Now it’s time for a few memorable stories and encounters from Puerto Natales and Torres Del Paine.
Oscar is Trouble
After a long day of travel from Santiago, we hop off the bus in Puerto Natales and start walking to find our home for the night. The town isn’t big, but it took us a little time to find our accommodations. NEWSFLASH, Google Maps is not always right. At the door, Oscar and Gloria, a super friendly couple, greet us. We all chit-chat for a bit before Kristin and I bring our bags to our room and get ready to call it a night.
This “bed and breakfast” is more or less a typical house with a living room, kitchen, office, and a few bedrooms. I walk out of our room, towards the bathroom and Oscar pops up out of nowhere. He immediately strikes up a conversation in his broken English and wants to show me more of their home/bed and breakfast. I agree, even though I could fall asleep standing up.
He takes me to the kitchen, points out some maps of Torres Del Paine in the office, and talks about the gear he can rent us. We pass by a classic Gateway desktop computer and Oscar slowly pats the tower and states “Mucho porno,” with a wink. Cool, definitely locking my door tonight. We end up in the living room and he wants to hang out, watch some TV and drink a beer. Normally, I would be all in because this is what our trip about, meeting new (and sometimes strange) people and immersing yourself in their culture. But, exhaustion has set in. He ends up inviting us to family dinner the following evening and I happily accept before heading to bed.
Dinner
The next day we show up to dinner with a bottle of wine. The table consists of ourselves, Oscar, Gloria, and a couple of their kids who are teenagers or older. Oscar serves a type of spaghetti or goulash that smells amazing. I am however caught off guard when Oscar picks up a squeeze bottle of mayonnaise and tops his pasta with a generous portion. He nods and passes the bottle to me with a smile. When in Rome, am I right?
The conversation over dinner was comical. Oscar loves to joke around and has multiple borderline creepy and inappropriate jokes. He really just wants to interact and entertain. His mustache doesn’t help the creepy factor. We talk about hiking, our world trip, and Chilean culture. After dinner, Oscar really wants me to drink, smoke, and go to the strip club with him. Did I mention we were a block away from the local gentleman’s club? This guy is 100% trouble.
With a multiple day thru-hike planned for the following morning I politely decline. I can only imagine how that night would have ended if I said yes. Only slightly regret declining the offer.
That Time Kristin Wanted to Kill Me
Me: “You ok with the title of this paragraph?”
Kristin: “I don’t know… I think it was worse than that.”
The day before we went on our trek in Torres Del Paine, our hosts, Oscar and Gloria, remind us that we need to hang our food from a tree at night so the mice don’t get into it. At our first site, Camping Central, there were also reminders about hanging food. Check. Got it. Hang food = no mice.
Now, let’s set the scene. It’s day 1 in the park, we had just hiked to the magnificent Torres. Back at camp, we make our dinner and watch as a random fox runs through the site. It’s been an amazing, but draining, day and we are exhausted. I start looking for an optimal tree where I can hang our food, because I don’t want to attract mice, right? I tie our food bag about 6 feet in the air and we get ready for bed.
An hour after we fall asleep, Kristin nudges me awake, telling me that she thinks a mouse bit her! Confused and groggy, I don’t believe her. She insists that she had some pasta sauce in her cuticle (yes she knows how disgusting that is and I have permission to write it) and woke up to a bite and swears a mouse scurried away. My half-asleep brain isn’t quite sure about this story. I look around the tent, but don’t see anything and end up going back to sleep with some earplugs in. Not because of Kristin, but because we are at a campsite and you never know what sort of noise people make.
Deep-Sleep Confusion
The next thing I know, Kristin is on top of me scream-whispering (is that a thing?) that there is a mouse in the tent. I was in a deeeep sleep, so it took me a few moments to realize what was going on. I look around the tent again and don’t see any critters. She asks if I put all the food up. That’s when I remember… some Germans I met gave me some tea and ginger that I had thrown in my bag. Oops. I get up, grab the items and go outside to hang them in the food bag. Problem solved?
At this point, Kristin is completely terrified and freaked out. Back in our sleeping bags we hear mice scurrying under our platform. I remember saying something like, “this is probably just where they live, don’t worry about it.” I roll over to go back to bed and about 15 minutes later Kristin hits me and I see a mouse scurrying across the top of our tent in between the roof screen and the rain fly. I smack the crap out of that thing right away.
The scurrying around doesn’t really stop all night. I get some sleep and Kristin get even less. She is not a happy camper.
Morning Surprise
The next morning we get up, make some oatmeal, and get ready to head to our next campsite. I start packing up my bag and I see a small hole has been chewed through the mesh in the front. Uh-oh. There is also a hole beyond the mesh that goes straight into the front pocket of my bag. I swear I hung up all the food! Or did I?
Well, it turns out that I had a silicon container of assorted wraps (peanut butter and meat/cheese) in my bag. I threw them in there and forgot about them, thinking they were hanging safely in our tree food bag.
I break the news to Kristin, and it doesn’t go well. Let’s just say that I’m lucky to still be alive and Kristin is now seeing a therapist for her trauma.
Hantavirus
So, it isn’t only gross having a rodent rummaging in your bag, it is also dangerous. Hantavirus is a disease spread by rodents through, urine, feces, saliva, or an actual bite. Well that sucks. The disease can cause fever, fatigue, muscle aches, vomiting, diarrhea, and even death. I use soap and water on everything in my backpack to get it clean and we just hope we don’t get sick.
Kristin also starts calling me mouse related nicknames the rest of the hike. At least she is talking to me
Puma
I mentioned this fun fact in my article about Torres Del Paine, but I guess there are 50-100 pumas in the national park. It is very unlikely to see or encounter a puma on the popular trails of the park. Well, guess what? Roughly 30 minutes into our first hike, on our first day, I look over and see it.
There is a large puma 10 meters away, walking parallel to the trail.
I immediately stop and realize I have no idea what the protocol is when you see a large predatory cat. I motion to Kristin to look at that giant thing that could eat both of us. We stand frozen as it slinks past us beside the trail and disappears behind some bushes. Kristin and I proceed to speed-walk up the trail before breathing a huge sigh of relief.
I looked up some tips for what to do when you see a puma. A little late, but whatever.
- DO NOT RUN. Nothing triggers this predator’s reflex like fleeing.
- Pick up small children. (That’s scary)
- Stare the puma down. Make loud noises and try to look bigger by waving your arms. Put the kid you just picked up on your shoulders. Throw rocks or other objects.
- If the puma attacks you, fight back. Kick it, hit it with branches or hiking sticks or rocks, punch it like it owes you money.
That’s not my Chapstick
This one is a quickie. It’s the day after the mouse incident and we are settling into our second half-board campsite that includes a rented tent and sleeping bags. We’re exhausted, and to save my marriage and my sanity, I have to make sure we have a rodent-free tent. So I make sure that ALL OF OUR FOOD IS HANGING FROM A TREE. Actually, I hung everything from a tree. Not taking any chances.
We wake up before dawn and stretch blissfully in our sleeping bags at the realization that we did in fact get a full night’s sleep, uninterrupted by scurrying little mice. Kristin is about to ask me for my chapstick, but she finds it first when her hand brushes by the tube at the top of her sleeping bag. She grabs the chapstick and applies it to her dry lips. When she tastes the flavor–cherry–she realizes in horror that this chapstick does not belong to either of us. We only use Burt’s Bees. She’d used a tube of chapstick that was leftover from this campsite’s last tenants. Not only is that disgusting on its own, it also means that our sleeping bags weren’t cleaned or switched out from the last hikers. Ew.
Toilet Paper Fire in the Park?
On our final day of hiking we walk through a section (possibly the French Valley) of the trail where all the trees are charred. It’s wild because the trees almost look like they are made of silver. We do a little research and find this story about a tourist who wanted to get rid of their used toilet paper, so they lit it on fire. Before leaving the area, this bonehead said they made sure the TP fire was extinguished, but apparently that was not the case.
The result of this irresponsible behavior was a massive fire that ended up burning 40,000 acres. That’s roughly 7% of Torres Del Paine. The fire raged for 9 days before firefighters got it under control. This happened in 2011 and it is estimated that it’ll take almost 200 years for some of the vegetation to recover. Hikers also had to be evacuated from the park during the fire.
