O.K., don't read this second part without reading Part 1 first, you won't fully understand what we went through. I'm posting a couple of pictures so you have to go down and find the next part. One is my sister posing early on in the hike and one is of a guanaco (a guanaco is like a llama) and lots live here. We've actually seen more guanaco carcasses than live guanacos which is scary. It's like the killing fields here, they get massacred by pumas at night.
So on with the story. Here's a recap: we're on a day-long hike which is supposed to be around 5 hours that stretches into 14. We've had lunch, hiked and hiked and hiked and hiked and plotted ways to kill the guide who lied and told us it was easy. So finally we see Lake Sarmiento and we're SO HAPPY!! It's the largest lake in the park and has these distinctive calcium carbonate cliffs. Lake Sarmiento's supposed to be the end. But we have to go down the hill and into a valley and here's the big problem. We start going down this really long valley that leads to the lake and after hiking for an hour I start thinking, but don't we have to CROSS Lake Sarmiento where it separates from it's other half? But after going down the valley of death (there are THOUSANDS of guanaco bones here) I think, oh, we're following a path, SOMEONE knows how to get us back. Oh no. We come out at the opposite END of Lake Sarmiento and have to hike along the cliffs to get back to where it connects with the road. So we are literally clinging onto these calcium carbonate cliffs, climbing up and down for 2 hours to get back to where we have to get across. My palms are sweating even writing this, I can't believe I did it. We were on calcium carbonate, a path?! as wide as my shoe, hanging onto the rock wall with nothing but ocean about 100 yards down. You know how sometimes when you look at a cliff and all you see are those horizontal lines showing the different rock stratas? That's what we had to climb across for 2 hours. Already tired and having gone 17 km. My muscles were shaking. I thought I'd turn around and my sister would be gone, having fallen. And Nicolas, our fearless guide, kept running on ahead to make sure the path was safe because apparently at least part of the way we were following a GUANACO path, not a human path. It's about at this point in time where Nicolas comes back and says we have to hurry, we have to make it before the sun goes down. I know why... there are pumas that live around this lake and would probably love a human snack. It's also at this point where Nicolas confesses that we took a wrong turn at the swamp and he's so sorry that he's gotten us into this. I was just like, but you can get us out right? He said yes, there is a way. Finally we get around the lake and slide down a cliffside on our butts, ripping the hell out of our pants. Then we climb one final fearsome hill (still no path) and get on the half day path, that we've done before, finally! And it's dark by now and I am panicking. I keep telling Nicolas to slow down, we have to wait for my sister and that we need to all stay together. And I keep calling to my sister, hurry! She said later that she knew she had to kick it up a notch because she could tell I was in panic mode and that all I could think of was pumas. Finally we could see the van lights and I asked Nicolas to radio to have him blow the horn, maybe I was thinking to scare the pumas off? And he tells me, they don't have horns, they disable them because they can't use them in the park. Then right before we get to the van all these dark shapes come up to us and basically we're accosted by a family of nandu/yandu? The van driver said they are wild ostriches. What a crazy way to end the day. I drank 2 Cokes in the van and hugged the van driver (who spoke no English and I'm sure was totally weirded out by having this panicked American girl hugging him). When we got back to the hotel I hugged Nicolas like 3 times and thanked him for getting us out of there right in the nick of time after it got dark. Then I thanked God for getting us out. So 13 hours and 38 minutes later, we end our odyssey. Today I can barely move. My arms don't want to do any work since I used my poles all of yesterday to climb and my legs are all cut up from the calcium cliffs. So I'm on the internet today. Have a great day everyone! Be glad you're not lost in Towers of Pain National Park!
No comments:
Post a Comment