Torres del Paine, Chile

Just finished four days of backpacking in Parque Nationale Torres del Paine and it was among the best I´ve ever done, due in no small part to the fact that we experienced the nearly uheard-of phenomenon of nearly 100 consecutive hours of beautiful and wrathless Patagonian weather. Hiked up to the terminus of the South Patagonian Ice Field, which was a little too to wrap the noggin around, as well as two groups of bizarre rock formations called The Horns and The Towers.

Managed to negotiate the park with an unwieldy but outstanding group of ten folks, which was a feat in itself. Pedro the Columbian Lion ("I went to college in the United States, at Lehigh in Pennsylvania. You know, Harvard, Yale, MIT, Lehigh...") led the charge. Also present were Paul and Tony Finn (the crazy Irish cousins with the traffic cone company) and Graham the Brit (who you might remember from such adventures as "Bombarded with Snow and Misery at Salcantay Pass in Peru" and "Abandoned by the Side of the Road in the Middle of the Night Somewhere Outside La Paz, Bolivia." Tim and Faye, who were in on Freddy´s Bolivan Jeep Ride also made it, along with Alex and Fiona (really cool Aussie couple I met on the bus from Pucon to Puerto Montt and who came madly correct on The Boat), some random Israeli guy who actually disappeared halfway through the trip, and a marathon-running, wise-cracking, PR/Investor Relations-slinging girl from London who actually says things like, "I waited diligently for the chap ahead of me to cross the suspension bridge before proceeding as per the notification on the signpost only to find the Irish lads bouncing about behind me, sending the bridge asway to and fro like a couple of muppets," and who I suspect may also be a Duchess.

Was introduced to a different philosophy regarding backcountry eating on the first night when Graham and the Irish lads scoffed at my dehydrated pasta held forth with a sumptuous dinner of asparagus soup, crackers with pate, a can of corn, a can of pork and beans which they ate with hotdogs fried in butter (from a tub), a whole loaf of baked bread (with more butter from the tub), condensed milk, a liter of wine, and (I shit you not) a *whole* roasted chicken in a plastic container. I immediately tore into them, mocking their big-city ways relentlessly until they finished eating and offered me their leftovers, which I devoured ravenously in what would become a ritual I craved and anticipated furiously for the remainder of the trip.

Back in Puerto Natales now, where the church in the main square has been piping secular music into the air all day long through god-awful PA speakers in a scene reminiscent of the detainment camp where the Russians throw the parents in Red Dawn. A few minutes ago, some guys set up a stage with a somewhat bigger PA *directly in front of* the church, pointing straight at it, and are in the early stages of organizing what I can only assume is going to be a kind of "Karaoke in the Streets" festival, blaring "You Can Leave Your Hat On" directly into the face of the church´s choral music. As you can probably imagine, watching this happen was a rather bizarre experience.

Saying goodbye to most of the crew yet again tomorrow as they head toward New Zealand and I start the push down to Tierra del Fuego.

Amazingly, I´ve run out of books and was reduced to picking up a Spanish translation of Bukowski´s last novel to practice my Spanish. Not sure it´ll be the best primer but it´s sure to be full of some colorful new words.