The Towers of Pain!!

This week, we stayed with a Chilean couple in Puerto Natales. It has been a great opportunity to be a part of normal Chilean life.

Here is a snapshot of a typical family life.

While it might sound exotic, backpacking several thousand miles from home in Patagonia’s Torres del Paine National Park was not all that different than any other backpacking trip I’ve been on. There was the sweating, burning muscles, pain, and usual masochism of any normal backpacking experience.

Tap, tap, tap, tap.

A steady tap against my feet has awoken me for the third time this night. Few things in nature are this consistent, I think. It must be water. Sure enough, the uniform dripping continues as the rain pools at the edge of the royal blue tarp suspended above me. My brain feels as foggy as the sky above the trees, and I struggle to remember how the heck I got myself into this situation. Oh! Thaaaat’s right. I put that monstrous pack on my back and walked for hours, only to nestle in the warmth and security of this degenerate plastic lean-to.

In this summary of our latest happenings in the land of Chile, let me start by explaining how much we are learning about time management, commitments, and flexibility. We planned to be in the town of Puerto Natales for about two days (time management), and we planned to use the internet for updating purposes and the like and then move on (commitment). We ended up staying in town with friends for a 3 days, then backpacking around the local national park (Los Torres del Paine) for 3 days where two of us (Daniel and myself) got severely sick from drinking the river water, and after resting/hanging-out for another 5 days with our new friends (FLEXIBILITY).