Torres del Paine (random):
after the hike:
To get to Puerto Madryn - to see Orcas! -, I had to spend three hours in Rio Gallegos, the most forsaken town ever. I felt a bit Butch Cassidy entering Patagonia - Squinting, excruciatingly dirty and with torn jeans (from when I fell from the sidewalk.. hum, yes that can happen...). Eva Peron is waving to the honking cars with grotesquely disproportionate arms. Always schlepping my stuff around, as it's always too hot or drafty in the bus. Desperate about my dry skin and the lack of stock I've bought a post-natal bodylotion somewhere, thinking it couldn't hurt, but now I can't find it. Met a single fortyish woman traveller on the bus who seriously scared me, as she was about everything I'm sometimes afraid I'll become, save for the cats. (Maybe they weren't with her). I walked to Rio G's "laguna," as the name conjured up images from my last, too exhausting trek in Chalten. There the rocky hills and crates of bleak pebbles rubble suddenly gave way ato a beautiful silvery laguna, very still with white ice lumps like swans and the Fitzroy scenery looking proudly down.
Not so here. steady strong wind and lots of garbage at the shore, several old tires. What do people do here? It's like post-Ford Detroit, without ever having been Detroit (not that I've been to detroit). In Chile they go on sugar and grow heavy. Here, I just don't know...
this is el chalten:
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