The DeanLounge: Patagonia Going Gone

to talk about a trip that I went on. This is going to be the first first time talking about a specific trip that I've been on, and from here on out, it's going to be a lot of this. I probably will do this like two or three times a month, and then one episode will be something more specific about maybe like photography or I don't know, drone or traveling cheaply or how to pack without taking a checked bag. I don't really know, but we're gonna figure out as we go. I do have some bad news.

Kaylin is at the DMB right now, so she will not be taking part in this episode today, but fret not, I am going to play her role for her. So it's going to be tricky. I am going to uh just try to try to make lemonade out of lemons, with this, but let's get started. I guess right. So for this first trip I wanted to talk about, it was the trip that I went on that changed my life.

And that might sound a little melodramatic, and it probably is, but I went on this trip, and after going, after getting back home from this or even while I was there, Honestly, I just my life changed. It opened my eyes to what I wanted to I don't want to say what I wanted to do, because I don't necessarily think that's what I'm doing now, but it opened my eyes to a world of just traveling and experiencing new things and allowing myself to be alone and be comfortable with being alone.

Which if you listen to our main podcast, Suckers, there's an episode ways Back. I have no idea which one it was exactly, but I talk about how we so many people these days, we just are not comfortable being alone. We're always around friends or our significant others or family, and even when we are actually physically alone, we're not actually alone because we're on our phones, on Instagram, on TikTok, on all of these social media platforms that allow you

to feel less alone. And this is the trip that made me realize that being alone is a good thing, you know, in moderation, as most things are. If you can be consumed by love and family and friends and then also have the ability to go off and be alone and be happy and enjoy your time with yourself, I think that's an incredible asset to have, and a lot of people are kind of overlooking that in the

state of the world today. It's actually something too With Kaylin, my wonderful wife, she hasn't really traveled much alone, and after this trip and this experience, it's something I always encourage her to try to do because, like I said, it, it helps you better understand yourself and kind of shows you your own capabilities. I when I'm alone, I I

start thinking different, not necessarily better, but just different. Where you know, my brain's allowed to just be itself and it's not influenced by other people's motives or desires or actions or anything like that. It's literally just me doing what I want to do, thinking what I want to

think about. And you can't say talking what you want to talk about because I'm not really talking to myself, but I guess I'm talking to random people that I meet, But it's just it's it's a wonderful thing, and I think it's it's often overlooked and overshadowed because loneliness is a prevalent issue in today's day and age. But being

alone doesn't equate to loneliness in my opinion. So if you're listening to this, you're thinking about traveling, but you don't necessarily have someone to go with, but you want to travel, I say one hundred percent, one hundred out of one hundred times, go for it. I will say ninety nine out of one hundred times go for it. If you're traveling alone to a dangerous part of the world and maybe you're not comfortable with that, then potentially reconsider.

But ninety nine out of one hundred times, if you're thinking about traveling, can't find people to go with you, just bite the bullet, go alone and see how you handle it. Like you'll never know whether you can handle something until you actually get out there and try it.

So that's my advice. Let's get to this episode. So this trip I'm referring to is a trip that I took back in November twenty eighteen, So that's what five and a half years ago at this point geez Luise h five and a little over or a quarter maybe years ago. At this point, I went to South America. And at this point in my life I had traveled a little bit. I wouldn't say much. I had been to Mexico. I think I had been to like India,

maybe with my friends. I was going through my camera feed or my camera role to see when exactly this trip lined up in the in the synchronosity of whatever I've done, and I think India came before this, which was surprising because I thought that I had gone to India with a little bit more experience, but I guess not. But this was my first ever solo trip, I know that for a fact at least. And I went to South America. My goal was to get to Torres del

Pine in southern Argentina, Patagonia, more or less. And after doing a little bit of research, I found this thing called the W Trek, which is pretty popular. In hindsight, it's a lot more popular than I had realized at the time. The W Trek is like, it's a fifty mile hike through the Patagonia wilderness in quite honestly the most beautiful place I've ever been to in my entire life, and like I said, it changed my life, not only because I went there alone and I did all this

stuff myself. I was the only person responsible for myself. But just the beauty down there is unmatched. And I'm staring at my office window right now at a beautiful mountain here in Colorado, and the Colorado Mountains are incredible and I love them so much, but I don't think anything comes close to Patagonia. It is as good as it gets down there. So what I did was I flew from La to Buenos Aires. Spent a couple of days in Buenosaires. And I had heard from a few

people how great that city is. And while I'm not gonna say it's not great, I just personally didn't have a great time there. I think I'm just not much of like a city traveler. If I travel somewhere like let's say, go to Paris or London or I don't know, some other like bigger city, I just don't really I ever find myself having that good of a time, and Buenos Aires was no different. I just I struggle with finding things to do. I'm not really big into like

the night life scene. I'm not a big foodie, not a big drinker, Like I don't I don't go and enjoy a nice glass of wine. I just don't know. I don't have the taste for it. I don't know the difference between good wine, bad wine, good food, bad food. It's all it's all on the same kind of spectrum of middling to me. And when I went to Buenos Aires, everyone's like, you have to try them all back, you have to try the steak, And it was all good,

it was very good. But for me personally, it was more of a layover than it was a destination for me because it just I just couldn't I struggled finding things to do. And I might get some plaque for that because it is a beautiful country, it is a beautiful city specifically, but I just personally didn't have a good time. So I'm not really gonna dwell on that too much. So then when I did so, I went

LA to Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires to Santiago, And what I've kind of noticed is Santiago is kind of like the hub for traveling throughout South America. You can find cheap flights from Santiago to pretty much anywhere in South America for way less than what I would have assumed, like a Rio or a Buenos Aires would have been more of a hub, and they probably are still hubs.

But I found that flying out of Santiago was significantly cheaper at the time, at least than it was flying out of any of those other cities that I mentioned earlier. So went to Santiago. I only spent one night there. I will say, after just kind of ragging on city traveling a little bit, that Santiago is pretty awesome and I only spent one Yeah, I spent maybe like twenty hours there, so not a long time, but it just

gave me a better vibe. It's a little bit less busy than Buenos Aires, is a little easier to navigate as well. It's not quite like Buenos Aarres is huge, and Santiago is at least a little bit more manageable, and there's beautiful mountains over to the east. What I really wanted to do from there was travel to Easter Island, which is I don't know, five hundred miles off the western coast of Chile. What I found with that is if you're a Chilean local, you can fly to Easter

Island for like sixty bucks. But if you're a tourist like I was, obviously from probably any other country, not just America, it's like a thousand dollars just to fly that little flight over to Easter Island, and that might be one way. I can't remember if it was around trip, but it was. It was way out of my budget. It was it was within my budget, but it was too It just it didn't feel fiscally responsible for me to go to Easter Island for four hours and then

fly back over to Santiago. So I didn't actually end up doing that. So what I did was, once I got to Santiago, I realized that there aren't many direct flights that fly into Port Donatale, which is where like the base camp for the w Trek specifically is like that's kind of where most tour groups would start. You. I didn't use a tour group, but there are like buses that bus you up from Port Donatalast into Torrest Dell Pine a park, so that seemed like a good

place to start. A lot of people will fly into Punta Arenas, which is I want to say, like a four hour drive and then bust over to Port Donatales those four hours and then start their trek from there. It could be longer than four hours, it could be like eight. I just remember being it was long enough to where I didn't want to do it, and the flights into Port de Natals were they don't fly every day.

I think I remember it being like once a week there was a maybe like twice a week there was a flight down there, and then twice a week there was a flight back up. So you kind of really had to pick and choose exactly when and where you wanted to go. And I think I gave myself about a week in Port Donatales. I knew that I want to do the W tre but I didn't have any

like campsites bucked or anything like that. And if you've been there, or you've thought about going there and done some research on it, you'll know that you can't hike through the W without having your campsites buked. They don't limit the number of people on the trail per day like some national parks would, even this one actually on the upper half of the trek, which I did not do. It's the O is what the whole thing would be considered.

They only let like eighty people per day on the northern part of that trek, but in the W area they don't have any limitations. You just have to have your campsites bucked. And the booking platform for that is incredibly challenging to navigate. There's two companies that have like one has half of the campsites, the other one has the other half of the campsites. I think it's like

Conaff and Vertise or something like that. It's hard to navigate because it's like translate the website from Spanish to English and there's some stuff that's lost in translation. And when you do finally get to the booking page, a lot of this stuff is booked out, and so unless you're planning like a year or two in advance, it's kind of hard to figure out exactly how to get

all that stuff booked. So my plan was to get to ports Natals they have two headquarters there, Conaff and Vertise, and talk to them in person, hope there was some cancelations, and just kind of take those bookings. And what's challenging about it is most people do the W from west to east, so you have to kind of book your camp sites appropriately and make sure that, like you know, you go chronologically from the first to the second to

the third to the fourth. If you if you can't make all of those campsites or you have to miss one of them, your your whole trip is kind of shot because you're then either hiking twenty miles in a day, which is totally doable, just not necessarily ideal, or like you're just gonna go up there, camp at that campsite, wander around that area, and then return back to Port Natale. So I got there on a let's say I got

there on a Monday. First thing I did was go into the shops and get the camp sites booked, and luckily three days from then, So let's say on a Thursday, there was a campsite that was able to be booked. It wasn't Grays. Grays is kind of like maybe the most popular campsite because there's a huge glacier over there up in the mountains. That's where the passes that you come in through the o from, so a lot of

people like Gray's the most. Unfortunately I couldn't book Grays, but what I was able to do was book what was the first time I stayed at Piney Grande, which is the one that's like directly after Gray's, and then from Piney Grande, I was able to book Frances and then Central from there, so it's three nights, four days.

What you do is then they also give you a ferry ticket because you take the bus into the park and then you have to take a ferry through I can't remember the name of the like Pey Hooey Lake or something like that, and then that brings you up to like the bottom left side of the W and then you hike up into Grays Stay the Knight Grays ideally, and then you hike back down the same trail that you just came and then you continue on the W

from there. So I wasn't able to get Grays, which was a big bummer and something I regret, and it's actually something I've wanted to go back to and try to book the O. But like I said, I'm having trouble booking those campsites. It's so much easier when you get there, but you are rolling the dice because you might not be able to get the campsites that you need.

And it's just one of those things where it's like if you can't get it, you're gonna have to figure out what you're gonna be doing for the next week. And there are interesting things to do there. There's like a natural history museum with the Mylodons, which is like a giant sloth that used to roam around in that area back in the I don't know, prehistoric or Mesozoic days or something like that. There's a lot of other

sites to be seen while you're down there. If you're gonna do it, you're gonna probably want to rent a car, which is what I did, and highly recommend that for a while you're trying to kill some time. So I was able to get Plinty Groundey booked for Thursday, Fransace booked for Friday, and then Central booked for Saturday night. So I had three nights cover fifty miles, which is kind of a lot, and at the time I hadn't really done much backpacking, so this is not only my

first solo trip, but my first solo backpacking trip. And the nice thing about it is there is some infrastructure there, so like I didn't need to bring a sleeping bag or a tent or anything like that because they have campsites there and the reservations I was able to book included a tent and a sleeping bag and a meal for I think I got like dinner and breakfast, or maybe just dinners actually, because they they'll they'll cook for you at most of these campsites too, but you also

have to book that in advance as well, so something to consider. It did lighten your load, you know, like if you I didn't have to carry my sixty liter with me and with my with all that stuff in it. I just brought like nuts and dried fruit that you can buy in town pretty easily and for pretty cheap as well. So took the verry in to Piney Grande and hiked up to Grays to at least see it, so that, you know, added a bit of mileage to

my trick as well. So I hiked up to Gray's literally looked at it for I don't know, five minutes tops, and I kind of had to turn around quick because the hike from there to the next campsite was oh wait, no, Actually I didn't stay up Pine grund day. I think I stayed all the way at Francis, did I. I can't remember exactly what I did, but I do remember having to hike through another campsite to get to where I needed to go, making my first day even longer,

which is not ideal. But that first day is amazing. The bus takes you in super early in the morning, probably like six or seven am is when it leaves, and then it's an hour they or so drive to the park, and then the boat was about an hour, so you have some time to take it all in. It's the Patagonia clothing brand company. This is where they get their logo from. I'm sure you know that obviously,

if you're familiar with the area at all. So I took the ferry over, did all that hiking, and then from there, on the second day, I hiked up into the britann Co Lookout, which is kind of like the middle upper part of the w and it's amazing. You're hiking through these valleys with mountains surrounding you the most, like I said earlier, the most beautiful mountain scapes you'll

ever see in your entire life, mountains surrounding you. You're you're passing a lot of people because it's a pretty busy trail, but you're still fully alone, at least in my case, and so you never felt unsafe. There is like a pretty decent puma population out there, which is like South America's version of the mountain lion that we have here in North America, and so you kind of

are on edge about that. But what I've realized is like, as long as there's a lot of other people around, the chance of an encounter is pretty small, Like they're only going to be seen when they want to be seen, and unless you're doing something like so stupid, you're not really going to get attacked by one. Not to say that the chances are zero, because I think there have been some puma attacks down there, but very very very unlikely.

So went up to the Britannical Lookout, which was I was kind of on the fence of it because you don't need to go up there to do the track complete well, to complete it, I guess you would, but the main event comes at the end when you see the towers. But I did it anyways, one hundred percent worth. It pretty easy day relative to some of the other ones, because it was you know that it's not super long and there's a little bit of vert to gain, but

not bad, not bad at all. Hike back down, and then on the bottom right of the w you're kind of hiking alongside the lake that you I think that's the one that you take the ferry over in, but either way, you're kind of like water side for most of it, so water on your right, mountains on your left.

I remember there were like these huge, beautiful condors flying over occasionally, not the entire time, obviously, but it was just it was I can't I'm trying my best to like explain how amazing it is, and anything I say will not be good enough because it literally was so stink and amazing. Then I think I met a I think he was a guy, an Italian kid. He was probably like twenty years old, just an absolute beast of a hiker, like so strong, so fast, never got tired.

I met him at one of the campsites, and the next day he was like, yeah, I'm gonna go all the way to the towers tomorrow. But from where we were it was like fifteen miles and I was like pretty sore. I got these new hiking shoes that I absolutely hated, and I was like, screw it, I'm just gonna come with you and see what happens. And so I go with him. It's nice hiking with people that are faster than you because it forces you to come

to be faster and take less breaks. And when I'm hiking alone, I'm like, I'll take any excuse i can to like sit down for a little bit and just chill. So we hiked super fast. The last little push from what would it be kind of like central but not quite because you kind of like veer up before it. But the last push up to the towers of Torres still Pine, the base day last tourists lookout, I think

is what it's called is pretty challenging. It's steep, it's loose in areas, pretty rocky, and it's just it's challenging to get up there, especially when you're already pretty tired. But once you get over the crest and into the little what would you call it, not like a valley, but you're you're you're basically like in this alpine lake, surrounded, well not surrounded, but in front of you are these three massive granite I want to I want to call

them granite towers. And it's it's every picture that someone would post from this area has those towers in it. It's the most breath taking place in the entire world. When I was up there, it was kind of busy, like there's maybe like eighty eighty five people up there, all hikers. The only way to access it is by hiking. Some people just take the bus in, hike up, hike down, take the bus back down to Portinatals. But obviously if you wanted to get the full experience, you're like, you

got all your stuff with you. There were like, you know, families doing day trips up theres. I guess the point I'm trying to make, but it's just mind blowing. Like I said, nothing I say can encapsulate how incredible it is up there. So the whole track took me four days. Maybe was it three days. I might have done it in two nights. I can't remember. But anyone can do it, Like, sure, there are certain limitations, but if you can walk, you

could do this hike. It just might take you a little bit longer, but that's kind of the nice thing. You're on your own schedule, especially without a tour guide. You can wake up early, get to the next camp site late. Since it was almost summer solstice there in South America. In the southern Hemisphere, the days would last until you know, you'd have sun until ten pm because you're pretty far south down there, so you can, like I said, you can take your time, you can go slow.

I'm not an early riser typically, I would say, like my earliest start is ten am on a good day, and you know, you have a lot of people starting in like six am, so that way they can be done hiking before probably like at between lunch and dinner, which is a pretty good way to do it. It's always the best practice to get started early. That way, if there's any complications or bad weather, you can just kind of lean on the fact that you have a

lot of time to get to wherever you're going. So yeah, that, I mean the WS It's unbelievably breathtaking. It. I'm so glad that I like randomly stumbled upon it. I don't even remember how I found it. I I think I knew someone that had been down there or something, so it like piqued my interest a little bit, and then I started doing some research on it and looking at maps. You're kind of like, oh, yeah, this is cool, it should be fun whatever, blah blah blah. But then getting

down there and seeing it in person. Like I said, it's it's it's life changing. It changed my life for the better. So I can't recommend that area of the world enough. The food, it's funny. I was kind of talking to Crap about not being a big foodie. The food down there is amazing. It's it's affordable, it's it's high quality. As far as I could tell, you want like your American comfort food, they'll have, you know, some Hamburger shops. There's some pizza joints that are pretty good.

I'm trying to think of other important information that I can at least divulge. But the town reports in Natalless is incredible. And the three nights I spent there, two or three nights, whatever it was that I spent there, it felt like I could have spent more time in that town for how small it is. It's it's a tiny, tiny town. You can drive from one end to the other in less than ten minutes, maybe like five or

seven minutes, so it's not big. But there's a lot to do, not only just like driving around seeing the sites, but eating and just kind of roaming. I don't know, there's a lot of cute little stray dogs that'll come up to you and they're super friendly. I don't know how safe they are to pet in terms of like diseases and stuff, but they're they're awesome as well, so

keep that in mind. And then I made it back to portinay Talas and time flew out of the airport the next day back up to Santiago, and just something about being out there, being alone, knowing that you can travel to a place you've never been and do something

you've never done and succeed. I think that's really what was the turning point for me, to know that I can take care of myself, I guess in a way whereas like you know, I don't need to bank on someone else booking a reservation or planning an itinerary, like doing that all on my own and realizing that I like it more A and I won't die B is a very freeing concept. But yeah, that's the w track. I can't remember. Pricing wise, I have some stuff on my blog about how much it costs me to get

down there, how much it costs for the campsites. The campsites were probably more expensive than you think they would be, and more than they should be honestly, but I want to say it was like sixty bucks a night and then like twenty bucks for a dinner, so not bad, but definitely not super cheap when it comes to camping.

The flights were more affordable than I bet you think because that Portana Talis flight, Like, since it's so infrequent, you would think it'd be really expensive, but it actually if you catch it at the right time, you can get a pretty good deal. I want to say it was like two hundred bucks from Santiago, so not bad at all. And yeah, I stayed at a hostel in Portanatalies. I can't remember the name of it. Oh, this is

what I wanted to mention. Cheot too. Before you go on the hike, before you make it up into Patagonia or into Torrest del Pine and you're maybe you have some extra time in Portana Talis, there's a place called Erratic Rock in What they'll do is they'll kind of brief you on everything what to expect when you go up and do the w So they'll tell you like weather conditions for the next week, or how to navigate if you get lost, like certain things that you would

probably overlook otherwise unless your experience, which I was not. They'll just they'll you in on a lot of things that might be missing. It's like an hour long free lecture of sorts. Well, they'll just kind of brief you and give you information, let you ask questions. And so if you're there and you have, you know, a day before you start your hike, go to Erratic Rock. Trust me, it is one hundred percent worth your time. And you know,

I'm not a bit I'm not. I'm not super good at just like making new friends randomly out in the wilderness, but it's a good way to get connected with other people who are hiking around the same time as you. And you know, let's say you hit it off with someone, you guys become friends, then you guys could hike together if that's what you wanted to do too. On the bus there, I made a couple of friends that we hiked up to Grays but they stayed there, so I

hiked down separately. But Erratic Rock can't recommend it enough. I'm pretty it's got to still be there. There's no way that's not there anymore. But definitely worth your time. And yeah, that's that's my w check experience. I whenever anyone asks, Like, I'll have friends reach out to me occasionally like, hey, I've got you know, two weeks off from works in January, where should I go? And they'll

give me a list of places. Sometimes Patagonia is on it, and if it ever is, I say, don't even consider any other options. If you haven't been there, that's where you should go, Like that is the best place to go. So I hope that helps maybe encourage you to go down there and try it out and see if you like it for yourself. At the very least, I hope

it encourages you to consider traveling alone. It'll probably be a recurring theme at this point on this podcast, because I have done a fair amount of solo trips and they're usually the ones that I come back from the most happy because just from my experience with them. But that's it. That's the w trek La to Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires is Santiago, Santiago to Portentatales, and then you

just kind of figured it as you go. I will say too, it's nice to not have a schedule, like a strict schedule where it's stressful in the sense where you you might not get the campsites or the reservations that you want, but to be able to fly by the seat of your peans and change things as they develop. And you know, I guess like be dynamic is it's nice because there's no pressure, there's no stress if things

go wrong. If things go wrong, it's nice because you can be like, well, this is still fun and like, what did I expect anyways? Like of course things were gonna go wrong when I didn't have anything planned. So that's kind of the mentality that I've taken with traveling is just like get there and see what happens, and most more often than not, at least it turns into a positive experience that, like I said, that'll be a

recurring theme. You'll you'll hear me talk about that a lot in some other trips as well, of like me just going to a place with a zero idea of what to do or who I'm going to see or what at that place even is, and then it ends up being some of my favorite trips. So that's gonna do it for this episode. Sorry for not editing in Kalan's voice as much as I had hoped to, but I guess I was just rambling my coffee is hit me pretty hard, so be sure to do you next.

Next week, it's going to be a continuation of this trip I wanted to keep. I wanted to keep the W Treck separate because, like I said, it's magical. And I actually returned a couple years later that I'll talk about as well. I didn't do the W but I did some other things down there, so stay tuned for that. Stay tuned for next week's episode, where maybe we suck just a little bit less