As Kenneth scrambled to a rocky hill with his radio to try to contact the ferry, I thought about the many hours on planes (18), buses (10) and days on foot (3) it had taken me to reach this lonely, sleet-battered precipice, in the middle of nowhere at the end of the world.
Southern Patagonia, also known as Magallanes, is a world apart, where the broad expanses of the pampa meet with the glacially sculpted spires of the Andes. The first Europeans to lay eyes on this landscape were led by Ferdinand Magellan, who pioneered passage through the treacherous strait that now bears his name. His expedition named the mainland “Tierra de los Patagones,” and unwittingly spawned the myth of a race of Patagonian giants. To the south, they saw the horizon darkened by smoke from the natives’ fires and named the great island Tierra del Fuego. The legend of Patagonia was set in motion.
Until 1959, when the area was made a national park, Torres del Paine was a wild and lonely place inhabited by ranchers whose families raised livestock for generations. Today, the park is in danger of being loved to death by crowds of trekkers who come to experience Patagonia’s majestic, high-altitude scenery—minus the discomforts of hiking to high altitudes. In Patagonia, the W tops out at less than 4,000 feet but delivers scenery normally seen upwards of 10,000 feet. I’ve hiked all over the world, from the High Sierra and the Himalayas to the Colorado and Canadian Rockies, and I’ve never seen scenery like this, at such low altitudes, anywhere else on earth.
The Walking Wounded
Our Patagonian adventure had begun in Puerto Natales, the last outpost before the park and a backpacker haven during the summer trekking season, December through April. Along the back streets, construction workers tore up dirt sidewalks to make way for paved ones, and the hippy restaurants and cafés were crammed with an international coterie of bedraggled-looking trekkers. Some snoozed on sofas, other spooned up bowls of steaming soup as if it was their first meal in days; still others wrote intently in diaries. A group of women sitting in a corner looked haunted and hollow-eyed, and their hair was matted into bird’s nests. I wondered what awaited us, and if we’d look like that in a week, too.
PREVIOUS PAGE
