Today was a long, hard day of walking. The guidebook said that it takes about 4 hours to climb to the top. Usually I take an hour off these estimates as I walk very quickly (as those who know me are well aware), and so I made it to the towers in about 3 hours. The hike was actually a lot tougher than I expected, especially the last 45 mins - 1 hour where you are just scrambling over steep rock faces. I’m not used to carrying so much weight on my back, which only added to the difficulty, especially with a bad shoulder. However, as you can see from the photos, it’s worth all of the pain as it’s a little piece of paradise up there! I was lucky with the weather as there was no wind or rain and it was relatively sunny.
I stuck around for an hour to eat my lunch and admire the view. I was shortly joined by some guy who came and sat next to me, despite the thousands of other rocks he could have sat on. Here we go, I thought. His name was Mauricio and he was a policeman working and living in Santiago (tough gig right now!) Here is a sample of some of his cliched lines:
“Where’s your husband? Are you travelling alone?”
“Are all Scottish women as beautiful as you?”
“You’re really in shape, you must do a lot of exercise.”
“I really love Braveheart and bagpipe music”
For those of you who like to climb mountains, you’ll know the most soul destroying part is knowing you have to go back down! The descent is often much harder than the climb, and this was definitely the case here! Everything hurt at this point. What got me through it was the knowledge that there was a free welcome pisco sour waiting for me in my hostel! I’m glad I’ll be having an easier day. Only 13.6km and a more or less flat route (or so I’m told).
Back at my hostel I claimed my free pisco sour and sat outside to admire the view of Las Torres. They look deceptively close, within touching distance. Dinner is a 3 course meal. 3 courses of absolute shite that is. The soup starter was insipid and tasted like slightly salted water. The creamy chicken with rice main was marginally better and the cheesecake dessert was minuscule. It’s all part of my package, and there’s no other option but to eat in the hostels, so you eat what you’re given. Bit of a cheek to charge £22 for it though.
Over dinner I met a nice bunch of folk from the Netherlands. They didn’t have to tell me they were Dutch, I knew from looking at them! We had a drink and a couple of games of jenga before turning in for the night. When I travel these days I avoid shared dorms in hostels at all costs. I see the value for meeting people, but I’m at a certain age where I like my privacy, and my sleep! I was reminded of just how awful it was after a 230 alarm goes off and some guy puts his light on and starts packing up his things to set off for a sunrise hike. I don’t know how many pockets his backpack had but all I heard for about 20 minutes was bloody zips! If he had any decency he’d have sorted his stuff out the night before! Raging. Not only that he did nothing but snore up until that point!
Day 2 (the easiest day of all) was not so easy and it certainly wasn’t flat! I guess they probably think the earth is flat too. The walk is entirely along the lake, so it’s very scenic, but it is rather up and down. It probably would have been a piece of cake on the first day, but I was still tired from yesterday and so it wasn’t plain sailing. This was probably more to do with the blisters on my feet than it was the route.
I arrived at my next hostel, Domo Frances, at around 2pm, so it was a much shorter day. Although this meant that there was little to do in the afternoon, I was glad of the opportunity to have more time to rest my legs. This camp is a lot smaller than the other one, then again it’s pretty much in the middle of the forest. The staff live on site and work 11 days on and 4 off (because clearly it isn’t possible to commute). They have staff quarters located down a forest path with a sign that reads “staff only”. I’m picturing a scene out of dirty dancing where I sneak in and find them all dancing raunchy, but I couldn’t find any watermelons to carry.
The camp itself is pretty cool though, and the dorms are basically huge green pods, so it’s kind of like glamping. I’m sharing mine with a father and son french duo and 4 American OAPs who very loudly and brashly proclaimed their discomfort about sharing a dorm with strangers. Feel free to sleep on the floor outside guys!
I wasn’t particularly looking forward to dinner, so I made sure to save most of my snacks for that day just in case! However, it was slightly better than the other hostel. The soup was different and had more flavour and the main was meat and pasta which was edible.
Unfortunately they placed me next to a french group on one side and a loud bunch of Americans on the other. I chose the lesser of two evils and started chatting to the Americans (one woman and 4 gay guys from Alaska) who turned out to be a barrel of laughs. It was a mutual instant connection. They asked me if I was with the group to my left (the french) to which I responded, with I’m told a rather disgusted look on my face, “I’m not french!”. From that point onwards we hit it off and I ended up spending the night drinking wine with them and walking with them the next day.
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