Would You Like A Paper Boat?

On our third night in Patagonia, while we were eating dinner, a little girl came up to us and asked “Would you like a paper boat that I made?” She handed us three tiny, origami boats that she made at her table with her dad. As she left to gift the boats to other diners in the restaurant, I sat there, reeling from the onslaught of feelings that I had just unexpectedly gone through. In the blink of an eye, I saw the our little boats floating on the choppy arctic waters steps away from our restaurant and I WAS one. In that instant, it was the encapsulation of all my feelings I had been experiencing during our last trip in Chile, a futile struggle against the inevitable departure that was rocketing closer each day that passed. The trip that I had been so anticipating all semester – a week in Chilean Patagonia – had finally arrived and with it came something even more daunting: the end of all of it. December 14, endgame. What does happen after study abroad? How do you go back to somewhere that has stayed the same (for the most part), while you feel you have changed so drastically?

This trip has been a whole lot of mixed feelings. Experiencing Patagonia, one of Chile’s most famous places, as our last trip has hit harder than expected. My spanish is at the best it has ever been and I feel so comfortable with who I have morphed into as a person in Chile that the thought of leaving is jarring. Despite all of these sad feelings, it was truly a great trip to end on!

The first day, we took a bus tour throughout a good chunk of the Torres del Paine National Park, seeing famous vistas like the Paine Grande Mountain, el Salto Grande waterfall, Lago Grey and the Grey Glacier, etc. We also saw the wild, chilean cousins of the alpacas: guanacos! I will let the pictures tell most of the story of this day because it was so incredibly beautiful that I can’t describe it!

The second day was the most *classic* Torres del Paine day because we did one of the famous day hikes there: the Mirador de los Torres hike. It is a 9-hour, 11 mile round trip hike to the base of the famous towers that gave the park its name. It was really cool to hike alongside people who were completing the longer, multi-day W or O treks. We met people from all over the world, ate lots of food along the way and saw some pretty awesome sights. Besides the achy bodies, we had an incredible day!

Our third day was supposed to have a kayaking trip included, but since it was incredibly windy we just slept in, nursed our soreness and wandered around the cute little town of Puerto Natales where we were staying.

Day four was our last day in Puerto Natales and we squeezed our delayed kayaking trip in for a couple hours before we had to go to the bus station. We went with a guide for about 3 hours and we kayaked around a bay, saw tons of animals and enjoyed the incredible mountain views. After we had put all the gear away, we had a delicious snack of sopaipillas (chilean pastries) and scrambled eggs before we headed to the bus station to go back to Punta Arenas for our last day excursion.

Our last day in the south was a full day tour of “Tierra del Fuego,” which is the biggest island in South America and also the last Chilean territory before Antarctica. We drove through a good chunk of the island and saw how barren it is. It is exactly the type of place that you can imagine that ice was on top of everything a couple million years ago and then it just.. slid off. It is very flat, with only little rolling hills and not a lot of jagged edges. During our trip, we got to go to a King penguin reserve and observe King penguins in their natural habitat and that was incredible! They were very cute and a lot of them were expecting babies soon so we got to see them sitting on their eggs! We ended up in the capital of Tierra del Fuego – Porvenir – from where we took the ferry back to Punta Arenas for our last night before catching our flight in the morning back to Santiago.

I think during these last days we all felt a bit like those paper boats fighting against the water and the wind. The whole trip felt like we were fighting against something inevitable (and we were, honestly). Erin and Kelsey are leaving Chile tonight and I leave tomorrow. It feels surreal that we are all departing as it also feels like we got here yesterday. Pretty crazy stuff. The trip to Patagonia, however sad it made us feel about having to leave Chile, was an incredible trip. We saw beautiful sights and met awesome people (and penguins). I can’t wait until the next time I find myself at the edge of the world.

Lots of love,

Cecilia