Sunday, April 6, 2008

Our plan to take video of the sunrise was foiled because it was cloudy and raining, which was a bummer because we had woken up early specifically to see it. We ate breakfast and got ready for our hike to Ferrier. Our guide was Will, who was from California. He had come to Torres Del Paine several months ago, and just never went home. We were the only two people on the hike.

The weather was bad, but we were hopeful it would get better since the weather always changes. It did change, but for the worse. The hike was basically straight up a 2000 foot hill, like the worlds longest staircase. About halfway up we were in the snow. It would have been nice had it not been snowing on us as well. We could take almost no photos or videos because of the conditions.

Near the top we started walking through a beech forest, which was nice because of the snow on the trees. At the very top it was basically a blizzard, with sustained winds of 70 mph and gusts of up to 90 mph, and with snow right in our face. That being said, the view to the northeast and east was very nice - we could see almost all of the lakes and valleys in the park. On a clear day, we're sure the view would have been even better.

The hike down was treacherous because everything was slippery; Justin fell down yet again. We were back down the mountain at about noon, with everything soaked. Back at our hotel room, we put on some dry clothes and then ate lunch. There was hardly anyone there - most of the people were apparently on full day treks. Since we had no dry clothes, since it was still raining, and since we were exhausted, we just slept instead of going on our afternoon excursion.

Around 5pm we went down to the bar. We moved when this couple sat down 20 feet away from us and started loudly discussing politics just after mentioning they liked being away from the US and all of the political coverage. After dinner, we went to bed early since we were going to leave the hotel at 5am the next morning.