Be careful or they spit you - and The Vile Human

We´ve just re-settled into our fancy room at the El Calafate Hostel (or, as we like to call it, ¨home¨. Did we mention it also has a heated floor and a bidet?) after spending a day and night in Chilean Patagonia. We left for Chile way too early on Saturday morning and along with some seriously geared-out Spaniards were driven fast and furiously for five hours through the darkness and dense fog to Parque Nacional Torres del Paine in the southern-most stretch of Chile. Our time in the park was long, freezing and sometimes raining, but was nevertheless spectacular. The park is enormous, with numerous turquoise-colored lakes (some sprinkled with icebergs), red and amber-hued trees changing color to mark the beginning of autumn, and lots of interesting and unusual wildlife. All of this is set against the backdrop of the snow-covered mountains and the three distinctive ¨towers of blue¨ granite which jut out above the other mountain peaks and give the park it´s name (¨Torres del Paine¨ means ¨Towers of Blue¨in the language of the local indigenous people).

The color of the lakes is hard to describe and difficult to believe. It´s bright turquoise like the Caribbean ocean (due to the minerals carried by the glacier ice), but with a slightly milky tinge so that it appears etheral and not quite real. At one point during the day, we hiked to a raging waterfall created by the run-off of some of the park´s glaciers. It looked like liquid blue neon thundering onto the rocks below. Our guide, Daniel, was awesome and showed us a lake that is salty in the winter, but has fresh water in the summer, another lake that is 10 times saltier than the Dead Sea where flamingos like to congregate, and introduced us to the cousin of the camel, the South American guanaco (face of a kangaroo, body of a llama, ´tude of a camel). The guanacos are protected from humans within the park (they still have to contend with resident pumas) and so are very docile and don´t mind if people get close to them to take pictures (although Daniel famously warned us, ¨Be careful or they spit you.¨) There were a couple professionals in the herd that we stopped to gawk at and Ande got an amazing picture of South America´s Next Top Guanaco Model posing seductively on top of a hill, with postcard-perfect, snow-capped mountains in the background.

The journey back to El Calafate from Torres del Paine was long and shared with a hideous man and the two Spaniards. We first encountered the man the night before in the lovely fish restaurant we retired to in Puerto Natales, Chile with some awesome people we met on our trekking trip. Although Daniel´s plans to drop us off at a vegetarian restaurant in Puerto Natales didn´t work out (much to the dismay of Ande and our two new veggie, British friends who bonded over shared stories of eating nothing but bread and potatos for days on end in South America), the fish restaurant turned out to be great (and non-smoking...holla!) and we enjoyed a brilliant dinner with new friends and shared travel stories. As we were about to leave, the vile man approached. He was a head-to-toe British stereotype, from his mangled teeth all the way down to his drunken feet. He put his arm around Jen and our veggie friends and asked if we´d join him at the Club later on. We were in a town of about 4 people, what the fuck club was this drunken fool talking about? We politely turned him down and went off to pass out at the Alcazar Hosteleria.

Bright and early next morning, we and the chain-smoking Spaniards woke up and hopped on our mini-bus for the 5 hour ride back to El Calafate. We jetted 3 minutes down the street of the tiny town and suddenly stopped in front of another hostel. Our driver rushed in to fetch another passenger but came out empty-handed. Some Spanish was exchanged and we pulled away, drove around the block and came right back. The driver went in a second time and this time returned with the ´let´s go clubbing´ Brit from the night before (hereinafter referred to as the ¨Vile Human¨). The Vile Human stumbled onto the mini-bus reeking of alcohol and other odors and announced to no one in particular that it was quite a night he had and that he had been passed out the first time we came to pick him up. By quite a night, we imagine he pounded cheap tequila, gyrated to 80s techno, and went to bed with a 13 year-old prostitute (who we hoped was really a 20 year old man who robbed him blind). The Vile Human took his seat in front of us and we prayed to Dios that he did not barf all over our fleeces. We immediately plugged into iPods and closed our eyes. Some time later, the Vile Human turned around and started speaking at us. He was relentless and Jen finally opened her eyes and gave him a few sentences before re-closing them moments later while he was still talking. It only got worse once we hit the Chilean-Argetine border and our driver for the second leg of the trip realized he had forgotten his keys for the next mini-bus back at the hostel in Puerto Natales. We piled into a small roadside cafe to wait 2 hours for someone to go retrieve the keys. Despite our best efforts, the Vile Human plopped down at our table and continued to talk at us, this time with half of his sandwich hanging off his face and the other half flying out of his mouth in little chunks as he spoke. He was awful and rude and burping and STILL drunk. We found solace in our driver, the two Spaniards, and every other person within a 10 mile radius who shared a mutual disgust for the man. As he started blurting out his interary for the next 6 weeks in South America, we shuddered as we realized it was nearly identical to ours. Would we have to cross paths with the Vile Human in every city we visit from here on out, dodging his drunken, projectile spittle like he were some sort of backpacking, Queen´s English-spewing guanaco? Bahhh. Hopefully he was too drunk to remember us.