Day 504 - Torres del Paine, Chile
Kayaking Adventure - Day 504
The great Blue Towers of Patagonia generate massive clouds which the wind pulls slowly away in resolute and ragged sheets. The mist and clouds are so big that it can feel as though the mountains and not the clouds are moving across the sky. The peaks and glaciers, lakes and rivers create so much weather it turns them into a massive shell game, often leaving them cloud enshrouded, like Kilimanjaro or Mount Fuji or the Matterhorn. But this morning the weather is perfect.
We gulp down breakfast at Hosteria Lago and rattle into the park to meet our kayaking guide Carlos at the Hotel Lago Grey. The floor to ceiling windows of the restaurant show off expansive views of the towers. Below sits the tongue of Grey Glacier which spills into the lake and river of the same name. Unlike the Serrano and Pehoe rivers, the Grey is, in fact, grey and today it is running swift with a solid breeze in the 50 degree weather.
Near the shore of the hotel, Carlos and his compatriots Paula and Cristobal set us up for the trip. Carlos' business is a small operation, but he's kept busy running excursions out of Puerto Natales daily, sometimes two a day, often with several kayakers. Today though, it's just us and so we have the benefit of the three of them to take care of the two of us. It's a job yanking on the wet suits, and there's some fumbling and grappling. These contraptions are absolutely water tight to ensure we aren't soaked by the glacial water if it dumps us wrong-side up. The rubber at the neck had Cyn feeling slightly strangled, but a few seconds later she was fine. With our kayak bibs hanging around our waists we look like a couple of pregnant bugs, but it's those bibs that will keep us in and the water out.
It takes some hauling to get the double kayaks into the lake, but once in the current quickly pulls us into the mouth of the river, sweeping us away from the towers toward its pale blue sister the Rio Serrano. I ride with Paula, Cyn with Carlos, and Cristobal (Chris, father of two) heads off in a big pick-up to meet us for a bite halfway down the 18 mile trip.
Carlos says you can never be sure what you'll find when you get in the river. Today we're blessed. Kayakers faced gusty winds and hard rains yesterday, he says. For us, the breeze is at our backs and the broad river's currents are calm. Here and there we skirt a boulder or two, but there is no serious white water to navigate or nasty whirlpools to avoid. This made the trip uneventful, but relaxing. Behind us were the craggy spires, ahead the flat Chilean pampas, and along the bank low hills of scrub and green brush. Sitting in the kayak, the currents rock you like a great hand and here and there gusty rain would fall for a few minutes and then disappear as quickly as it arrived. Otherwise, silence. We were in the mountain's personal weather system and the clouds rolled past us in a great, cumulus parade as the kayaks road us through places that few humans had ever seen as recently a 100 years ago.
Cristobal meets us at Grey Bridge with a boxed chicken lunch. It was delicious and quickly gone (anytime you're hiking, camping or kayaking it seems the food is always perfect). We sat and watched the river roll by. Its current was high. It was summer and the glacier melt and yesterday's rains gave it force. While we were on the kayak I asked Paula about her favorite trips in the area and she told me about the "O" Circuit - a nine day trek that takes you through and around the towers. When I asked for more details, she wrote it down in my notebook and I've added it to the gallery here.
Back in the kayaks I felt we made record time and before we knew it we could make out the ice blue confluence of the Serrano with the Grey. This was the end of the trip and we were sorry it was over. We peeled ourselves out of our wetsuits, hugged our goodbyes.
"It was a good trip," said Carlos, in his excellent English. "The weather was kind and it doesn't always happen that way. " We agreed, but now it was time to move on.
Torres del Paine Recommendations
“Torres del Paine National Park, in Chile’s Patagonia region, is known for its soaring mountains, bright blue icebergs that cleave from glaciers and golden pampas (grasslands) that shelter rare wildlife such as llama-like guanacos. Some of its most iconic sites are the 3 granite towers from which the park takes its name and the horn-shaped peaks called Cuernos del Paine.”