Team Super Awesome wins again

Torres del Paine is the most intense landscape that I have ever seen. If you had to compare it something, I guess you could say it’s like walking through Lord of Rings only ten times more beautiful. To start at the beginning, I dropped my stuff off at my new host family’s house. I had an interesting chat with the cabbie about music, he like folk music or more specifically “La Nueva Canción Chilena,” which is all that war protest-y Bob Dylan/Joan Baez-y sounding stuff. Shortly after dropping my stuff off I ran into my host mom (the old one) in the metro station (this is going to get confusing) and we had a nice chat. Then I headed down to Kara’s house and we caught TransVip (pronounced VEEP!) to the airport where we caught a plane to Punta Arenas, a bus to Puerto Natales and another bus to the actual park and then a boat to the beginning of the hike. There was much moding of transportation. Okay, backtrack time.
Puerto Natales feels like its in the end of the world. The wind races through the town, the streets are smaller and the ouses huddle up next to each other like they’re trying to share body heat. Our hostel owner was this funny lady with her funny poodle and their funny family . They rented us all our equipment and told us how we should hike Torres. (for clarification: there are two main trails in Torres: the circuit and the W. We were hiking the W, which looks surprising like a W if you were a condor.) Shortly thereafter, we met a roommate of Micah’s who had hiked the circuit in 5 days when the recommended amount is ten. Aside from being superintense about hiking, she recommended a superintense pizza place where we met the first of many British men who had been laid off and decided to come on holiday in South America. After dinner, we prepared to set off at 7:10 the next morning by making hot chocolate and packing. We had breakfast with some guys from Fargo and Texas the next morning and then hopped on the bus to the park.
Seeing Torres for the first time, it looked like it had blasted up out of the ground: this ginormos rocky formation surrounded by a sea of hills. In other words, it dominated. We had a little bit of trouble deciding whether to go see the Torres on our first day or not as they were only slightly covered by clouds. But we decided to take our chances. Therefore our basic itinerary is as follows:
Day 1: bus to boat to glacier to campsite. Day 2: campsite (lake location) to campsite (crazy parkguards location) to Curnos to campsite (same crazy parkguards). Day 3: campsite (CPG) to campsite (Torres base) Day 4: torres!! Day 5: relaxation and basic inability to move.
People we met: Dominic! (crazy German LARPer), the hot Irish guy, the two Welsh girls, the crazy park guards, the crazy Israelis!, the nice campsite guy with no teeth, and one of the TAs from my freshman year geo class. A good time was had by all, but I think that in the end, we decided that there were too many potatoes and not enough pita bread.
In Santiago, it’s easy to forget how much the world rocks. But Torres was the most real and unreal experience I think I have ever had. It was hard to imagine that such a place exists and that you can actually go there and be in it. I’d never dreamt of so many stars or ice so blue or rivers that were that huge or towers that high and mountains so massive. I don’t know, I can’t describe it. All I can say is buy your plane ticket now.