Patagonia: Part 1
If you follow me on Instagram, I’m sure you’re overly aware—due to my grotesque amount of posts—that I went to Patagonia over Thanksgiving. Since then, I’ve been asked a lot of questions about my trip. So, rather than ramble on about my current thoughts, I thought I would delve into my trip.
When i started writing this post it quickly got VERY long—and not just because of my ADD tangents. To save you all the pain of a 10,000-word post, I decided to break up my Patagonia trip into two posts. For today, I'm just going to talk about my planning process. In part two, I'll tell you more about the trip itself.
So let’s begin…..
How the Trip Came About
This is a pretty simple answer: someone pissed me off. Kidding.
…..Well, half-kidding
I had been ruminating on going to Patagonia for a few months around October/November of 2017. As soon as I get back from one trip —if not before—I am already thinking about where I want to go next. And if there’s one thing I f*cking love… it’s mountains. And seeing as I had already been to Banff, I thought Patagonia was probably next.
But, I wasn’t set on it. I had mentioned it to people that it was a place I was thinking about and everyone was like, “That would be awesome! It’s on my bucket list!” Well, mine too buddy. Mine too.
What really solidified my decision, though, was a terrible New Years and a guy making me feel like shit about myself.
Reader's Digest Version:
He traded me out for someone else—or as I tell myself now...downgraded. And, for me, it doesn't matter if I just met the person 2 months ago or have known them for years, being traded out always makes me initially feel like I'm not good enough. And f*ck that feeling. I’m going to be awesome.
So—in true Kaitlyn fashion—I said, “f*ck this shit, I’m going on a trip.”
My two biggest trips, Africa (maybe I’ll share the story of that trip in a future post) and Patagonia have been post being hurt by someone in this way. But instead of wallowing in it and questioning why I’m not good enough, I say, “f*ck them” and go live the best life I can, the best way I know how: Travel.
So to kick start my “f*ck you” phase, I booked a ticket at the end of the week to go to Yosemite and hike up to the sub-dome of Half Dome (the base right before the cables) January 19-21—just two weeks later.
The view of Half Dome from the sub dome.
It’s probably still my most impulsive trip to date. But from there, I started planning to *try* to do something epic or worthwhile every month. Adventures make me feel alive and that I’m taking full advantage of the time I’ve been given and not wallowing in my insecurities. Experiences that make me feel that my life is worthwhile. However, I had just moved into an exorbitantly priced apartment, so I knew I would only be able to do one big trip. And as I always say: Go Big or Go Home!
I do want to note here that just because traveling makes my life worthwhile, doesn’t mean yours isn’t if you don’t. You may have other things that fill your life and give you more happiness than travel ever could. And, hopefully—one day—I will have more important things in my life than travel that makes my life worthwhile.
So, back to the story….
The trip really started solidifying as a definite mid-February when I posted on Facebook if anyone was interested in going to Patagonia over Thanksgiving; and, unsurprisingly, my constant travel companion, Lisa, was once again down for an adventure.
Side Bar:
A little insight into Lisa’s and my relationship. The second time I ever met Lisa was in Heathrow Airport, on our way to South Africa. I posted on Facebook months prior asking if anyone was interested in doing the Garden Route in South Africa. She hopped on board without missing a beat and suggested adding Victoria Falls—which we did. That trip was f*cking awesome, and we met some amazing people along the way—such as our friend Josh, who joined me in Patagonia, and our friend Victor, who we saw when we traveled to Barcelona together. Since then, I have traveled with Lisa more than anyone else—5 trips totaling 7 countries, 4 states, and 2 national parks. All in the span of 3 years. Thank god she can put up with me and is always down for crazy adventures. Oh, and she is always up for spontaneity. Our trip to Banff and Jasper we planned—and booked—all within a 30-minute window on Facebook and we departed just 3 weeks later. Needless to say, if you need a travel companion, she’d probably be down.
So enough about Lisa….back to Patagonia. (No offense Lisa if you’re reading this…)
However, Lisa wasn’t the only one. Our friend Josh, who as I already mentioned we met in South Africa, also chimed in. And this kid loves his adventures. And what better way to reunite than to go on another epic trip. Thus, the planning began…
How I Planned it
Now the real fun began….planning.
If you need someone to plan a trip for you, holla at ya girl.
All I knew I wanted to do in Patagonia was hike and see pretty mountains. But the first question was where??
If you aren’t aware, saying you’re going to Patagonia is like saying you’re going to the Sierra Nevadas or the Rocky Mountains. It’s a massive area that spans multiple countries. Not just a brand at REI.
So first thing I did was Google, “Top places to see in Patagonia.” (Google and I are besties.) After googling the places listed—read, “looking up pictures”—I decided that the creme de la creme was in the south and that the highlights to see were Torres del Paine, Bernardo O’Higgins, Fitz Roy, and the Perito Moreno Glacier…as well as one or two more.
I was already set on these locations when Josh and Lisa risked going on another adventure with me. Lisa, then mentioned the W Trek and that she had a few friends that had done it. And, to be honest…..I had no f*cking idea what that was. But after my trusty advisor Google informed me that it was in Torres del Paine, I was sooo down.
So, after finalizing dates so that Josh had one extra day in the states after touring across the country for the month—he was on what he liked to call “funemployment”—it was decided that we would fly into Punta Arenas on November 22 and depart December 1. 11 Days. That’s it. That’s all I had to work with.
Okay…so, first things first, how do I get from the airport to Torres del Paine?
With a little google mapping, I discovered we could take a bus directly from Punta Arenas airport to Puerto Natales—the closest city to the park. It would take about 3 hours to get there, and based on our flight itineraries, this would give us plenty of time to get to Puerto Natales and get Josh some rental gear—even if our flight was delayed a few hours or customs was a nightmare.
Next questions: Now do I get to Torres del Paine from P.N., how long does it take to do the W Trek and what are the steps I need to take to lock it in?
The main resource I used was back-packer.org. It gave me information how to get to the park and 3 options for hiking the W trek noting the kilometers each day, what campsites to book, and how much they would cost. The only thing I had to look up separately was how to book them. I found this information on Travel Outlandish. Booking the campsites is slightly confusing because unlike our National Parks, these campsites are run by 3 different companies: Conaf, Vertices Patagonia; Fantasticosur. However, Travel Outlandish was great about putting which campsite belong to which and a link to their websites.
A map of Torres del Paine from CONAF’s Website
I decided that the standard 5 days, 4 nights would be sufficient and would give us some extra time to explore some of the other places on my list.
Insert my best friend, Excel. (I f*cking love Excel when planning a trip.)
Now, I don’t always use Excel for planning trips. The only times I’ve used it is for Africa, Patagonia, and when my parents came to visit me in Denver. I utilize it when I want to see and do a lot of things in a short amount of time. It’s great for visualizing the logistics. On most trips, I just explore without a plan: except for where I’m going to stay.
With the information I gathered, I began creating trip itineraries in Excel and came up with the 3 options below to send to Josh and Lisa. Josh was slightly concerned about whether we could do 24 km in a day. But I assured him, “it will be fiiinnnneee,” because, quite frankly...it was going to have to be.
We ended up choosing option 2. The biggest risk we took with that itinerary was deciding to start the trek the day after we arrived. Should everything go smoothly, we’d have plenty of time to rest that evening and the first leg of the trip was only 11k (approx. 6.5mi). However, you never know when you’ll have a flight cancellation or major delay that will throw a kink in your perfect plans. But with the way the trek was planned, we could easily modify it to be 4 days rather than 5 without missing anything if something did happen. We’d probably just be bitching….a lot....since our first day would now be 30km rather than 11. Not that we didn’t do that anyway—but always with a big ass smile because, “WE’RE IN F@CKING PATAGONIA!”
Luckily, everything went smoothly (more on that in my next post!).
The next step was:
Find out when reservations opened.
Find out the logistics of driving to Argentina.
Finding out when reservations for November opened was easy….
I simply emailed the two operators and asked—and also apologized for my google translate Spanish. They got back to me pretty quickly with a general timeframe of April-May that they would begin taking reservations. I then vigilantly checked their website every other day or so around that period until I had success. I had all campsites booked by the end of May and they only totaled about 56USD per person. SCORE!
Figuring out how to get to Argentina was not quite as easy….
Just so you know, if you are planning to drive to Argentina from Chile, you need to request special permission from the rental car company to cross the border. They will give you the forms that you will need for customs. I luckily knew this beforehand, and requested and filled out the forms and emailed them back. However, you should still check the day before picking up the car if they received them. For us, the information I sent was never filed with our reservation.
Thankfully, everything worked out—accidentally.
What happened was, I had read somewhere that you needed to pick up the car 24 hrs before you planned to cross the border. My original reservation was to pick up the car the day we were leaving—the morning after we got back from the trek. After reading this, however, I booked a 2nd reservation to pick up the car the day we arrived back instead and canceled the other.
BUT, I f*cked up—(I can only be perfect 93.7% of the time...this was the other 6.3%)—and canceled the wrong one. And due to this lucky mistake, we showed up the evening before and discovered that they did not have any request for us to cross the border. But you bet your bottom dollar I pulled up that email. I don’t know if it was because I showed him proof that I had sent in the proper forms or if he could have done it anyway, but he made the calls and got the documentation we needed to cross the border. It is still my understanding though that if we had discovered this in the morning we would have been SOL. (If you don’t understand the acronym please click the link.)
The final task was simply booking the reservations for where to stay. And that was by far the easiest. I will give more information on where we stayed in the next post. Because honestly, at this point, I’m sure you’re tired of reading this—if you even made it this far. And I am f*cking tired of typing at the moment.
But, if you have any questions about the planning portion of this trip, leave them in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them next week. More than likely I’m talking to an empty room and laughing at my own jokes though— because 1. I’m f*cking hilarious and 2. I’m sure you fell asleep 10 paragraphs ago.
Be prepared to be sick of me next week as I dig into the actual trip experience—with an obscene amount of pictures to follow along with.
xo
Kait
