Issue 31: Patagonia, the long way in
Three days to get there, three towers at the end, and a wind that rearranges your opinions...
Patagonia is far. Everyone says so and it is still further than that. The distance is the point: by the time you arrive you have already left everything else behind.
Getting there
Fly to Punta Arenas, bus to Puerto Natales, bus to the park. Three days if you are lucky with connections. Buy the bus tickets the day before, in person, in the office by the harbour.
The walk
The W, five days, which everyone does and which is still the right walk. The last morning is a climb in the dark to the base of the towers, to see the sun hit them at six. It is cold. It is worth every step.
The wind
It knocked me over twice. Not a gust, the wind. Walk leaning into it and stop when it stops, because it will start again.
The food
Carry it. The refugios sell it at prices that reflect the mule. Peanuts, chocolate, and the best instant noodles of your life, eaten in a hut with forty strangers who have all become friends by day three.
One place, every Thursday
The letter, in your inbox, before it is on the site. Nothing else, ever.
Writes Signal from wherever he was last Thursday. Eleven years, sixty countries, one forty-litre bag.
Signal
A weekly travel letter: one place, one week, one opinion.