The wonders of Mr. Allah with a sharp sterilized ice pick

January 31st, 2011: Just came back from “W” in Torre del Paines National Park which was perhaps the best trek in my entire 38 years and 5 months of life. It was as if Mr. Allah himself picked into my brain with a sharp sterilized ice pick and miraculously pulled information out of my grey oversized mass in the depth of my skull and built my vision of natural perfection.

The 5 day trek itself provided nonstop visual beauty and a nice physical beating upon my body. Goliath mountains with white snow hair in all different lengths and thicknesses covered them with surrounding lakes speckling the land in a variety of shades of blues as a multitude of waterfalls from little and great heights pouring into the rivers, feeding this great natural machine. If it wasn’t for the obese backpack with unusable wheels that I hung off my back…caring everything but the junk in the trunk, it might have been a simple 7 – 9 hours a day walking up, down, around and under the trail as the vision of pizza, hamburgers, soda and thoughts infiltrated and stuffed my brain.

With it not getting dark until around 10pm, it was hard to not to stop hiking at a reasonable 5 or 6 pm. Not wanting to waste valuable daylight hours my friends and I ended up calling it quits from the trail averaging around 9:04pm with some extra time to add some spent calories prior to bedtime. I do love nature and I do enjoy hiking, but I feel that I might have been coming down from my hiking vertex/peak for the past 19 years.

The weather in Patagonia changed as quick as the Dow Jones Industrial Average for the better and worse. It ranged from the beautifully warm sun rays containing a ton of vitamin D with a strong dose of UV cancer burrowing additives, snow, horizontal rain and category 1 hurricane wind that happily kept away all things that fly – ALL things that fly…from drunken Japanese Kamikaze pilots off course to all hated horse flies.

The forces of Patagonia happened to create the perfect storm one night and great stories as I was natures toy as it violently shook my tent in as if it was Regan MacNeil’s bed in the film, Exorcist during the night with gale force winds…hearing it tear across the land prior to impact as I leaned against one of the tent poles as the other side of the pole was supported with my backpack to keep my tent poles from buckling, eventually flooding my tent in knuckle deep water - breaking my rental shops dreams of hiring a waterproof tent. Thankfully I didn’t drown since I was in a large sleeping bag that seemed to suck up a large part of the water during the night.

From the overall great weather for Patagonia standards (and mine), perfect views, wonderful memories of witnessing the glaciers suicidal jumps of faith off the face of the mountains while experiencing it all with my friends from Israel whom I met on the trail who so kindly let me join them on their honeymoon for the past 5 days – helping make this trip to Patagonia a hard place to forget…even if did happen to have a lapse in memory in the near or distant future.

REMINDER: Click on the Photo Album for Chile to see a fraction of my trip photos