Navarino Part V: Bahia Windhond, or the day I stood naked at the end of the world

Part V in the story of my 7-day solo trek on Isla Navarino, continued from Part IV: Refugio Charles and Lago Windhond. To start at the beginning or to see the full list of Navarino episodes, click here.

I am the queen of late starts. Despite waking at around 7 am I didn’t leave camp until around 10. I first spent around two hours trying to mend the giant holes I had burned in my socks at the fire at the previous camp—an attempt that later proved futile, at least in part because of my terrible sewing skills. I didn’t bother with breakfast and just ate some cookies and one of the sandwiches I had packed instead. I put on my damp socks and boots and took off with a little fanny pack with food and a poncho, leaving my tent up in case of bad weather, and thinking I’d be back from the bay—which was right there—by lunch. Ha!

Frankensocks

First, less than two minutes in to the trek my bowels made the sort of gurgle that means “DO NOT IGNORE ME” and I barely had time to drop my pants before I suddenly became a full two pounds lighter.

Not long after that, I was stopped again, this time by a large river that was not on the cheesy whole-island map that I now had to rely on (this part of the island falling well off the edge of my halfway decent topo maps). It was, I realized, on my GPS map which if I had seen before should have warned me (my excuse: my phone screen is nearly impossible to read in the glare of the light of day, and with all the rain over the past few days I didn’t often want to take it out of my pocket). None of the creeks that had been very difficult to impossible to cross that I had been hopping and wading through and skirting before had been on the GPS map, so the fact that this map showed up should have clued me into the fact that this would be a large obstacle. Indeed, this was no creek. It was a legitimate river. I walked along its banks for over a mile, trying to see if there was any chance of a shallow spot I could wade across or a series of logs or something, but there was nothing, no way to cross without swimming, which I might have considered if not for my cold (I had woken up with a sore throat, headache, and full sinuses), it being very cold, and not wanting to dunk my camera for a second time in 30 hours.

My campsite. Camera was still a little soggy (hence the fog)... didn't want to get it any wetter.

The river did not go straight to the bay, which as the crow flies was less than 4 km away. It went instead another 12 km to the east, increasing the distance I needed to walk by at least 3x (or 16 more km out and back). I mentally came to terms with the reality of my not making it back by lunch, needing to camp another night in my little hilltop room with a view, and it being now extremely unlikely that I’d be able to make it back to the Dientes circuit in time to make a quick go at it.

But damnit, I was going to make it to that bay! Over the next four hours I marched through forest, peat bog, spiny death bushes, and beaver swamps that in some cases I was only able to get through by tightroping across their dams—in two cases breaking them (sorry beavers, but you did make the route impassable, plus, you are a non-native species…so I didn’t feel too bad).

But this guy was a native species. He can stay.

Most exhausting of all were the chest-deep mounds of beachgrass on the dunes when I finally approached the bay. Where hiking through the peat bogs was like walking for hours on a mattress, the beachgrass involved lifting my leg to my chest, scrambling up, sinking back down, repeat. When I arrived at the beach I was exhausted and my tendons hurt.

More bog.

But I made it.

To the end of the world.

The beach at Bahia Windhond

At least as close to the end of the world I could get without passage on a yacht or a trip to Antarctica, as close to the end of the world as I could get without a whole lot of money I don’t have. The farthest south anyone I know has been who hasn’t been to Antarctica.

Yay!!

I had a glorious ten minutes in the sun when I finally arrived. I ate my sandwich, stripped naked and had just started to wade into the water when I saw the giant dark storm cloud heading straight for me. I thought the better of going for a frigid swim with a storm coming and a four hour walk back to warmth before me. So I waved goodbye to the end of the world, threw my clothes and poncho back on, and hit the chest-deep grass again just as the hail hit.

Where on the hike there I had had many moments where I’d grin and laugh when I’d see some vista and remember where I was and what I was doing, on the way back my brain switched off and I just marched, too tired and cold and wet to enjoy the scenery. I marched back through the mounds of beachgrass, back through the beaver swamps, back through the peat bogs, through forest and plains, through meadows and over hills, poncho on, face set, trying to keep up a good clip to stay reasonably warm in the cold rain.

A sampling of the scenery I marched through.

I marched for hours like that until suddenly, at the top of a ridge forested with tall, slender trees, a gentle wind made the trees sing at the same time that a cloud opened up, sending soft green light dancing around me. I was dazzled.

The moment hit me like a shock, a reminder of where I was, of all that had brought me there, and I was floored with gratitude and happiness. It was like the God I had loved as a young person had appeared in front of me, held out his arms, and said, “See? It was all okay in the end.” I looked around me, bathed in the dancing light and singing trees, filled with the feeling of everything being okay.

In that moment I realized that all of the struggle and torment and tedium and heartache (and good times as well) that had eaten me the past decade and especially the past few years had, as a culmination of forks in the road that my life had taken, brought me there, to this magical grove of trees on an island on the cold, sweaty, southern toe of the Americas. There, to a place and on an adventure of which my self a decade ago would never have dreamed. That it had been okay in the end. More than okay: Incredible. And there I was, standing outrageously happy at the end of the world.

Forest

I was moved to do something I hadn’t done in over a decade: I prayed. Dropped to my knees, face to the sky, surrendered myself to the universe, and prayed. I prayed to no deity in particular, having long ago become disillusioned by and walked away from the religion of my childhood, so I was simply talking to the air. But the feeling was the same as when I used to pray in my youth; I felt connected to the universe, felt my soul bursting inside me. It was a prayer of thanks, and a prayer for forgiveness: forgiveness for my lack of understanding and appreciation of all these years, and forgiveness for the anger and bitterness that I had been refusing to give up for so long.

And finally I forgave, in words out loud to the wind, those people against whom I had held the anger that had been eating me alive.

I forgave my German ex-fiancé who, I was finally able to accept, did what he had to do to protect his own happiness and sense of self. In that moment I realized truly that I am happier now than I could have been with the real version of him that I had refused to see and refused to accept. That his leaving was, even though the circumstances were terrible, in the end a gift. That my heart was broken but was returned to me, and that it was in my power to heal it, because my heart is a big heart, a strong heart, and a good heart. In that moment I was finally able to let him, and the rage and disgust and fury that had been rotting me from the inside these past few years, go.

I forgave my beloved sister who, also in making decisions to protect her own happiness, had burned to the ground her own relationship—a relationship that I had held onto as a lighthouse of hope in the wake of my own falling apart as proof that true love was possible. If true love like hers was possible, I felt some hope that I might also find it someday. When her marriage ended I was devastated, because I saw it as proof that I would never find a lasting relationship because real and lasting love does not exist. In that moment in the trees I realized that my happiness does not depend on my finding a soulmate, if such a thing even exists. I realized that I am the happiest I have ever been right now, and I am alone!—and my happiness certainly doesn’t depend on the relationship status of my sister, who I adore and wish every joy in the world.

I forgave the friend who had been my buddy during much of the time I was struggling through the former two hurts who, without word or explanation, threw me off in a way that ripped open the wounds that were just starting to scab over. I realized that although I may never understand why he did it, that I was okay now, that I could be grateful for the happiness he brought me in a very dark time, and that I hoped that whatever he is up to now, that he is happy.

Stream

And finally, I forgave myself for my shortcomings and the hell I put other people through during these dark years. I forgave myself for taking so long to get over the other things—for the hell I put my own self through. For being small and bitter and jealous and angry and needy and an imperfect human. I had been furious with people for ruining my life. I needed to see that my life wasn’t ruined, that it was, in fact, better than it otherwise would have been, before I was able to let go and forgive. That was not big of me, but it was human of me, and sometimes we have to forgive ourselves for being humans, not saints. Whatever the path, in the end I had fought through the darkness and clawed my way up from the deep well I had fallen into. I had been brave enough to throw a middle finger to expectations and go on a quest to find where my soul had run off to and to try to heal my heart. I hadn’t done perfect, but I had done good. “It’s okay, Carie,” I thought. “It’s okay now.”

The wind and light wrapped me around me as though the universe was also saying, “It’s okay, Carie, it’s okay now,” and giving me a hug. I stood, feeling if not fully healed at least a whole lot closer. And I felt at peace in my heart for what very well may have been the first time of my 20’s.

The rain started again and the magical huggy wind spirit wasn’t going to take me back to camp, my feet would have to do that, so off I went again. My GPS was acting screwy but I was pretty sure I could find my way back to camp without it. Sure enough, an hour and a half or so later, I laughed out loud when I rounded a corner and almost stepped in my giant, now half-melted turd from the morning (bad pootiquette, I know, but I figured nobody would be around this area until long after the weather had taken care of it, and I didn’t have a trowel on me). I was home!

Home sweet home.

For dinner I cooked a noodle soup and then promptly knocked over the pot and spilled it all over the ground, so I ate dirt-coated noodles picked off the ground and cookies for dinner, enjoying the view for about twenty rain-free minutes before the rain returned. It was a cold night, not only because I had a cold but because it was a cold storm, and I curled up inside my tent bundled up in several layers including a down jacket inside my down sleeping bag and still felt cold. Cold, but content and happy, and whole.


Spoiler video from the trek:

I woke up to patches of snow around my tent, a preview of the weather to come. Continued in Part VI: Bushwhacking North

Navarino Part I: Arrival

The Navarino Series

This is the first post of a series documenting my trip to Isla Navarino: the cold, sweaty toe of South America, and site of the southernmost settlement in the world (unless you count the Antarctic research bases). I arrived, took off for a week on a solo hike to the southern end of the island, and returned a different person. This is the pre-hike prologue.

The full list of Navarino episodes
Part I: Arrival
Part II: The hike begins
Part III: Paso de los Dientes and descent into the swamp
Part IV: Refugio Charles and Lago Windhond
Part V: Bahia Windhond, or the day I stood naked at the end of the world
Part VI: Bushwhacking North
Part VII: Blizzards and Beavers
Part VIII: The Feral Swampbeast returns to civilization

And here's the spoiler video!

Ushuaia

I arrived in Ushuaia and, with all of the hostels I wandered to booked up, finally found a room in a place that was more men’s boarding house than hostel. It was fine; the men were all respectful and I spent very little time there anyhow (in contrast to my time in Bariloche where the Green House hostel was my home and office for a month). The first night I went out to dinner with a Swiss girl that I met on the bus and her friend to a crab restaurant—Ushuaia being famous for king crab. So of course I had crab, as well as a local chardonnay. It was absolutely delicious.

The following day I met up for brunch with friends I had met weeks before in the Green House hostel. I had serendipitously run into them at the border crossing at San Sebastian—we were on two different buses from two different places both heading to Ushuaia. The Mainguys are a fun-loving and sweet French couple who have also been keeping a travel blog of their adventures.

Brunch with the Mainguys

I spent the rest of the day shopping for my upcoming adventure. I literally went to every store in town to price out the items on my list, namely a one-man tent, liner gloves, and a lightweight cooking pot. Despite rumors in Bariloche that Ushuaua, as a tax-free zone, would be a cheaper place to buy imported outdoor equipment, prices were significantly higher than in Bariloche and generally twice the price that they should have cost in Chile or in the U.S. I tried to trade things for my bivvy sack but couldn’t sell it—nobody wants a bivvy in a cold, damp climate like Ushuaia. But I was desperate, so I coughed up the money for expensive gloves, an expensive tent, a cheap dollar-store cooking pot, groceries, etc. And then swallowed my pride when I failed to seduce and/or hitch a ride with a yachtsman in my 30 hours in Ushuaia and bought an overpriced ticket on a zodiac to get to Navarino.

This was going to be an expensive trip, but it would be absolutely worth it.

View of Ushuaia from the port

Crossing the Beagle Channel

The boat ride across the Beagle Channel alone was worth the price of the ticket. I finally understood and witnessed “slate grey waters” while riding a grey carpet with hints of green in swells that dropped the little zodiac like a roller coaster.

In the Beagle Channel

Sea birds (cormorants? help me out here bird nerds) in the Beagle Channel. I freaked out when I saw them from a distance because I thought they were penguins, but they weren't.

The boat arrived in Puerto Navarino where police inspected our stuff and surprisingly didn’t seem to care about my leftover pasta and half-cooked garbonzo beans that I had brought over with me. Usually the Chileans are ultra-anal about bringing food into their country and I was fully prepared to scarf down the heap of pasta and beans when they found them. We were loaded into a van and driven the hour and a half to Puerto Williams, a little town of 2000, where we went through customs. The five of us who had been on the boat crowded into a little information office where an Estonian transplant gave us the low down on her adopted town: the one bar which is only open on Fridays, the restaurant with the cheap pizza, the only place in town to get internet access, etc. We then scattered into the streets to hunt down our respective intended hostels. Amusingly, three of us separately landed at the same place with Patty Pusaki at the Residential Pusaki.

Welcome to Chile! At Puerto Navarino on Navarino Island where we waited for police to check us into the country.

Puerto Williams

I spent the next 48 hours when not sleeping or stuffing my face with Patty’s legendary food finishing up job applications on the world’s slowest internet connection in a little room at the little town library. I also tried to find some of the things I wasn’t able to get in Ushuaia, and scored big at a shop across the street from the Municipalidad which for anyone else considering trekking on Navarino is a real treasure chest of everything from camp stove fuel and duct tape to ramen noodles and GORP, as well as topographic maps. The only things I wasn’t able to find were guy lines for my tent and, bizarrely, salami. No salami on the island. I substituted a few extra packages of cookies.

Whale bones spread out in front of the Magical Place of Really Slow Internet

Puerto Williams is the sort of place where everyone you meet is interesting.

There was Alejo Contreras Staeding who was staying with Patty en route home from Antarctica who was something like the 26^th person (and first Chilean) to reach the South Pole on skis, essentially Mr. Antarctica as well as being an expert on the Darwin Range (if anyone can be called an expert on the Darwin Range) and who—I also found out after wondering why he looked so familiar—was the crazy bearded guide featured in the Art of Flight. And there I was sitting with him and swapping mountain adventure stories over dinner.

There were Ben and Anna who I met at the yacht club, a young couple from San Francisco who had sailed all the way there over the course of several years in a little boat that they bought for $2k as a dilapidated POS and rebuilt themselves, often going for months without going ashore. They are now off on a free month-long sailing trip to Antarctica that they managed to charm their way onto.

The Club de Yates Miclavi, where the pirates hang out and drink with Gringas like me.

There was Charlie Porter, a glaciology professor at the University of Maine who would go to Maine to teach for two months in the summer and lives the rest of the year on his two sailboats (Gondwana and Ocean Tramp) in Puerto Williams, sailing around to the glaciers of the region to take cosmogenic isotope measurements in order to piece together the aging and movements of the glaciers. He’s been living in Puerto Williams since the early 1970’s, longer than most of the “locals”. Oh yeah, and he’s a legendary big-wall climber who used to work rescue at Yosemite and actually first landed Southern Chile in order to free climb the largest overhanging granite slab on the planet in Torres del Paine back in the day…and the first person to kayak around Cape Horn.

Inside the Club de Yates Miclavi, decorated with flags from the ships that have docked there over the years. The mermaid is a lamp. Her tail lights up bright green. Like a sea version of the Christmas Story leg lamp. Loved it somuch.

There was Marcel, an older Belgian gentleman who has been coming to the area in his sailboat and running charter trips through the fjordlands for decades and whose most recent post-retirement job has been as a gaucho in a remote only-accessible-by-sailboat estancia (Yendegaia) in a fjord (population = 3) surrounded by a national park on one side and a very large glacier on the other. I ended up hitching a ride and staying for a few days on his yacht back to Usuaia when I finally left Isla Navarino.

There was the older Canadian couple who had biked all the way to Punto Arenas from Bolivia. The Austrian adrenaline travel addict who drops huge chunks of cash for tours to active warzones...and Puerto Williams. The Brazilian public servant who arrived in a quest to see Tia Cristina, the last living Yaghan speaker and a resident of Isla Navarino. There were wealthy yachties, ex-naval commandants, mountain guides, “Funemployed” sailors and hikers and nomads and random adventure bums of all varieties. All people who, unconvinced by Ushuaia's "fin del Mundo" signs that look out on mountains across the Beagle Channel to the south, want to go further to the edge of the map.

The place is a funnel for the wild of soul.

The Dientes del Navarino, the toothy mountains I wandered into and crossed during my solo adventure.

I would discover just how wild my soul was in the following days as I set out for a solo seven-day hike around the island…

Continued in Part II: The hike begins

My Hovercraft is Full of Eels: Adventures in Argentine Banking

I have no cash, it's snowing (actually objectively beautiful) in town, the ski area just closed for the season, the bus service to the mountains shut down, the bike shops don't accept credit cards...essentially, I'm stuck. Stuck until my ATM card shows up. So at this point I'm just blogging to keep myself amused.

But I had a VERY DRAMATIC, SUPER-RAD, EXCITING trip to a bank today! Read on for the full, uncensored, shocking account!

Completely out of cash, and with my Emergency Express debit card replacement not scheduled to arrive for another week (two weeks after ordering it),  it was time to try other options.

I had half jokingly asked a few places around town for temporary employment, but after a few very confused looks and one prostitution related response, abandoned that line of inquiry.

This was at lunchtime, when the place started to
clear out, but this is one of eight sets of seating
areas in the bank, and that was the only row of
seats that wasn't full in that particular moment.
It's Monday! Party in the bank!

Having money wired via Western Union or other agents (I keep hearing Xoom is great in Argentina, but only has 40 offices in the country and none even in the same state as where I am) wasn't an option:there were no offices in, or anywhere near town. I didn't have a PIN to use with either Visa card I brought, and Visa claimed there were no bank locations within 75 miles that worked with Visa where I could maybe get a cash advance.

But I was desperate, and determined to at least ask. So, after spending an hour looking up phrases I might need and copying them into my notebook, I headed to the town bank. And it was packed. At one point I counted 76 people (not counting 5 babies) waiting to be helped.

A22: The Winning Ticket?

I arrived at 11:30 and took Number A22, at which point the screen read E65. I took a seat and desperately hoped the ticker didn't run all the way through Z. An hour and a half later of playing with learn Spanish apps on my phone, I heard the familiar 'ding' announcing the next number being called, and was immensely relieved to see it go from E99 to A01.

Since it had taken an hour and a half to get from E65 to A01, I calculated that I now only had approximately 56.6 minutes of waiting left. But lo! only half an hour later, at A11, the Lunchtime Effect set in and as there was no A12, A13, A14, A15...you get the point...I started to clutch my ticket, get all of my important documents tother, and brace in a sprinter's crouch to be totally ready lest the the quick flipping of numbers stymie my chance to speak to the man behind the glass wall. A22 was called at 1:34pm, and I scurried up to the window just as the man behind the glass wall had his finger ready to call for A23.

Screenshot from my very helpful
Learn Spanish phone app.

I was ready. Sort of . Clearly whatever my opening line was wasn't making any sense (maybe because of things like the photo at right), so I passed my notebook with a carefully-written translated explanation of my situation through the hole in the plexiglass shield to the teller, and he read, and chuckled, and read, and chuckled, and read, looked up, and said....

"No."

I protested, "But I have two forms of I.D.! My visa card! I have no cash! Pleeeaaase?"

"No."

"Is there anyone, anywhere else in town who might be able to help?"

"No."

"No?"

"No." And with that, he waved me away, and A23 approached the counter.

At least I tried?

This is unrelated to the post, but if
anyone reading this is a bird nerd,
what is this cool dude?
Spotted him while walking at the
edge of town. He looked sort of
like a falcon, was about 6" big,
plump, beautiful gray-tan, white,
and black markings.

I returned, defeated, to the hostel, where Creepy Dude from the previous post was waiting, so I snuck out the back door and scurried off to wander aimlessly through town, letting the falling snow calm me down.

In an effort to cheer myself up by giving myself something to look forward to, I stopped by the bus station to see if there was any possible way I could pay for a ticket to Las Leñas with credit card since I had literally no cash (something they had scoffed at before). They replied that it was a moot point, Las Leñas  had just closed for the season and there was therefore no more bus. 

Even more dejected, I moped in circles around town until I was famished, my being famished falling conveniently at exactly the time when everything in town closes for the afternoon, but chanced upon a restaurant tucked quite a few blocks from the main part of town, that, like some celestial gift of mercy, had a Visa sticker on its window. And I drowned my frustration in a mini bottle of very excellent local Malbec while eating some very excellent local trout (a regional specialty), and decided that if I could just learn a few key phrases (like whatever "If you touch me again I'll feed you your nuts, creepface" is in Spanish), I could deal with this situation.

At least lunch was good. Excellent, actually.
And not only was that bottle of wine adorable,
it was also muy delicioso.

And, belly happy, I returned to the hostel, where creepface was gone, and here I sit, blogging, to decompress from what's been an upsetting and frustrating few days.

Except I have excellent news for tomorrow: I explained the latest news in the ongoing saga of my debit card and consequent inability to pay for my room at the hostel to Ramón, who once again was very forgiving. I asked him for advice on what to do to pass the wait time until the card arrives, and he again said "no problem" and offered to loan me his bike (for transportation to cool places) and his cell phone (in case I get stranded somewhere) and sending me off on an adventure to go see something awesome tomorrow. Once again proving that there is at least one shockingly, unnecessarily nice person for every creepface out there. Ramón, you saved my day. Thank you.