My love hate relationship with mountains
Trip Start
Oct 19, 2007
1
108
126
Trip End
Ongoing
Ushuaia,
Argentina
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Fox - top of Cerro Guanaco
. There is an 80 year old lady who lives today in southern patagonia who is the last Yaghan of pure blood left. I'm starting to get a bit worried because I absolutely have to catch the 2:00 bus to the national park or otherwise I won't get to trek to the top of Cerro Guanaco and it's like 1:00 now and we are just leaving the island to head back to the harbor. After we leave the island though another tour boat's engine dies and we have to tow it back in. Suck me. We are going slow as shit and we don't dock until 1:50 and I will have to run my ass off in order to catch the bus. It was a nice trip though and as an added bonus we got to eat as many cookies as we wanted.
I run like I'm being chased by the cops or an ex-girlfriend and I get to the bus station at 1:58. I just make it and I'm about ready to die from breathing so hard. Holy shit am I out of shape. The bus drops everyone off at the national park and we all get a map of the different treks. Tierra del Fuego National Park has 4 main treks and the one called Cerro Guanaco is labeled as "Strenuous", sweet. About 5 of us on the bus start the Cerro Guanaco trek and some chick from Cali thinks she is awesome and she starts running. We have to be back to pick up the bus at 8:00 otherwise we are stuck there for the night and time is quickly running out
Fox - top of Cerro Guanaco A
. Once we start the uphill climb though I pass her up within 10 minutes and now she doesn't think she is so cool anymore. I have to go as fast as possible and for some reason this place doesn't believe in switchbacks so it is a steep climb the entire time. This is the hardest thing I have ever had to do in my life. I have to stop every so often to catch my breath and give my legs a quick break. This is like the boxing match between Quick Tillis (who coincidentally enough my old boxing coach actually trained early in his career) and Mike Tyson. It was like you knew Quick Tillis was going to go the distance but you also knew he was going to get the absolute shit kicked out of him along the way. I hate Cerro Guanaco. So when you are trekking up mountains by yourself your mind starts to think of odd things and one of the things I remember thinking about were my enemies from each country I had visited so far. My enemy from Brazil was undoubtedly Finland, my enemy from Uruguay (I actually have 2 which is odd since I was only there for a week) was old bald Swiss dudes who speak fluent Spanish and highschool students and now my enemy from Argentina is Cerro Guanaco. I have declared war on this motha fucka. I finally make it to the top and I am not only relieved but when you go through something that tough it makes the end that much more rewarding. I got to the top in less than 2 hours and about 1 hour and 50 minutes of that time was spent walking up at about a 45 degree angle
Lighthouse - Ushuaia
. I am the first one up here (I win) so I have the top of the mountain to myself. The top of the mountain supplies a 360 degree view of Tierra del Fuego and the experience of chilling up there by myself is very peaceful and surreal. I lay back on this smooth rock that is angled up and I just lay there for about 10 minutes staring out at the rewarding landscape and then I notice that I am not alone as there is a fox up there with me. He is quite squittish but I feed him and he ends up coming pretty close to me and we become boys. The other people finally reach the top and they sort of ruin the experience but I'm glad I had the time to myself that I did. I take some pictures and then the girl from Cali starts talking to me and I realize in about 2 minutes that she sucks pretty bad. However, I am sort of stuck with trekking back down with her unless I want to be a complete asshole. After about 5 minutes she realizes that she forgot her sunglasses on the mountaintop and she has to go back to retrieve them. What she doesn't realize though is that her sunglasses are on her fucking face and that she is actually wearing them. This was one of the most unbelievable experiences of my life. I was completely incredulous. I laughed a lot and for a long time afterwards at her expense. This chick talks nonstop about absolutely nothing and I stop paying attention to her after about 15 minutes and she doesn't even have the slightest clue that I am no longer listening to her. It's as if her conscious being doesn't even reside in this world but in some parallel dimenstion and all that I am privy to is the retarded outer edge of her psyche that somehow crossed over. I arrive back to the hostel a little after 9 and I hang with Em and a couple of his roomates for awhile. My night consists of this - Dinner - Internet - Ice Cream - Bed (pretty sweet night). For some reason I have become mildly addicted to ice cream down here which is odd since I don't really enjoy sweets. But the thing is it's cheap and really good and I mean come on, who doesn't like ice cream. I have to get up at 7:30am tomorrow in order catch my plane. Man are my days getting long and my sleep time getting short.
Fin
Comments
Yaghans
I know you thought about stabbin that 80 year old woman just to spoil her 'pure Yaghan' blood.