Go away, invader!

So, I got this article published in the January edition of the Patagonia Black Sheep, a monthly magazine available in Punta Arenas, Puerto Natales and other towns in Patagonia. Yay for getting things published! It's about invasive plants. No, that dandelion is not supposed to be here. And neither is that clover. And that scentless chamomile? An outsider as well. These plant species — and a number of others — made their way to Patagonia years ago and, quite literally, put down roots. Some biologists estimate around 25 percent of the plant species in some parts of Torres del Paine National Park originated elsewhere. “Invasive species are going to continue arriving as a consequence of tourism,” said botanist Osvaldo Vidal, author of the guide Flora Torres del Paine and a doctoral student in Germany, speaking in Spanish. “This is clear.”

Scentless chamomile: Cute, but invasive

Many of the invasive grasses and ground covers found in Patagonia were introduced as forage for livestock, and many of the flowers were brought over for ornamentation purposes. Other plants arrived by accident: Their seeds rode into the region in the fur, feathers or intestines of animals, or the shoes, clothing, tents or cars of humans. Most came from Europe. Some of the most common invasive species in Torres del Paine today are: • Poison hemlock • Red sorrel • Scentless chamomile • Silver hairgrass • Spotted catsear Invasive plants have earned a bad reputation in the scientific community for their tendency to change ecological patterns and displace their native counterparts. Few, if any, studies have been conducted to determine the effects of the invaders in Patagonia, however. Morty Ortega, a professor at the University of Connecticut who has conducted research in the park since 1977, said he considers most of the invasive grasses and ground covers in Patagonia more useful than threatening. “Perhaps the most dangerous ones are those that are brought as ornamentals and escape because of their aggressive nature,” he said, citing a fast-spreading, white-flowered plant named cicuta as a prime example. He described the plant as both poisonous and useless. Human visitors, hikers especially, are the single greatest threat to the native Patagonian ecosystem today, Vidal and Ortega agree. In addition to unknowingly spreading seeds, they compact the soil, making it ill suited for fragile native species and ideal for hearty invaders. So as you trek through Torres del Paine National Park this season, do your part to slow the invasion. Stay on established campsites and trails, and wash seeds from your clothes and supplies before you arrive and after you leave. That way, Patagonia can stay Patagonia, and stop evolving into the countryside outside your hometown.

One guanaco, two guanaco, three guanaco, four...

I counted 24 guanacos the other day. The number in itself is not notable at all, because I often run across 75 of the llama-like creatures in one place at one time on my hikes through the park. What’s notable is my ‘24’ has become part of the official 2008 Torres del Paine guanaco census taken last week. According to the count, there are 4,600 guanacos here. That’s 800 more than last year at this time.

Three guanacos

Dr. Morty Ortega, a natural resources management professor at the University of Connecticut, has been studying guanacos in Torres del Paine since 1977. He’s here with a group of students until mid-January collecting information and invited me to participate in the census. Guanacos look funny, so I figured counting them would be entertaining.

Two

Here’s how the census worked: Over three days, groups of students scoured the sectors of the park the animals are known to inhabit, noting the number of male (machos), females (hembras) and babies (chulengas) in each group they encountered, as well as the time of their observations. For the record, there’s a more polite way of determining a guanaco’s sex than peering indiscreetly at its privates.

Usually, a lone guanaco is a male that the herd has rejected for being too sick, old or ugly. (Females, even sick, old and ugly ones, are welcomed into group activities and offered the most delicious terrain for grazing.)

When you see a group of guanacos, you can assume there’s a dominant male in charge and that there’s one hembra for each chulenga, plus maybe one or two more.

Sometimes, you’ll run across groups of young males who’ve been kicked out of their family groups for being strong enough to threaten their groups’ leader. They mostly bide their time until they can start wooing women and forming communes of their own.

When counting, it’s hard not to get distracted by the cuteness of the chulengas.

I tromped the landscape with Rebecca Weissinger, a plant biologist from the United States, and Oscar Guineo, the second ranger to arrive in the area once it was named a national park. The a 56-year-old botanist resigned as a ranger when CONAF, the semi-private forestry organization that runs Chile’s national parks, switched it’s No. 1 priority to recreation (read: money). But he still spends most of his free time in Torres del Paine and knows it like his backyard, especially the plants. He and his wife Gladys Garay, who prefers animals, conduct regular investigations and have written a book about the park’s flora and fauna (the one, incidentally, I purchased when I first arrived to Patagonia).

Once the red Toyota truck dropped us off along the gravel road that parallels Río Paine, we cut across the matorral, or the shrubland, heading south toward Lago Sarmiento. The region is not a favorite destination of guanacos because it’s inhabited mostly by spiky plants, like calafate and mata barrosa, that are painful on the tongue. Thus, a lot of walking and not many tally marks.

A plant and a rock, both inedible

Oscar looking for guanacos and finding none

Fortunately, the off-trail walk took us through some amazing terrain not seen by many.

Case in point:

And now, for some fun guanaco facts: 1. Guanacos jump fences.

2. Dominant male guanacos always defecate in the same places in order to build piles of caca, or poop, that mark their territories.

3. Female guanacos have babies between mid November and late January. They’re fertile again two weeks after giving birth, take 20-45 minutes to copulate and have a gestation period of 11 months.

4. Guanacos and rheas are friends (and they often wear matching turtlenecks to Christmas parties).

What I miss by sleeping in

Sunrise from the Las Torres campground this morning

I guess I do collect something

I have a problem with Isabel Allende’s House of the Spirits. I can’t stop buying it. I just purchased my fourth copy today. That’s right, my fourth copy. It cost $22 from the World’s End bookstore in Puerto Natales.

The problem began three years ago when I purchased my first copy. I meant to read it, I really did. Instead, though, it ended up on a bookshelf in my parent’s house in Greensboro, North Carolina, the spine uncracked, while I attended college three hours away.

I purchased the second copy after I finished school, during the one of the summers I was leading outdoor adventure trips for Adventure Treks. I found it at a used bookstore I ran across on the side of the road in rural Washington State and thought, 'I've been meaning to read this.' Leading 25 teenagers through the woods leaves one little spare time, however, and the book spent the summer at the bottom of my duffel next to a pair of liner socks.

Copy No. 3 I picked up 15 days ago in Punta Arenas, after deciding I should read Allende’s work while in her home country (Incidentally, the random woman on the street I asked for bookstore locations would only tell me about one: the Krishna bookstore she runs out of her garage. I kindly accepted her address and moved on, eventually to find a more traditional book seller.) I bought the Spanish version of the novel, but the going was slow, and I didn’t want to miss the richness of the story for the language barrier.

That’s why, when I ran across my latest copy in Puerto Natales, I shelled out the 22 bucks.

I’m on page 13 now, just past the part where Uncle Marcos teaches the parrot with the Amazonian dialect to speak Spanish and tries to seduce his cousin Antonieta with military marches on a barrel organ. From what I’ve read so far, I think it’s going to be good. So good, in fact, that I might need another copy.

As a sidenote: I really like the Pablo Neruda poem that precedes the story:

¿Cuanto vive el hombre, por fin? ¿Vive mil days o uno solo? ¿Vive una semana o varios siglos? ¿Por cuánto tiempo muere el hombre? ¿Qué quiere decir para siempre?

How much does a man live, after all? Does he live a thousand days, or one only? For a week, or for several centuries? How long does a man spend dying? What does it mean to say “for ever”?

More on Ronan Lawlor

According to the article in La Prensa Austral this morning, Ronan Lawlor’s body was found buried under a pile of rocks and debris in the moraine at the base of the towers. Rescuers say it was located 700 meters beyond the mirador from which people are advised to view the granite formations, in an area with a gradient of 75 degrees. They suspect Lawlor was climbing past the established overlook to take pictures when he lost his footing and fell.Rescuers found Lawlor’s passport in a nearby backpack, as well as a park entrance ticket dated Nov. 18, the date the Irish hiker was known to enter Torres del Paine. They must wait for the results of the autopsy in Punta Arenas to determine for sure whether the remains are Lawlor’s, however. The body had many lesions fractured bones and was in an advanced state of decomposition, according to La Prensa. It will be sent back to Ireland once the autopsy is complete.

Ronan Lawlor found

The steady thwop-thwop-thwop of a helicopter passing over my cabin woke me up this morning. More than a month after 28-year-old Irish hiker Ronan Lawlor went missing, his body was discovered by Brazilian tourists near the base of the towers yesterday. A search and rescue group is ascending to the spot this morning to fly out his remains.

¿Hasta cuaaaando ya?: A lesson in Chilean slang

When I arrived in Chile three months ago, people’s stories were a lot wilder than they are now. One day at lunch, for example, I learned there’s a two-week period every August where Venezuelans take to the street and eat banana Jello, and I considered making a trip. As I've grown more accustomed to the language, the stories have calmed down a bit and have started to make more sense. But to understand them completely, it helps to recognize the slang that peppers most every Chilean sentence.

Here’s a quick guide to the Chilean slang I’ve picked up on so far: Al tiro — Immediately Bacán — Cool! ¿Cachai? — Get it? Carrete — Party Fome — Boring Guagua — Baby Guata — Belly Huevón(a) — Buddy, Dude, Man, Jerk or Asshole, depending on the context. Often added to the end of a sentence to indicate familiarity. La onda — Attitude, mood, character of person. As in “Ella es buena onda” or “She’s got a good vibe.” La pega — Work, Job Pololo(a) — Boyfriend/Girlfriend Po — Well Short for “pues.” Added onto the end of many sentences and phrases. As in “Sí po” or “No po.” Ponte las pilas — Go for it! Try harder! Literally “Put your batteries in.” La raja — Excellent, Cool, The shit El tuto — Sleepiness (in a cute sense) As in “Tengo tuto” or “I’m sleepy,” and “Voy a hacer tuto” or “I’m going to take a nap.” Wea — That shit As in “Esa wea no funciona” or “That shit doesn’t work,” and “Esa wea está mala” or “That shit is bad.”

A separate slang culture, mainly driven by the baqueanos (Chilean cowboys), has developed within the park. Here a few phrases you need to get around here: Meh — A sound used to express surprise or disbelief Vamos, VAAAAH-mos — Let’s go, leeeeet’s go. Shouted as loud as possible, often by a baqueano, a guide or me, when prodded ¿Hasta cuaaaando, yaaaa? — When’s it gonna stop? Literally, “Until when, already?” Uttered with a nasally voice in fake annoyance

There you have it. Consider yourself Chilean.

Fútbol is life

As I walked from my hostel toward the center of Punta Arenas the other afternoon, I heard the announcer on someone’s television scream “Gooooooooooooooooooooooooool” from an open window.Minutes later, everyone in town rushed to Calle Bories, a main drag that’s always pumping with eaters, shoppers and vendors selling strawberries, garlic or handmade bracelets. Most of the congregants on that day were wearing shiny polyester soccer jerseys. They circled the block in cars, honking their horns. They hung from windows, ran through the streets waving oversized flags, slapped each other on the back, yelled.

About 15 minutes into the commotion, I entered the Abu Gosch supermarket. When I emerged 45 minutes later with a bag of vegetables and some cheese, the noise and excitement were strong as ever. Here’s the story, as told by the man in front of me in line at the grocery store: The Colo-Colo soccer team won. They were playing another team. There are many soccer teams in Chile. Colo-Colo is one of them. Here’s the same story, told with slightly more flair by a man I met on the sidewalk on the way back to my hostel: The Colo-Colo soccer team beat the University of Conception 2-0 in the national championship. The Colo-Colo team is based outside of Santiago, but since Punta Arenas does not have a soccer team of its own, most here root for Colo-Colo, a team that has come to stand for the working class. The team will go on to play other countries.

So, there you have it. Colo-Colo is one of many teams in Chile. But it’s one worth keeping an eye on.

Walkin' the W

Trying to put up a tent in the wind is like trying to walk a big, dumb animal that has an agenda distinctly different from your own. On the first night of my 3.5-day solo-hiking excursion along the Torres del Paine’s legendary W Circuit, my tent wanted to go in the thorny bushes surrounding the campsite — or the lake, it didn’t matter — and I wanted it to go in the nice, flat spot I had picked out in Paine Grande campground.I’m proud to report that after a long, fierce battle, I firmly anchored my opponent to the earth with titanium stakes, and I lined its inside with heavy rocks for extra measure.

Triumph

The W Circuit is approximately 50-kilometer route through Torres del Paine National Park that runs between Grey Glacier the granite towers themselves, ascending the awe-inspiring Valle Frances along the way (forming, oddly enough, a W-shaped route).

A mystic mountain and wind-blown lenga tree I encountered along the trail

For some reason, I wasn’t intimidated by the prospect of taking on the W alone (I didn’t find out about the disappearance of Irish hiker Ronan Lawlor until after I returned). I figured the trails were well marked and I was way more likely to run across a crazy psycho maniac in the hollers of North Carolina than the internationally-visited Torres del Paine. Still, I packed a map and first aid kit, gave Victor in the office my route and asked him to send out a search party if I wasn’t back by Tuesday. I started the hike toward Glacier Grey along the western leg of the W in rain and the 90-km-per-hour winds on Friday morning. The trail ascends a valley, passes the dark-watered Laguna Los Patos and then traces the shoreline of Lago Grey as it approaches the 15-mile-long glacier, one of the largest tongues of the Southern Patagonia Ice Field.

Icebergs in Lago Grey

The still, blue glacier fills the valley it occupies almost to the top, and its edge hugs an island as it meets Lago Grey. The ice field is hard for the eye to comprehend from afar because the sun refracts off it in so many different directions. It registers as a white glow that’s hard to distinguish from the sky. When I crested a hill and first glimpsed it, I inadvertantly gasped and got chills at the same time.

Glaciar Grey and its island

The wind blowing off the glacier is fierce and unrelenting. Despite the rough conditions, though, flowers manage to bloom. I’m impressed by their resiliance.

On Day Numero Dos, I hiked about two hours from the Paine Grande campground to Valle Frances. I pitched my tent at the base of the valley in Campamento Italiano, reserving a spot in the lenga forest right by the river. Then I strapped on a fanny pack (yes, a fanny pack) and ascended the valley, the looming, glacier-ridden Cuerno Paine Grande to my left and the smooth, granite slabs of Los Cuernos to my right.

Los Cuernos from the trail

Let me just say, the view from the mirador at the top of the valley is one of the best in the park: Towering rock formations, including Las Torres in the distance and Los Cuernos more immediately, surround you on all sides. Lucky for me, the ranger who works the Italiano campsite invited another camper and me into his metal-sided shack for dinner. We pooled our pack food, fed the wood-burning stove and created a rich feast of 5-Minute Rice, pasta with red sauce and sauteed hot dogs. As the water boiled, we listened to traditional Chilean music on a set of just-repaired speakers and discussed beehives and garbage. The social interaction was good.

The following day, a warm bed and fluffy comforter thwarted my well-laid plans. I had intended to hike to Refugio Los Cuernos and convince one of the staff members to explore the hidden Valle Bader with me in hopes of touching the base of Los Cuernos themselves and glimpsing the elusive huemul (an endangered deer said to live in the valley). But when the Refugio Cuernos staff offered me a free stay in one of the cozy, A-frame cabins on a hillside overlooking Lake Nordenskjold, I accidentally spent all afternoon napping and reading Jon Krakauer’s “Into the Wild.” It was heaven, really. I helped the Cuernos staff wash dishes in the refugio as a thank-you.

My cabin

After breakfast in the refugio the following morning, I strapped on my pack, extended my hiking poles and took off toward Refugio Las Torres, my home base. The sun was shining, the birdies were chirping and Lago Nordenskjold was blue as ever.

I stepped off of the trail and onto my doorstep, feeling exhilerated by three days in the aire libre of Paine.

Visit this link to see more pics from the hike.

Missing person

Ronan Lawlor started the W Circuit in Torres del Paine on Nov. 18 and has not been seen since. The 28-year-old chemical engineer from Ireland signed in when he entered the park, but never signed out. He has not contacted his family in over a month and has yet to return to a hostel in El Calafate, Argentina where he left his rucksack. The Irish embassy, local police and park rangers began an official search for Ronan today. If you have any information on his whereabouts, email inforonan@gmail.com.

Ronan Lawlor

Penguins are funny

Everyone on Chile’s Isla Magdalena looks just about the same. Black is in, white is in, and horizontal stripes are considered OK. The treeless, grassy island, located in the Strait of Magellan off the coast of Punta Arenas, is home to about 150,000 Magellanic penguins for a few months every year.

I spent a recent afternoon wandering the island, coming within several feet of many of its inhabitants, who seemed to carry on with their usual activities despite my presence. These consisted mainly of:

1. Grooming (very important)

2. Sitting/lying (secondarily important)

3. Walking in lines (a third priority)

And now, for some fun Magellanic penguin facts: • Magellanic penguins eat the cuttlefish, sardines, squid, krill and other crustaceans they find in the water. They rely on a salt-excreting gland to filter the salt out of their food. They do without pepper as well. • The species of penguin gathers in large colonies off the coast of Chile and Argentina every summer to nest and breed. The men arrive early and await their women, who manage to recognize them by call alone (and perhaps, too, by that special twinkle). • The penguin couples lay two eggs at a time and usually end up raising one or both to adulthood. Parents take 10- to 15- day shifts watching over their eggs during the almost two-month incubation period. After the babies are born, the proud mother and father feed them every two to three days. • Magallenic penguins live an average of 25 years in the wild. • They have been assigned a “near threatened” status, though millions live off the coast of Chile, Argenitina and Brazil. Oil spills, declining fish populations and the hungry mouths of predators like sea lions and giant petrels have made breeding extra important.

To get to Isla Magdalena, you sign up with a tour agency in Punta Arenas, lay down $64, catch a 7 a.m. or 5 p.m. shuttle to the “Tres Puentes” port outside the city and ride a zodiac 35 minutes across the strait. Once you reach your destination, you’re set free for a couple hours to stroll the path that circles the island.

On the way home from the colony, we made a pit stop at Isla Marta, home to about 1,000 sea lions that visit their neighboring island every day around lunch time. Our guide explained that the lions were lying on the beach in three basic piles: males, females and rejects. It reminded me of middle school.

An ode to my gloves

It might be a sunny 60 degrees while you’re packing for your hike through Torres del Paine National Park. But don’t be fooled. You need your gloves. The weather is unpredictable and often rotates through the four seasons in one day. It might be sunny when you wake up, raining by mid-day, snowing by 3 and sunny/blue again by dinner.

I learned this lesson the other day when temperatures plummeted midway through my ascent to the towers. As the weather worsened, my hands went numb, and tasks I usually complete without a thought suddenly occupied me for a longer than I’d like to admit.

Among the most daunting of my challenges were:

1. Opening the wrapper of a granola bar 2. Zipping up my rain jacket 3. Pushing the ‘take a picture’ button on my camera 4. Tearing duct tape off the roll to stick over the hot spot on a hiking partners’ heel 5. Unclipping the waist belt of my daypack 6. Unsnapping and unzipping my pants’ fly / re-snapping and re-zipping my pants’ fly (It’s especially embarrassing if you manage to accomplish the former, but not the latter.)

A moraine made slightly less impressive by freezing hands

For those of you heading out for a day in the park, I recommend you wear a synthetic outfit and broken-in boots and pack the following items, even if you don’t think you’ll need them:

Warm gloves Warm hat A fleece or wool pullover Rain jacket Sun hat Sunglasses Sunscreen More than 1 liter of water A snack A first aid kit

Despite my trials, I made it to the towers the other day. Here they are and here I am: