Five minutes later, it had become a five day hike with at least an extra 17.5km thrown in for good measure. Oh and the company of two German guys. Apparently us Australians are all the same!
At least the decision paid dividends right from the start, even if it meant our carefully calculated food rations would need to be stretched an extra day. At the ferry terminal there had been a lot of commotion as someone had seen a puma. A group of both tourists and park workers gathered at the crest of the road hoping for a glance that didn't materialise. Eventually, after everyone on the bus except for our little group had gathered their things, we continued down the road.
Not far from the terminal another group of employees stood watching the opposite hill. As the bus approached they started pointing frantically, to the spot they were observing. There, blending perfectly into the golden grass, a puma was walking up the hill. As the brakes on bus shrieked into action, she stopped and turned to look down at us. That's when we saw not one, but two of her cubs as they bounded past her and over the crest of the hill.
It was after 12pm when we hit the trail with a projected 8-9 hours of walking ahead of us.
At least the first section which took us straight towards the Paine Massif was easy, providing us an opportunity to work out exactly what we'd gotten ourselves into by joining the crazy Germans.
By the time we reached the section that we'd initially planned to walk that day, most other hikers were already cooking dinner by their tents or sipping wine at their hosteria. That, along with the clear, calm weather was a blessing. When the path emerged from the forest and onto rocky outcrops, we were alone to observe the lake filled with blue icebergs.
In the late afternoon, when we got the first glimpse of Glacier Grey and the enormous ice fields all around, we felt like we'd discovered something amazing.
And when finally I stumbled into the campsite that evening, where the other hikers were already settling into their down sleeping bags, I was convinced that they, not I were pussies.
It gets easier from here...
It did not escape the attention of some of the members of our group, that we were camped just near an enormous glacier. Me? I slept straight through the thunderous noise as chunks of ice broke off the terminal face and slid into the water, to eventually come drifting past the little beach we were camped beside.
In the morning, we went further up the hill to get a better look at Glacier Grey from the campsite we'd hoped to have reached the previous evening. After a bit of a scramble we got to the lookout that sits high above the ice and for over an hour, we admired the deep blue crevasses and waited for the glacier to calve. When they did the chunks of ice seemed miserably small in comparison to the thundering roar, which got us thinking about just how enormous the glacier, the mountains and ice fields beyond, really were.
By the afternoon, when we'd picked up our packs and were headed for the middle of the W, the famous Patagonian wind was in the mood to play. The gusts would come in so strong, that our footsteps would inevitably land everywhere but where we'd intended, giving us the appearance of drunken backpackers stumbling from one side of the path to the other. I'd been warned, but it had always seemed inconceivable that the wind could so casually almost knock us off our feet.
Later in the day and in a seemingly entirely different section of the park the wind eased. Without needing to worry about staying on our feet, we could focus on how much the scenery had changed just from that morning. From rocky cliffs and forest, we we're walking straight towards the heart of the Paine massif, past turquoise glacial lakes and shrubs set aflame with flowers.
Finally, not long before night fall, we crossed a very cool suspension bridge over an icy river to reach our campsite in the shelter of the lenga forest. While the Patagonian wind swept through the canopy, I dreamt about the glaciers and mountains I'd gotten a glimpse of upstream.
