D24 -- We will not be broken!

We got very little sleep last night because it was storming so badly. We both woke up every couple of hours thinking the roof was going to blow off. I imagine that’s what a small hurricane or typhoon must be like. Crazy! At breakfast the wind was still going strong. We were in good spirits, though, with a wait-and-see attitude. My efforts to remain positive were slightly challenged when I found a dead bug in my scrambled eggs (after I’d eaten most of them, of course).

We set out for Hosteria Los Torres instead of Chileno as originally planned, thinking we’d cut the trip short and leave a day early to go see penguins and thereby escape the crazy Patagonian weather. But as soon as we left the rain stopped and a beautiful rainbow appeared over the lake. It was hard to stay in a bad mood looking at that!

So we trudged on, me with the benefit of Jock Jams on the iPod to get me through the steep climbs at the beginning of the trail. (Thanks, Denise!)

We had another setback when it came time to cross two streams. There was a wire to grab on to but that was it – you had to cross by stepping over mostly submerged rocks. Ever the gentleman, Thomas carried a woman’s pack across and came back, managing not to get too wet. So he told me not to take my shoes off, which turned out to be a big mistake because I got my feet drenched. I changed into his dry, day-old socks, then we hit the trail again, with me in a bad mood and sloshing around in my boots. What really frustrated us was the realization that we could have used Thomas’s Tevas to cross the stream. Ah, hindsight.

The sun was out today, and the walk was pretty but SO windy. It really beat us down. We debated leaving versus staying when we came to the fork between Torres and Chileno trails. Being a stubborn gal I hated to quit, but by staying we could put ourselves at risk of more annoyances and bad times and there was no guarantee we’d see the famous Las Torres rock formations/mountains because of the unpredictable weather. And frankly, we were having a string of bad luck so we were thinking maybe fate was telling us to give up. We decided, however, to go on, but after another 30 minutes of ozone-hole sun and battering wind we again reconsidered over lunch. (I couldn’t bear to eat my sandwiches after the bug incident, so Thomas gave them away to some hikers.) We decided once and for all that we’d stick it out together and that we were lucky to have learned something about ourselves - we’re day hikers, not trekkers!

About 1 hour from Chileno we started to see huge drifts of dirt coming off the mountain that we had to pass, much like the water that got picked up by the wind on the lakes. (We got showered by another lake earlier in the day.) Then we started to pass very tired-looking people heading the opposite way saying things like “it’s REALLY windy”, “good luck” and “be careful not to let the wind knock you off the mountain.” Great! We came to Valley Asencio between two mountains, at the bottom of which was a river with rapids. It was called “Paseo de los Vientos” on the map (vientos = winds). That’s when the REAL winds hit us. We had to brace ourselves not to fall over. The dirt pelted us so hard it stung. It got in our ears, noses, mouths… we were completely covered! Thomas saw one woman get blown down to the ground by the wind. She just stayed down to wait out the gust. We made it to Chileno just before another downpour started. Whew! We heard later that this day was the windiest day of the season so far, and read that the park can get wind gusts of up to 60 mph. I’m guessing the winds we experienced were close to that. We traded wind horror-stories with Danuta over dinner and hit the sack.

- Elva