We are in Chachapoyas now and have been away from the internet for a while. This is just a quick update to let our mom´s know we are not captive in the Peruvian jungle somewhere.
We arrived in Chachapoyas Wednesday night and took a short cab ride to a hostel that was in our guide book. We had only planned on staying for a day or two and trying to find our way out to Kuelap. The guy that runs our hostel also runs a tour guide service and we signed up to do a couple hikes this week.
At 5:30 am the day after we arrived via a 23 hour bus ride, we set out for Catarata Gocta. This is the third tallest waterfall in the world. It was "discovered" some time in 2006, but the people that live in this area had known about it for a long time. The locals just didn´t have the means of telling the rest of the world to come here and spend money to see it. It was a pretty impressive sight after a few hours of walking along the side of a mountain and through the jungle. (Pictures will probably have to wait until we get back to Lima because the Internet connection is pretty slow here.) There were only six people in our group including the guide and we saw no other people on the whole trek. We did see a snake and a lizard in the jungle, but no monkeys or bears. We got back to San Pablo, the town we started at, and ate lunch. We finished lunch at 2:30 and were ready to head back to Chachapoyas. Unfortunately, the road between San Pablo and Chachapoyas is closed from 6:30 am to 6:30 pm while construction is done. We misunderstood and thought that the road was closed at night. This makes more sense to someone from the states, but I guess it is easier and cheaper for them to work on the somewhat remote road during the day than to have to get all the equipment necessary to light up the work area at night. So we slept for a couple of hours in the taxi while we waited for the road to open.
Our next hike was supposed to be a four day hike through the Chachapoyas area that would end at Kuelap and take us through several other significant archeological sites on the way. Unfortunately Stefani started feeling pretty sick and only made it about halfway through the first day. We had a driver that took our group to the starting point of the trek and he took Stef and I back after getting the others to their destination. Again, the road was closed until the evening and poor Stef had to wait quite a while to get to some medicine and a warm bed. We eventually got back and she is feeling better now, but still too weak to hike over mountains and through jungles. Tomorrow, I will rejoin the group we set off with and finish with them at Kuelap. Hopefully after another day of rest, Stef will be able to meet us all to see Kuelap, which is supposed to be quite spectacular.
To our moms and grandmothers we would like to say Happy Mother´s Day! We probably won´t be able to talk to you until Monday or maybe even Wednesday when we get back to Lima because of our lack of Internet access here, but we did not forget. So, have a great day and we will be in touch soon.
Showing posts with label trekking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label trekking. Show all posts
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Much Like Pimpin', Trekkin' Ain't Easy
On Saturday, we went to a talk about trekking through Torres del Paine. It’s a national park here in Chile. We thought there might be some day trips that we could take to see glaciers or something. About 10 minutes into the talk, I realized that the only way we were going to see anything cool was to spend a lot of money on a paid tour or to go on a camping trip. Knowing that there were better glaciers to be seen in upcoming towns on our trip, I didn’t want to spend a bunch of money to see these. And, knowing that Stefani hated camping, I quit paying attention to the guy almost right off the bat. To my surprise, the first thing Stef asked me after the talk was, “Do you want to do that five day thing on the ‘W’?” This was shocking to me, but a pleasant surprise. We went to the talk again on Sunday to take better notes.
Monday – Day 1.
We caught the bus from Puerto Natales to Torres del Paine at 7:30 am. After a two hour bus ride, an hour wait for a ferry and a short trip across a long lake we were ready to begin our voyage.
Usually, I think of solitude when I think of camping out in the middle of the wilderness. The ‘W’ at Torres del Paine was anything but. On the first day we passed around 40 people. I kind of lost track somewhere in the 20’s. Most of the people we saw only briefly, though, as we passed on the long, long trail to our campsite. The pack I carried weighed around 40 pounds and we went 15 km (That’s 9 miles to you and me Russ) in about five hours. I seriously thought I wasn’t going to make it towards the end of the first day. It seemed like we would never stop going uphill. I have to admit that Stef was a champ that day and totally kicked my butt going up the mountain. I guess I should have taken some spin classes with her because my legs were dead the last hundred meters up that mountain.
We set up camp, ate some delicious instant pasta alfredo with a mix of boxed vegetables and then went to sit and watch the glacier during sunset. The glacier was quite magnificent with blue and white jagged rows going back for several miles. We had hoped to see a chunk break off, but it didn’t happen before it got dark, so we went back to our tent to catch some sleep before starting off the next day. About 10 minutes after we left the glacier we heard a few thunderous crashes that we knew were chunks falling off of the glacier. Icebergs floating in front of the glacier the next day served as evidence of the scene we had missed the previous night.
Tuesday – Day 2.
After 15 km the first day, we stepped it up to over 22 on the second day. The pack was a little lighter, but my legs and back were a lot more tired. Never-the-less, we made better time the second day and set up camp with hopes of staying there for two nights with a day of rest before our next long hike. We hung out with our new Scandinavian friends, drank a little bit of crappy box wine and took a muscle relaxer and/or pain killer to help with the soreness/back-spasms/knee problems/shoulder problems that tend to occur when trying to hike over and around mountains with no experience.
Wednesday – Day 3.
After sleeping for around eleven hours and taking our time we decided to pack up and head on down the trail to a campsite a little closer to our final destination. It was a pay site, but we felt it would be best to cut the length of our hike down for the next day. It was a good choice to head down to the pay site. There was no way we could have gone any further than we did. At this point we were both feeling the burn of carrying too much crap over tough terrain, but at least our clothes smelled like the inside of a locker room at the end of a long season. We actually cheated on the third day, because the pay site had had bathrooms with showers and we partook.
Thursday – Day 4.
Once we put our stinky clothes back on, the showers we had taken the night before faded into non-existence. We were immediately hit with an 800 meter climb that was as steep as anything we had come across. We were on our way to Camp Torres, where we would spend the night before climbing to a lookout point before sunrise for the climatic conclusion of our trek. Watching the sunrise onto the Towers was supposed to be incredible. We decided to hike up to the lookout point in the daylight before we attempted it in darkness. It was a difficult climb and Stef had enough about halfway up. I continued on my own and finally made it to the lookout. I was rewarded with a view of the the towers, a glacier and some waterfalls flowing into a lake over 2000 feet above sea-level. The descent, like the climb, was not easy. There were loose rocks and me being tired and sloppy didn’t help.
We ate our last instant pasta dinner and went to sleep knowing that we were almost done. We heard one mistaken trekker and several mice throughout the night trying to get into our tent/backpacks. This attempted intrusion seemed to be amplified by the side-effects from the combination of painkillers and relatively empty stomachs.
Friday – Day 5, The last day.
I woke up at 5:30 and saw more stars than I had seen in many probably ten years. The hike up to the lookout point was a lot different then it was in the daytime. I completely missed the marked route, but got up there without too much trouble. I hung out and watched the sunrise, took some pictures and then headed back down the mountain. Nobody else was leaving, but it was cold, I had to go number one (and halfway down the mountain it was numero dos) and it was light out, so I didn’t think that the show was going to get any better. I was about ten minutes down the mountain when I passed someone looking up at the towers that exclaimed, “wow!” I turned to look back at the towers and saw them glowing an incredible orange. I guess I should have waited a little longer. We had perfect weather for four days and even got a perfect view for the sunrise at the towers. How could I miss the best part. Oh well, I just made my way down the mountain. Long story short, I got back and had no regrets about missing the after-sunrise effect because I made it to the bathroom in time with about two seconds to spare. We broke camp and booked down to our bus stop and wound up waiting for a few hours, had some of the best, most expensive beers we had ever had and then headed back to Puerto Natales.
Monday – Day 1.
We caught the bus from Puerto Natales to Torres del Paine at 7:30 am. After a two hour bus ride, an hour wait for a ferry and a short trip across a long lake we were ready to begin our voyage.
Usually, I think of solitude when I think of camping out in the middle of the wilderness. The ‘W’ at Torres del Paine was anything but. On the first day we passed around 40 people. I kind of lost track somewhere in the 20’s. Most of the people we saw only briefly, though, as we passed on the long, long trail to our campsite. The pack I carried weighed around 40 pounds and we went 15 km (That’s 9 miles to you and me Russ) in about five hours. I seriously thought I wasn’t going to make it towards the end of the first day. It seemed like we would never stop going uphill. I have to admit that Stef was a champ that day and totally kicked my butt going up the mountain. I guess I should have taken some spin classes with her because my legs were dead the last hundred meters up that mountain.
We set up camp, ate some delicious instant pasta alfredo with a mix of boxed vegetables and then went to sit and watch the glacier during sunset. The glacier was quite magnificent with blue and white jagged rows going back for several miles. We had hoped to see a chunk break off, but it didn’t happen before it got dark, so we went back to our tent to catch some sleep before starting off the next day. About 10 minutes after we left the glacier we heard a few thunderous crashes that we knew were chunks falling off of the glacier. Icebergs floating in front of the glacier the next day served as evidence of the scene we had missed the previous night.
Tuesday – Day 2.
After 15 km the first day, we stepped it up to over 22 on the second day. The pack was a little lighter, but my legs and back were a lot more tired. Never-the-less, we made better time the second day and set up camp with hopes of staying there for two nights with a day of rest before our next long hike. We hung out with our new Scandinavian friends, drank a little bit of crappy box wine and took a muscle relaxer and/or pain killer to help with the soreness/back-spasms/knee problems/shoulder problems that tend to occur when trying to hike over and around mountains with no experience.
Wednesday – Day 3.
After sleeping for around eleven hours and taking our time we decided to pack up and head on down the trail to a campsite a little closer to our final destination. It was a pay site, but we felt it would be best to cut the length of our hike down for the next day. It was a good choice to head down to the pay site. There was no way we could have gone any further than we did. At this point we were both feeling the burn of carrying too much crap over tough terrain, but at least our clothes smelled like the inside of a locker room at the end of a long season. We actually cheated on the third day, because the pay site had had bathrooms with showers and we partook.
Thursday – Day 4.
Once we put our stinky clothes back on, the showers we had taken the night before faded into non-existence. We were immediately hit with an 800 meter climb that was as steep as anything we had come across. We were on our way to Camp Torres, where we would spend the night before climbing to a lookout point before sunrise for the climatic conclusion of our trek. Watching the sunrise onto the Towers was supposed to be incredible. We decided to hike up to the lookout point in the daylight before we attempted it in darkness. It was a difficult climb and Stef had enough about halfway up. I continued on my own and finally made it to the lookout. I was rewarded with a view of the the towers, a glacier and some waterfalls flowing into a lake over 2000 feet above sea-level. The descent, like the climb, was not easy. There were loose rocks and me being tired and sloppy didn’t help.
We ate our last instant pasta dinner and went to sleep knowing that we were almost done. We heard one mistaken trekker and several mice throughout the night trying to get into our tent/backpacks. This attempted intrusion seemed to be amplified by the side-effects from the combination of painkillers and relatively empty stomachs.
Friday – Day 5, The last day.
I woke up at 5:30 and saw more stars than I had seen in many probably ten years. The hike up to the lookout point was a lot different then it was in the daytime. I completely missed the marked route, but got up there without too much trouble. I hung out and watched the sunrise, took some pictures and then headed back down the mountain. Nobody else was leaving, but it was cold, I had to go number one (and halfway down the mountain it was numero dos) and it was light out, so I didn’t think that the show was going to get any better. I was about ten minutes down the mountain when I passed someone looking up at the towers that exclaimed, “wow!” I turned to look back at the towers and saw them glowing an incredible orange. I guess I should have waited a little longer. We had perfect weather for four days and even got a perfect view for the sunrise at the towers. How could I miss the best part. Oh well, I just made my way down the mountain. Long story short, I got back and had no regrets about missing the after-sunrise effect because I made it to the bathroom in time with about two seconds to spare. We broke camp and booked down to our bus stop and wound up waiting for a few hours, had some of the best, most expensive beers we had ever had and then headed back to Puerto Natales.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)