It’s all about timing

February 24^th, 2013

It’s all about the timing

We woke up this morning and the rain had stopped. Yes, I am not kidding you. The rain had stopped. What had been a raging class 4 rapid on the path to the bathroom was now a simple tranquil lagoon.

After seeing the conditions of the bunking arrangements and based on the fact that everything we owned was now completely damp, we decided to detour out to the van and regroup. We could do the hike up to the Towers without staying at Refugio Chileno and just doing it as a day hike. The dudes we had dinner with last night said there was a horse taxi as well. We had wanted to do a horseback ride, so maybe we could accomplish all that in one swell fwoop.

We ate some breakfast and packed up our stuff and headed out of camp around 8:00 am. It was 11 km back to Casimiro. The weather was holding with only the occasional spitting of rain. The clouds were still hanging low on the mountains, so the views were still pretty limited.

There were a number of creek crossing on this trail the required a fair amount of skill to get across if you didn’t want to get soaked to a squishy (that’s a technical New Zealand term for wet). To Susanne’s great delight, she had smartly packed her crocs. Now, I know, this is a much-maligned shoe company. How on dog’s green earth can a shoe company that makes modeled plastic “shoes” be worth a billion dollars. Well, here is how. At each tricky creek crossing, I would carefully, with years and years of experience, make my way delicately across the rocks; always in danger of dousing my expensive camera (which by the way, Greg, does a crappy job of making a gray sky, with a gray background with a gray colored lake, look interesting) in the creek. However, Susanne, being the smarter of the two of us, would simply, stop, take off her shoes, put on her crocs, and march across the creek. It was brilliant. So, if you are ever wondering why crocs are awesome, call Susanne.

 

The weather started to clear up as we made our way toward Las Torres.

There a clearly some bad things about planning your own trip. Las Grutas. But one of the great things is that you can adjust on the fly. We decided to head out to the van and maybe move our hotel night up one day and then do a horse back ride/trip to the Towers if the weather was good. It’s doable as a day hike, but it’s 22 km+ and that seemed to much to ask of Susanne’s foot. Plus we wanted to do a horse back ride anyway.

By the time we got to Hotel Las Torres, the weather had cleared and we had a beautiful evening. We moved our reservation for the hotel, had a nice dinner and signed up for our trek/horse ride the next day.

Hopefully the mountains will let me in tomorrow.