After 8 hours of sleep, I felt much refreshed in the morning. The pain and tiredness on my feet and shoulder were significantly reduced. Dan shared the same feeling. Because of another day with 13 hours of hiking, we quickly had breakfast, packed our stuff, and headed out. The reason for starting it early is that we wanted to hike slowly today so that we could enjoy the view. We did not want to rush to our next destination like the day before.
Also because of the 13 hours of hiking, we had to let go of French valley even though it was supposed to be very beautiful there. However we were happy enough just to look at the breathtaking view right next to our campsite
I randomly turned around to find myself speechlessly gazing at the spectacular view behind our back
After the first 10 minutes, we began our "real" hike with up and down hills. The trail was amazingly beautiful with an unrivaled landscape of mountains on one side and lakes on the other side.
There were many little waterfalls as a result of melt ice from the top of the mountain along the hike. The best part of it is that it provided us water to drink along our hike so that we did not have to carry water with us at all. Following the recommendation of the Lonely Planet book, we purchased water purification tabs from REI that help kill microorganism in water to prevent cholera, typhoid, dysentery, and other borne disease. We first used it but the water tasted terrible like water from a swimming pool. Therefore, I told Dan that I prefer have diarrhea to use this tab. We decided to dump all purification tabs and drank water directly from waterfalls. Luckily both Dan and I did not have any problem with our stomach and digestion system.
Dan was filling up our bottle of water
After 6 hours of hiking, I spotted a perfect place for lunch off the trail where we could peacefully enjoy a breathtaking view of the lake and mountain without being disturbed by noises caused by other hikers. I joked with Dan if he could make a poem for me. The first and last time Dan made a poem (that has 3 sentences) for me was when we started dating for a month meaning more than 4 years ago. Here is his haiku (5-7-5 rule)
Mountain standing still
Calm wind blows beautifully
Dsquare is happy
(Dsquare=Dan & Doan)
The strong sun kept us company along the hike. It helped us enjoy the blue coloration of the lakes but it also made our hike more struggling and tiring. After the first 8 hours, we started doing a lot of quick stops to gain our breath. Our backpacks seemed heavier. The pain of my feet and blister kept expanding to my brain.
The entire part of trail did not have much shade so that the sun made us even more tired. We did not bring our hats with us. Actually Dan brought his hat but he could not remember where he kept it. The scenary kept dramatically spaning from the vast openness of the steppe to rugged mountain. We even crossed a deserted pampas field. Dan tried to touch a brush of cucti and he was so exhausted that he almost fell into that brush. Good for him that it did not happen because I could not image its consequences.
The view still stayed face-slappingly stunning
There was a beautiful open-wide daisy field aong the hike. It was the last days of spring so that flowers still blossomed in the Pantagonian land.
Dan started whining that why we kept going up hills. While Dan prefers to go downhill , I enjoy going uphills more because going down hills always make my knees feel terrible. Thus whenever we hike, I always wait for Dan up to the top of the mountain while he always waits for me down at the bottom of the mountain. I tried to cheer Dan up by telling him that the uphill will end soon and we'll soon go downhill. However the downhill part was so short that before we could feel it, the uphill already waited for us.
Though I love going uphill, I started getting tired and my breath became very heavy because of seemingly unlimited uphill and heat. Eventually we had a chance to really feel that we were going downhill when we got close to the next campsite
We got to the next campsite at 7p.m. While most people decided to stop here, we decided to keep trekking to another campsite, about 1.5 hours ago so that we could hike less the next day. The campsite we passed lies right next to a big stream falling down from the mountain
After 10 minute break, we resumed our trek. The sun was gone. The entire part of the trail to the next campsite was in the forest so that it had shades all along the way. I uttered in frustration that why when we needed the shades most, we did not see anything and once the sun is gone, now we have all the shades.
We hiked in silence. I broke the silence by telling Dan that I will make a haiku for him. During lunch, Dan asked me to make a haiku for him. However, I had never created a poem in my entire life and I was horrible at it so that I gave him a big grin as my nay saying. Therefore Dan seemed excited with my sudden gift to him. I read ALOUD, SLOWLY, AND EMPHATICALLY my haiku as a way to encourage both of us
"Pain, sweat, and fatigue.
Sun, wind, heat, snow, and strong rain.
We will make it through"
When I generated that haiku, I added the words snow and rain impromptu. We definitely did not expect that rain and snow did come to visit us right that night and the entire following day. In order to drive us away from our tiredness, I asked Dan to play a game in which Dan made the first sentence of the haiku and I produced the next one and so on..
We got to the next campsite at 9p.m. We thought we found a perfect camping spot next to the stream so that we could enjoy hearing the sound of the water. However life is not a dream and things are not always as beautiful as we think. We did not recognize that that perfect spot is a little bit steep. That night I could not sleep well and woke up so many times because I kept sliding down to the end of the tent. In the morning, Dan also complained about the same problem. Also under his spot, there was a pebble that he accidently hit on while turning around, hurting his back a little bit.
Day 4:
It rained heavily on that night. When I woke up at 6a.m, the rain was gone and the sun rose up. I joked with Dan that we got our MOST romantic night of sleep ever with the sound of water and the rain in the middle of forest and mountain and now we are enjoying the ray of early sunlight through the forest. My joy did not last for a long time. The sun quickly disappeared and the sky became very cloudy and gloomy again. The rain and fiece wind came fast followingly.
We decided to leave our stuff at our campsite and hiked up to the tower, called Torres Del paine that the park is named after. This part of the trail is very steep and it is all the way up hill. The trail is very rocky. The wind became more fierce. I prayed that the wind did not blow me off the trail. I am generally afraid of height and I know the worst thing in this moment was to loose our mental balance so that I tried not to glance at the steep side of mountain down next to me to stay calm .
The challenges were not over yet. When we got close to the top, it started snowing. Snow and wind tapped fiercely on my face. After almost 1 hour of hiking up, we got to the so called Torres Del Paine.
Torres means Tower and Paine means blue. The entire name means the towers of blue. Here is how it is supposed to look like in a beautiful day:
Souce: The internet
Here is what we actually saw in that day. The cloud entirely covered the three spikes.I murmured myself that at least we see the blue lagoon and we can image the granite spikes by ourselves. Probably the towers in our imagination might look way much more beautiful that they actually are.
We reached our campsite about 10a.m and we quickly packed our stuff under the rain. We started hiking very fast to make it to the the shuttle station by 2p.m where we could take the shuttle to the bus station to get back to Puerto Natales. It rained heavily in the entire day. Our poncho was enough to cover the upper part of our body. My pants got wet. Our shoes and socks were soaked with water.
We had to hike all the way up in the part that we went down the day before. Dan asked me why we kept going up again,lol. After climbing up to the top, we hiked all the way down. My knees started whining a lot and my back started hurting terribly. My entire body yelled at my brain. On the bright side, at least the cold water from my socks helped numb the pain on my feet. I had to do many second stop to rest my back.
We held hands to hike up the last small hill. We went straight up to the top where we stopped, looked at each other, and started laughing and BREATHING heavily, and then dragged ourselves to where we tood the shuttle. We made it 10 minutes earlier and immerged ourselves in the crowd of other hikers who were waiting for the shuttle. We gave each other a lingering kiss at the end of the trail. I modified my haiku
"Pain, sweat, and fatigue.
Sun, wind, heat, snow, and strong rain.
We damn finished it"
We took the shuttle and the bus to Puerto Natales where we took another 3 hour bus to Punta Arenas, our next stop, with our wet clothes and stinky shoes and socks.
That night we slept straight 12 hours to recharge ourselves.
The hike was strenuous and we were tired mentally and physically but we were more than happy that we chose to do it. We hiked slowly in some parts but we finished it. We did not see the tower but as a cliche goes, it is the journey that's important. We beat ourselves to push through the pain and beat the diverse weather ranging from windy, sunny, rainy, to snowy to finish it. There were so many moments that I had doubt that we could make it but our will always beat our tired body:). MORE IMPORTANTLY, we shared all happy, painful, exciting, and tiring moments together, encouraged, and took care of each other along the hike. We took turn to sing and dance in the most silly and nonsense way to entertain and to cheer us up when we wanted to give up. We got a big fight in the middle of frustration,tiredness, and misunderstanding but we solved it to keep moving on our journey and to enjoy it. I donnot think we could request a better honeymoon than that. We cannot wait to plan more hiking trip in Portland and other places. Later on, I suggested to do a long trek in another country at least once every 4-5 years and Dan could not agree with me more.
Continued......
PS1: On the way from the park back to Puerto Natales, our bus was full and we had to sit down on the bus' floor because the bus driver did not allow anyone to stand. Since I was the only girl among the group who had to sit down on the floor, the bus driver spoke to me something in Spanish while checking the ticket of people. Dan translated to me that the bus driver told me that there is a vacant seat next to the bus driver and I can come to sit there. I told Dan to thank him for his kindness but I prefer to sit on the floor with Dan. Later, he found 2 vacant seats in another bus in the same system and we moved there where we could enjoy our nap on the way back. Life could not get better:)
PS 2: I got sunburnt during the hike so terribly that my nose still stands out very dark compared to my face and the skin on my arms is still peeling off by the time I am writing this entry, about 2 weeks since our hike
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