This morning I woke up with blisters on every toe and a pulled muscle in my hip, but a few advils and pieces of moleskin later, I was good to go. Today, we learned our lesson about breakfast and bought bananas and stuff at the grocery store next door. We nomed on our much more filling meal on the drive to our next hike, which was (thank god) only 9 miles and relatively flat. It went along this gorgeous river, and we climbed up a bit of a hill in the middle of this valley formed by glaciers and surrounded by mountains.
Fitz Roy!! Apparently, there are only a couple of clear days a season and we were sososososo lucky to have one!!
I think what I have come to appreciate the most about being here is how little evidence there is of human life. Patagonia really is the last bit of wilderness there is left. Like you can walk for miles and see nothing but nature—even when you stand on top of these mountains and can see for hundreds more miles, it’s just glaciers, lakes, rivers, trees, etc. It makes you really think about what the earth was like before people came around.
Also, it’s oddly fitting that I’ve come here after spending a couple of months watching TONS of environmental-focused documentaries. Our guide here told us that the glaciers were receding pretty quickly, and it reminded me just how quickly climate change is affecting the world. I really do think that this is going to be the defining issue of our generation as much as communism was way back when and as much as Iraq has been now.
Being here has also made me realize how much of the world there is to see, and how important it is to see the physical parts of earth. I mean when I have traveled in the past, I always focused on getting to know a people, their history, and their culture, and I never really got into exploring the local landscape. But gahhhhh, I’ve been missing so much!!!
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