Monday 3/23/15 -
This was relax and errand day before we headed south to Patagonia. Our flight was at 10:50pm so we had plenty of time. We did laundry, cleaned the apartment, did some grocery shopping, organized our things and plans, went to Florida street to change money and eat at a small parilla, and other things. I bought the flip flops I really needed and we got rain covers for our backpacks. I met up with Emma briefly to thank her and say bye as well.
We caught a cab to the local small airport at around 8:45. The cab driver accused me of closing the door to hard. He said every single American does that as if the door is a revolving door, which was funny to me because I had actually been accused of this before.
Waiting for our flights we met some more American study abroaders and the plane took off right on time, estimated landing time of 2:10am.
This was relax and errand day before we headed south to Patagonia. Our flight was at 10:50pm so we had plenty of time. We did laundry, cleaned the apartment, did some grocery shopping, organized our things and plans, went to Florida street to change money and eat at a small parilla, and other things. I bought the flip flops I really needed and we got rain covers for our backpacks. I met up with Emma briefly to thank her and say bye as well.
We caught a cab to the local small airport at around 8:45. The cab driver accused me of closing the door to hard. He said every single American does that as if the door is a revolving door, which was funny to me because I had actually been accused of this before.
Waiting for our flights we met some more American study abroaders and the plane took off right on time, estimated landing time of 2:10am.
Tuesday -
We landed abruptly because there was zero light to gauge our altitude before the runway lights. This airport was in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Which meant amazing stargazing! The airport was the smallest airport I have ever been in, and we got a fixed price, 25 minute cab ride directly to the hostel where were not staying. The cab driver turned that into an 18 minute ride though, at one point he was going 135 km/hr, which is only like 85 mph. This really wouldn’t have been that big of a deal, but the speed limit was 60 km/hr, which made me wonder when we were going to skid on some ice and have a massive crash. We didn’t.
We got to the hostel at about 3am and had a bus to catch at 8am. So we had 5 hours to kill, and we saw this situation coming. We had reservations here after our Torres Del Paine 5 day trek, so we asked the hostel guy if we could just sit and hang on the couch to kill time. He said yes, but he was sleeping on the couch downstairs, so we had to go upstairs and be “siliencio absolutamente”. He wasn’t kidding because when we were whispering and exchanging stories with the study abroad girls, he came up stairs and threatened to kick us out. From then on, we made zero noise until about 6am as we messed with our phones, used the wifi, charged our things, and dozed off a few times to pass time. It ended up working out really well.
We got to the bus station at about 7:35am and there were already people there waiting that may or may not have spent the night in the station, not sure. We checked in, enduring the stressed out lady processing our tickets, and hopped on the bus that left promptly at 7:58am.
Sleeping was pretty easy off and on, and about 3.5 hours into the 5 hour drive, we stopped at the Argentinean and Chilean check points. At the Chilean check they had us bring our handbags off the bus, and sent them through an x-ray machine. They confiscated natural foods like fruits and nuts and such, we didn’t have any, but apparently they’re trying to prevent famine to agriculture or something of the sort.
We arrived in Puerto Natales at around 1pm and lugged our stuff the 10 minute walk to the hostel. The 70 degrees and clear skies weather made it a bit easier. At the Singing Lamb hostel (highly recommended, by the way), we took care of the important things first by making sure we could connect to the wifi, and then proceeded to check in. We threw our stuff down on our beds in one of the dorms with 9 beds and relaxed for a bit before the “3 o’clock talk” at the Erratic Rock. Erratic Rock is a hostel, rental store, bar, and overall helpful place to do Torres Del Paine national park and trek. Every day at 3pm, they have a little briefing about the park and any information would help us. We were both complete rookies at this stuff.
The guy who talked to us (I think his name was Coone, Dutch guy with great English) was fantastic. Even though he geared the talk toward those who were camping, we learned important info about the buses, hiking, packing, and timing strategies, and recommended view points and pathways. We clearly picked the right time of year to go because everything (for the most part) was still open, and Coone said that this was the fewest people that had ever attended the 3pm talk. There were probably 15 of us in there and he said usually there are 50+ anxious trekkers packed into the room. After the talk, we were starving so we found a bank to get some Chilean pesos. I forgot my debit card so Gabi got enough for both of us and I’ll pay him back on Venmo (seriously that app makes the world go round). Gabi pulled out $200 USD, which of course is 125,231 Chilean pesos. I’m not kidding. The current exchange rate is 626.16 Chilean pesos for 1 USD. He gave me 40,000 clp so I could have some, and we found a place to eat across the street called Repizza. In dire need of food, we both ordered burgers (4,500 pesos each, naturally), and we decided to split their signature dish called something I can’t remember consisting of chicken, steak, hot dog, eggs, fries, cheese, and vegetable. We got the smaller version priced at 7,500 pesos. Our burgers came first and they were large great, mine was gone in about 75 seconds. Then, came this mound of food probably twice the size of a Don Juan (shoutout). My jaw dropped when I saw it, there couldn’t have been any food left in the kitchen, it was all on this plate. We laughed when the waitress put this plate on our table. It was actually quite delicious, and after doing as much damage as we possibly could, probably ¾ of the dish was still sitting there. So we asked for a to-go moving truck and made our way to run some errands.
First was the pharmacy for sunscreen and allergy pills, then frutas secas (dried fruits) for some energy on the trails, then FantasticoSur to finalize everything with the refugios, then a print shop to print confirmation pages, then a store for trekking pants, then the optics shop for sunglasses (mine were stolen by Aerolineas Argentina). Then we relaxed at the hostel knowing we had plenty of time the next day to pack and organize before the 2:30pm bus to Torres Del Paine National Park. All we could discuss is how excited we were.
We landed abruptly because there was zero light to gauge our altitude before the runway lights. This airport was in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Which meant amazing stargazing! The airport was the smallest airport I have ever been in, and we got a fixed price, 25 minute cab ride directly to the hostel where were not staying. The cab driver turned that into an 18 minute ride though, at one point he was going 135 km/hr, which is only like 85 mph. This really wouldn’t have been that big of a deal, but the speed limit was 60 km/hr, which made me wonder when we were going to skid on some ice and have a massive crash. We didn’t.
We got to the hostel at about 3am and had a bus to catch at 8am. So we had 5 hours to kill, and we saw this situation coming. We had reservations here after our Torres Del Paine 5 day trek, so we asked the hostel guy if we could just sit and hang on the couch to kill time. He said yes, but he was sleeping on the couch downstairs, so we had to go upstairs and be “siliencio absolutamente”. He wasn’t kidding because when we were whispering and exchanging stories with the study abroad girls, he came up stairs and threatened to kick us out. From then on, we made zero noise until about 6am as we messed with our phones, used the wifi, charged our things, and dozed off a few times to pass time. It ended up working out really well.
We got to the bus station at about 7:35am and there were already people there waiting that may or may not have spent the night in the station, not sure. We checked in, enduring the stressed out lady processing our tickets, and hopped on the bus that left promptly at 7:58am.
Sleeping was pretty easy off and on, and about 3.5 hours into the 5 hour drive, we stopped at the Argentinean and Chilean check points. At the Chilean check they had us bring our handbags off the bus, and sent them through an x-ray machine. They confiscated natural foods like fruits and nuts and such, we didn’t have any, but apparently they’re trying to prevent famine to agriculture or something of the sort.
We arrived in Puerto Natales at around 1pm and lugged our stuff the 10 minute walk to the hostel. The 70 degrees and clear skies weather made it a bit easier. At the Singing Lamb hostel (highly recommended, by the way), we took care of the important things first by making sure we could connect to the wifi, and then proceeded to check in. We threw our stuff down on our beds in one of the dorms with 9 beds and relaxed for a bit before the “3 o’clock talk” at the Erratic Rock. Erratic Rock is a hostel, rental store, bar, and overall helpful place to do Torres Del Paine national park and trek. Every day at 3pm, they have a little briefing about the park and any information would help us. We were both complete rookies at this stuff.
The guy who talked to us (I think his name was Coone, Dutch guy with great English) was fantastic. Even though he geared the talk toward those who were camping, we learned important info about the buses, hiking, packing, and timing strategies, and recommended view points and pathways. We clearly picked the right time of year to go because everything (for the most part) was still open, and Coone said that this was the fewest people that had ever attended the 3pm talk. There were probably 15 of us in there and he said usually there are 50+ anxious trekkers packed into the room. After the talk, we were starving so we found a bank to get some Chilean pesos. I forgot my debit card so Gabi got enough for both of us and I’ll pay him back on Venmo (seriously that app makes the world go round). Gabi pulled out $200 USD, which of course is 125,231 Chilean pesos. I’m not kidding. The current exchange rate is 626.16 Chilean pesos for 1 USD. He gave me 40,000 clp so I could have some, and we found a place to eat across the street called Repizza. In dire need of food, we both ordered burgers (4,500 pesos each, naturally), and we decided to split their signature dish called something I can’t remember consisting of chicken, steak, hot dog, eggs, fries, cheese, and vegetable. We got the smaller version priced at 7,500 pesos. Our burgers came first and they were large great, mine was gone in about 75 seconds. Then, came this mound of food probably twice the size of a Don Juan (shoutout). My jaw dropped when I saw it, there couldn’t have been any food left in the kitchen, it was all on this plate. We laughed when the waitress put this plate on our table. It was actually quite delicious, and after doing as much damage as we possibly could, probably ¾ of the dish was still sitting there. So we asked for a to-go moving truck and made our way to run some errands.
First was the pharmacy for sunscreen and allergy pills, then frutas secas (dried fruits) for some energy on the trails, then FantasticoSur to finalize everything with the refugios, then a print shop to print confirmation pages, then a store for trekking pants, then the optics shop for sunglasses (mine were stolen by Aerolineas Argentina). Then we relaxed at the hostel knowing we had plenty of time the next day to pack and organize before the 2:30pm bus to Torres Del Paine National Park. All we could discuss is how excited we were.