quick correction before I begin today's blog... yesterday we wished you happy easter, today we were informed easter is next sunday. awkward... just didn't want all y'all back home worried that we were going crazy in the forest. no jungle fever here, knock on wood, just the two of us way out of touch with the world, which we think is a good thing every now and again. and hey, we get two easter sundays this year! honestly, who doesn't love to double up the holiday celebrations? :)
today is monday and we are oriented to person, place, time, and event... unlike yesterday. and guess what? we slept in, surprise surprise. kind of a trend of this trip, I think we are still on us time 4 hours earlier than here.
we may have fallen asleep under clear skies but this is Patagonia and we awoke to a downpour. from the inside we could see mud splatter up the sides of the tent, but we were somehow still pretty dry - love this tent.
breakfast was mochas and steal cut oats with seasonal fruit and granola oooorrr rather instant coffee & hot cocoa mix, a little on the watery side and oatmeal pancake batter slash trader joes granola with dried fruit all stirred into a bowl with hot agua. mmm good when you wake up starving, which we did.
originally we thought we had overpacked food like we overpacked everything else for this trip, but now that we're just past the halfway point we are a little worried we might run out before the evening of the 27th - turns out Pete and I eat quite a bit. so we rationed our remaining meals and we should just get by, maybe a little more cranky than usual given that is often the consequence when we are inadequately fed.
but when we are severely hypoglycemic, like we were last night when we stumbled into camp, our brains turn off entirely, which explains why Pete and I realized, soon after exiting our tent this morning, that we were in... how do you call it? a marsh. in last night's stupor we had picked the campsite the furthest downhill of all of the others, it was wide open! we should have questioned why, and maybe thought about what that would look like in the rain, because though we have been very fortunate with the weather thus far, it often rains at night here. it poured last night and our tent was floating, or sinking, in the swamp to prove it. so after breakfast we sought dryer ground and moved our entire camp in the midst of the persistent downpour that was this morning.
it's cool though, don't feel bad for us, we are Oregonians and this is our natural habitat. right at home in the rain, we didn't think twice about donning our raincoats and heading for the mountain mirador 7.5km up from here.
I don't know if this is possible but I felt like our hike was more beautiful than anything we've seen thus far... actually that is a silly statement, you can't compare the landscapes here, but all i know is, you just look up and the impact of the mountains practically knocks you over! (and if you're on the loose rocks we hiked on today, you actually will fall over)...
today we had the insane snow covered peaks from last night to our left, too big and close to capture on your camera. every so often we would hear the crack of ice breaking loose and see the crash as it came cascading down the steep slopes. this seemed to happen often and we wondered if it was the unexpected warmth - there were these most bizarre breezes that would hit us as we hiked, best described as toasty, which meant total sensory conflict when we were surrounded by scenery that appeared arctic. but there are apparently 17 unique ecosystems in Patagonia and I feel like we've hiked through at least a dozen of them. waterfalls drained the glaciers above and there were so many I wondered how the ice didn't run out or the falls go dry - the water cycle in action!!
to our right were our beacon twin peaks that had lured us to camp last evening. they are the oddest shades of dark red on top with a distinct line where the white/orange rock begins and lower still another line dividing the softer red of the base. cool.
Justin, Jeff, and their crew (two girls from Germany with names I can't pronounce but they are very nice, and Marcus a guy from Germany, who have joined up to conquer the circuit together), caught up to us on our lunch break and the 7 of us set off together.
it was glorious to hike without our big packs, especially after yesterday. I almost feel as though I was floating. we sped along the 7.5km of uphill on rocky, muddy poorly marked trails like it was a walk in the park - and by the way, if it were, best. park. ever.
we went through forests with mangled trees and leaves just beginning to change to vibrant colors of orange and red. the trail followed the meandering river made from the confluence of the many waterfalls previously mentioned. it is this pale icy turquoise color that is difficult to describe but it makes the red in the trees seem even more dramatic.
the view the other direction, to our backs as we hiked, was not to be outdone by everything to the left, right, and directly before us. the sky was clear out that way, making the lakes, which were various shades of blue, pop even more. and in the far distance there was a row of yet more snow covered peaks- is there no end to the beauty here?!
at the top we were surrounded by mountains in every direction, the steep cliff faces jutting straight out of the ground before us. this was literally jaw dropping beauty and I kept catching little raindrops on my tongue, with my mouth hanging open in awe. we drank directly from the glacial stream, we took a group photo... or 7... we contemplated which of the peaks we could climb, but decided against it in the interest of making it back to camp for dinner, and finally, with much difficulty, we managed we drag ourselves away from this remote mountain paradise to hike back to the campground...
on our way back we got one more treat. Patagonia gifted us not one, but three! Magdalena's woodpeckers !! apparently rare in the area, and very elusive we have read that few close-up photos exist of them. and somehow we stumbled upon practically a flock of these red-headed beauties just pecking away at the trees. they were right there!! we captured the best photos we could with our less-than-professional cameras and continued on our way.
finally back in camp we were 15km worth of hungry and as I mentioned before, a little scarce on food. but we had rationed our last two bags of ramen and our final tuna packet for tonight; carbo loading for tomo's big day.
when the ramen was almost ready I added in a few last minute spices as I usually do. we had cleverly packed some of the essentials in tic tac boxes to make them backpacking compatible: salt, chile (how appropriate), garlic pepper (invented for this trip... and maybe because we didn't have more tic tac boxes), and cinnamon. maybe you see where this is going but we did not end up labeling these containers, figuring smell would be adequate to differentiate them. well in the dark of the cooking shack, and the haste of getting dinner prepped, I somehow dumped a lot of what I thought was chile powder into our tuna noodle special. turned out it was cinnamon, which consequently made the meal extra special... all we could do was laugh.
clearly we had to eat it, we were almost out of food! but heavily cinnamoned chicken ramen with garlic pepper doesn't exactly sound appetizing. the lady cooking near us clearly overheard our mishap and was trying not to laugh into her own dinner as she eavesdropped while we sorted it out. knowing that we had been found out made me laugh even harder... ultimately we decided to go with it, and rather than stop with the cinnamon we proceeded to squirt packets of mayo and mustard into the concoction (what? we had carried it this far, and those were calories we weren't going to waste!)... I felt like I was 5 and making a potion or mud pie or something. and then came the taste test. turns out when you're pushing a dozen miles a day with 1/3 of your body weight on your back, bark tastes good- so cinnamon tuna ramen super special tastes frickin' delicious!! and we scarfed that dinner as though we had intentionally made it that way- which we might again in the future sometime :)
too bad two packets of ramen was probably enough for Pete alone, but not for both of us, so we caved and ate the last day's lunch - pb&j tortilla, and it was oh so good!! not really feeling full, but finally noting the absence of hunger, we headed to bed- already excited for breakfast the next morning. really makes you appreciate always having plenty of food around, we are far more fortunate than we ever recognize.
as i write this it is still raining, we would complain but the weather has been so perfect up until today, and we didn't mind the rain when we had only the day hike without packs planned for today. lets just hope we stay semi dry tonight. the tent has been sopping wet since last night and we aren't sure just how waterproof something so light and thin can actually be.
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