03.11.08 - Torres del Paine

Day 5 – Torres and Return to Puerto Natales

5:00am insured darkness, as Birgit, Linda, Lipika and I headed out into the flurries of snow dancing in from of our headlamps. The trail was relatively well marked, but in the moonless night everything was just a little less sure.

Marijn and Lotte had hiked the extra hour up the valley, last evening, to spend the night at Campamento Torres. Our trick was to meet them at 6:00am, in the darkness. Arriving at the campsite, the scale was unexpected. Hundreds of campers crowded the space. Linda, Lipika, and Birgit started up the bolder strewn ascent to the viewing site, while I stumbled between the tents looking for Marijn and Lotte. After fifteen minutes of interrupting far too many campers preparing for the climb themselves and with no sight of the Dutchies, I headed to the trail head.

Trying to catch the Germans, I put on a real pace and somewhere in the darkness and swarms of people missed them completely. Arriving almost alone at the top, with only three other strangers ahead of me, reinforced this solitary condition. So I climbed a little further, to a photo location and waited in the drizzle for the sun to rise.

The cloud deck showed little signs of either moving or evaporating by 7:15am. At this rate the early start and effort would be rewarded with little more than a dull almost monochromatic scene.



As if on quay, at the stroke of 7:30am, the sun scrambled over the opposing mountain ridge and began to light the towers.



The clouds and fog started to part, revealing a few of the jagged edges, which make this part of Patagonia distinguished.



Then by 7:40am the cast light dissipated and the clouds returned. If you hadn’t been in position for that exact fifteen-minute window, then the climbing effort would have been spent with little reward. As it was, actual Torres / towers, were hardly visible, but the thrill of watching the alpine environmental change was well worth the early morning exertion.



I have debated for over a year, as to whether to ever broach this topic but the Torres del Paine experience was a capstone experience in Israeli youth exposure. Most “gap year” travelers experience some experience with the roving demolition team of Israeli youth. Basically, the premise is you take a young person (18 years old), enlist him or her in the military for about three years, then release them upon the world. The net result is a public relations disaster. The marauding packs take over almost every situation with a selfishly insulated egotism usually reserved for anti-American stereotypes. In Torres del Paine, this particular group, laid waste to every shared kitchen and shelter: clogging drains with food, spraying uneaten pasta all over the ground, throwing garbage without reserve everywhere (in a pack-in carry-out environment), and crushing their cigarettes on the granite boulders of the Torres vista, while leaving butts everywhere in a non-decomposing visual legacy.

These continual self-centered socially ignorant behaviors led me to broach the topic, not only with our immediate group, but with a further multi-national contingent. The consensus was this is definitely not a Semitic issue but an Israeli foreign national dilemma.

One traveler commented, “That so many people, traveling the world across continents, are having similar interactions, with so many multiple Israeli groups, that all these instances can’t be wrong.”  Meaning, if it walks like a duck, quacks like duck, smells like a duck, then on a trend line basis odds are it is a duck.

An Aussie couple chimed in that, “This is definitely changing my political position about the Middle East. You can only imagine how they must interact regionally.”

While an Irish traveler proclaimed, “Nah, this has only reinforced the rationale of my previous political stance.”

The Israeli government is fortunate that US citizens are amongst the least traveled in the world, else our billions of dollars in aid might meet a diminishing point or at least start to have clearer expectations attached. Again, this topic took almost two years to broach and can be easily misinterpreted for what it is not, an anti-jewish position. To be painfully clear, again, the collective experience was a consistent intrusion of obnoxious Israeli youth, who demonstrated no active faith, so religion has nothing to do with the perception outcome.

Whew, on to something less controversial… given the far southern hemisphere geographic positioning of Patagonia, the first twinges of Fall started to appear along the trail.



Our group has been extremely lucky, with mostly sunny skies for four days, so no one could feel particularly surprised by the constant mist, which blurred and clouded the refugio return.



All in all, hiking the “W” at Torres del Paine challenged the strength of our group but not the bond. We were happy to have completed the trek, but a little saddened because Linda and Lipika would not be returning with us to Puerto Natales, opting to head north to El Calafate.



The evening in Puerto Natales was equally magical as our first exposure. The southern hemisphere clouds somehow appear closer and more impactful, in the chilled breezes.



I know, I know, not another food shot, but this experience was truly extraordinary. Birgit and I dined at an East African/Patagonian fusion restaurant. The soy sesame chicken drumsticks, with barbeque mashed potatoes was a flavor explosion not experienced thus far in South America. Truly awesome! Kudos to the Kenyan born, Zambian influenced chef. Asante sana!!!