we spent in Chile, except at Paine Grande, where we were informed that the howling wind was considered a gentle breeze by those who spend the season there. Rare good fortune for us.
About three hours into our hike, not long after we started the steepest part near the towers, I decided to integrate a little humor for which I’m sure my daughters would roll their eyes. We had stopped at a point where we could get off the trail and catch our collective breaths.
In between deep breaths, I tried to look as earnest as possible and said, “It’s too far. (breath) I think we (breath) should turn back (breath).
With a stricken look on his usual jovial face, he said, “You’ve got to be kidding me!”
Tolerating my usual dreadful attempts at humor, my wife chuckled as I smiled. “Yeah, I’m kidding,” I said. “We’re good.”
He then smiled his relief, but I’m not sure he appreciated my weak attempt to lighten the mood.
Twenty minutes later, he was fixing us coffee at the base of the Three Towers, on the shore of one of the most beautiful turquoise-colored lakes I have ever seen, which is when I decided a little lesson in American slang was in order.
I asked, “Have you ever heard of the term ‘lady killer?'”
His face turned suddenly somber as he contemplated the literal meaning of the words…God bless his chivalrous Latin heart.
“No,” he said, reaching for his phone. “What does it mean?”
When I told him, he smiled one of the biggest, whitest smiles I’ve ever seen, and made sure the term was stored in his phone to retrieve later.
In Patagonia, what the Chileans call pumas and what we call mountain lions were very prevalent, although, in all the days we were there, we didn’t see any.
Half an hour later, after coffee, a little lunch, and pictures, we were heading back down the mountain. On the way down, we stopped a few times for water breaks, and during one of these stops, I asked him, “Besides mountain lions, do you know another name for pumas we have in the United States?”
“Yes! Cougars!” he said with more than a little enthusiasm.
“That’s right,” I replied. “But do you know another meaning of the term cougar that is used in our country?”
“No,” he said, truly puzzled.
When I told him that the word cougar also identifies an older woman in search of a much younger man, he again revealed that huge smile and said, “Like me!”
And out came the phone.
All too soon, we were back at the trailhead near our hotel, where we knew we would have to say goodbye to Raul. He opened the back of his vehicle and handed me a popular local beer and Gayla a soft drink, and he then laid out a variety of crackers and cheese and fruit, which was exactly what I was needing, particularly the beer.
Soon, after everything was cleaned up, we hugged, which is what Chileans do in addition to a handshake, said goodbye, and walked into the hotel, where we were to pack and get a good night’s rest for the next part of our trip.
Everything we needed and brought with us would be stuffed into a backpack, which we would carry for the next four unguided days and three nights as we trekked through Torres National Parque, putting on 50 miles, and hiking some of the most scenic, rugged mountain terrain on the planet.