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I'm sitting in the tiniest cyber café yet, squished into a room in a hostel up the hill overlooking Puerto Williams, which lays greater claim to the title of 'the most southern town in the world' than does Ushuaia, just northwest of here and on the other side of the Beagle Channel. It certainly feels more 'end-of-the-worldy' here, too. The wind (and snow - yes, despite this being the middle of the southern hemisphere's summer!) howls down the streets of wooden coloured houses which look as though they could be blown away in a second... The town is actually the main town (and only one?!) of the 'Borough of Cape Horn', considered to be within 'Chilean Antarctica', although we're not on Antarctica itself...
There isn't the tourism which riddles Ushuaia, and it's largely a case of guessing which services are offered in which little coloured building and for which two hours of the day those services are available: one tiny bank, one teeny post office (which we must get to before we leave to get our passports stamped to prove that we've been here!), a café-cum-boat-ticket-office, a place to eat one set menu of soup and empanadas (seafood pasties this time) and for the yachtsmen to drink and spin their yarns.... and that's about it... There are a lot of Chilean Navy men walking around and fishing boats, navy vessels and yachts parked in different places along the bay. I like it. It must be a glum place for most of the year, but there's a definite sense that you're at the end of everything.
A Very Scary Day
(...'though before you read on, know that we're absolutely fine...!)
You'll know that we came here to do a five day trek - the Dientes (teeth) de Navarino - so called for the spikey mountains that the trek circumnavigates. Having had to wait two days to be able to cross the Beagle Channel we had to squeeze this into four days (quite do-able by all accounts - many do it in three). We arrived on Monday lunchtime, booked ourselves into Pusaki, run by the apparently infamous 'Patty', and readied ourselves to leave the next morning; I was to carry the food (good idea!) and Simon everything else including our sleeping gear and tent.
After a night of broken sleep (mainly due to fighting, barking dogs outside our window and Patty and a couple of her other guests necking copious amounts of red wine and having a good old time!), we breakfasted and set off to the trailhead on the outskirts of the town.
The sun was shining and the first part of the walk up through a steep sloping forest was lovely and very sheltered, with laid out paths and the sun bursting through the trees and every now and then a wonderful view back down over Puerto Williams and the Beagle Channel. I was down to my T-shirt and Simon had even attractively rolled up his waterproof trousers! We remembered what the Dutch couple we'd met at the tango show in Buenos Aires had told us about this trek being 'easy', and thought that it was going to be a breeze.
Oh, how wrong we were!
The minute we emerged from the trees at the top of the hill, the wind hit us like a train (this was expected) and it was on with the fleeces and jackets, down with the rolled up waterproof trousers, and on with the hats and hoods as we put our heads down, drove our walking poles hard into the ground and pushed on up to the Chilean bandera (flag) at the top, and on over the plateau that stretched out in front of us. Nearly being blown off our feet and momentarily taking shelter at the top of the treeline which ran below us to eat some nuts and raisins, we began to question the Lonely Planet's description of this as a 'moderate to demanding' walk... the initial part of which clearly doesn't take into account the unpredictability of the weather this far south in the world...
We had also lost the path and the next long part of the trek was across steep scree slopes which were really hard to cross; we were continually slipping and felt to be going one step forward and two steps back all the time. Eventually we found the path again, which made walking somewhat easier although it had now started snowing as well as blowing strong gales and it was hard-going and the visibility really poor.
We established which of the several lakes below us it was that we were heading to and descended to its banks to shelter (as best we could) for a lunch of cheese and biscuits, five hours after setting off from Puerto Williams. This is where you camp if you are doing the trek in five days, but we (although Simon insists that it was largely me) decided we needed to push on over the pass ahead of us to be able to get around the circuit in four days.
The terrain got worse (we next had to climb up alongside the 'waterfall' that descended into the lake) and the snow had begun to settle. By the time we got above the lake and were heading up towards the pass an hour later, we were surrounded by white blizzard and thick grey clouds. Nonetheless we pushed on - that we shouldn't have done is one of the many lessons we learnt that day. In one sense, however, we were growing in confidence. The SNUPIEs (the international signing system used to mark the route) were cropping up all the time, interspersed with cairns and we felt that it wouldn't be long before we were over the pass and camping at the next camping spot....
But once at the pass, the blizzard was so strong that we just struck off in the direction that seemed most likely without consulting the guide and after an hour off traversing more rocky ground and in retrospect dangerously unpredictable snow drifts we realised that we had gone the wrong way around a lake. We stared hopelessly at the what seemed now very ominous black peaks of the Dientes above us, shrouded in thick grey cloud, and it felt really quite scary. It was not a nice feeling and neither of us wanted to be there. There was nowhere to go... We considered our options and the only one we really had was to go back to the lake where we'd had lunch. (As I write this, the man in the internet café is telling a German tourist that 'this is the worst weather (they've) ever had'...)
We climbed back up over the rocks, across the snow drifts on hands and knees (very frightening, the winds the strongest they'd been and the slope dropping steeply below us into the lake), following our own, nearly disappeared footprints, and back up to the pass. Once we'd got to the top, we were able to look back at where we should have gone - around the west side of the lake across a steep slope below the Dientes. It was described in the guide as a tricky part to cross especially if there was 'remaining snow' and it was wet. There was, however, nothing old or 'remaining' about the snow that lay there now, and there was no way that either of us were going to attempt crossing it. For the first time in about an hour, our decision made, we began to realise that we were going to make it to somewhere safe to spend the night.
We walked back down to the first lake, the snow falling thick and fast and the landscape disappearing more and more under a blanket of white. The momentary bursts of sun would reveal really beautiful views looking back down the valley towards Puerto Williams - beautiful despite how we were feeling. We were now so cold and tired and had been walking for about nine or ten hours, all this with huge weights on our backs, especially Simon, whose shoulders couldn't take much more. Finally we got down to the lake and found a damp, flattish, relatively sheltered bit of space for the tent. It would do fine.
We put on whatever we had that was dry and ate dinner inside our sleeping bags. Simon had gone to get water from the stream (slipping on his bum in the snow just as he reached the tent with a pan full of water - funny, him being in just boxers and a jacket, and yet not at all after the day we'd had...) and afterwards we fell asleep. We were warm enough, just, and actually slept for a long time. Ultimately we were in a good situation. The snow was piling up outside our tent, but the alternative walk back to Puerto Williams that we would take the next day (there was no way we were going to try and push on with the trek), along the river at the bottom of the valley was going to be easier than climbing up back across the scree slopes. We were not stuck between two passes which we would have been had we gone the right way earlier on, and prospects were 'good'! We did, however, realise that there must be other people half way around the trek...
The next morning (yesterday) we woke up to a foot or more of snow around the tent (it is still soaking wet rolled up at the bottom of the bed in the hostel). Eventually we had packed everything up, pulled on our jackets, 'waterproof' trousers and shoes (all wet through) and set off 'home' through the snow. The first bits were tricky as we tried to find the trail and navigated our way around and down between lakes (often big drops), between trees, through undergrowth and over rocks, our limbs really aching and feeling very wet and cold. But then as we descended and became less exposed, the wind was less harsh, the trees sheltered us and everything felt a lot calmer. We even felt 'lucky' to be able to see everything coated in snow and looking so beautiful. We gradually left the whiteness behind and were getting our first glimpses of the Beagle Channel again. It wouldn't be long before we were back in warmth. The last few hours were through forest, along well marked trails, feeling the heavier weights of our backpacks, but not having to think about whether we were going the right way...
It took us about six hours to get back to Puerto Williams. It was snowing there too and they opened the door to us at the hostel, telling us how they'd been thinking about us all day and exclaiming how not normal this weather is at this time of year. It was good to be there - very good.
Everyone's been talking about the 'freak weather'. When you look up at the mountains, they're covered in snow and still shrouded in cloud. The police station have said that everyone is back off the trail. A German couple arrived a few hours after us having done the whole thing in a day less than they planned and walked 12 hours that day.
It's been an adventure. I think we both feel like we've come through something really 'big' together. And we've learnt a few lessons - mainly about what not to do 'next time'. But then the decisions we did make made getting back easier, if you see what I mean. We could have been a lot more 'stuck'. Mad mad mad.
So now we're back here in Puerto Williams, indulging in Patty's woodburning stoves and homemade cooking and short(!) walks around the town while we wait for another boat out. This one leaves on Saturday (apparently almost always without fail, it being somewhat bigger than the rubber dinghy we came here on!), and this time up the Beagle Channel for Punta Arenas where we'll arrive 30 hours later (I suspect a bit green!)
Another unforgettable experience. And we've certainly felt to be at the end of the world.
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