last week was my birthday and it was such a blast! my dorm mates had multiple surprises (and cakes) for me, which was fantastic. in total about 5 different cake type things. scoooore. that night we had an asado (otra vez) and a little party which turned out to be quite the fiesta once our landlady left. kelsey and laura also brought over the supplies to make shamrock shakes which was fantastic since they don't have them here and y'all know how much i love them :). so basically this was a paragraph to say thanks to everyone for making my birthday so much fun. love you all!
and now back to the torres adventure. we left thursday night from the santiago airport to head to punta arenas (very very south chile). i forgot until we got there how much damage the airport sustained from the earthquake...so much so that we never actually got into the airport. everything was operating out of tents outside the airport and we had to take a bus directly to the plane in order to board. that was a bizarre experience and a huge reminder that the earthquake is still affecting everyone here. we finally got to board our flight to punta arenas and arrived there at about 3:00am...so with nothing to do until bus companies opened up, we took naps on the airport floor. que comodo! 6:30am finally rolled around and we found a bus to take us to puerto natales (about 3 hours away from punta arenas) where we loaded up on calories before taking another bus to torres del paine national park.
while in the park we did SOOO much hiking (obviously). over 20 hours worth. and for those of you who know how uncoordinated i am, it definitely was not the easiest thing in the world. we also camped...which meant limited showers. and you also know how i feel about showering. haha. but the discomfort was soo amazingly and totally worth it. once we left i felt so great knowing that i was able to see the things i was able to see and do something pretty far out of my comfort zone. and we got to see the two best things in the park: las torres and the glacier!
so yeah...torres was crazy beautiful. not a serene beauty, but a powerful, stately, intimidating beauty. it's really one of those places you look at and go "whoa. mother nature is amazing." beyond the beauty of the mountains and the landscape, there were some downsides as it was craaaaazy windy as well as pretty darn cold, especially for camping. i also kept looking at the torres and thinking how it reminded me so much of the evil mountain thing in lord of the rings. and considering all 7 of us were always hiking in a line we were pretty much the fellowship. hence the entry title :)here's some proof of the ridic wind-
and some random things:
1) when camping, consider packing a variety of food. for instance, my packing 12 peanut butter sandwiches and trail mix maybe was not the best idea. hard to swallow down that much PB after awhile.
2) when people say it might be cold, it will be. if you hear it rains a lot, it probably does. maaaaybe a good idea to pack appropriately. whoops.
3) using your highschool back pack for intense back packing might be a little uncomfortable.
4) why oh why did rafael nadal lose to ivan ljubicic at indian wells? seriously? ljubicic?! the loss of ranking points resulting in a slide back to number 4..ugh. this is going to be a rough year for me.
back to school this week...one of my classes still has not started! so hopefully i like the profe or i guess...well i'll just have to deal with it. haha sooo yeah that's it for now. the moral of the story is that if you ever get a chance to go to patagonia, go! it's rough but totally worth it. oh and if you're ever in puerto natales you should probably hit up patagonia dulce. seriously delish chocolate related things (brownies, hot chocolate, tortas...mmm). so that's it for now. left out some deets but too many and it's boring, right? chaooo for now.
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