Trudging onward . . .

The view from up here is staggering. It’s pacifying in a way to think that in that water behind us are the most gigantic mammals on the planet, and in front of us lies a primeval forest essentially untouched by humankind. This region is somewhere between “Magellanic Moorland” and southernmost American rainforest, where solid ground is rare and water is a fixture.

As Mike and Mark pack up their camera gear, I go over the ridge to see how fast the Canadians are moving. Lucy, almost unrecognizable in the distance, turns toward me just as I begin to head downhill again, and she waves. I stop and wave back, watching as she disappears into the trees with her teammates. After a few minutes Mike and Mark appear behind me, and we start moving again. The next few hours consist of a descent through more thick forest, thorns, and downed logs, crossing narrow streams cut through shallow, mossy ravines, slipping, sliding, and squeezing over and between trees. We aim for areas where the light breaks through, because this often means turba, where instead of fighting vegetation we can trudge across sponge. There we’ll sink in a few inches, but our steps disappear in seconds as the alien stuff seemingly reconstructs itself back into its original state.



Every once in awhile we see a smudge where another foot before us has slipped in the muck, and we congratulate ourselves for being on the right track, or at least the track chosen by the people who seem to know what they’re doing. We finally arrive between two rises on the top of a ridge and pick our way around a lake, which runs right over the edge of the rocks in front of us. Here the land opens up around us again, my heart picking up speed at the vision in front of me—snow-topped mountains across the horizon line, waterfalls pouring down through valleys leading into more forest, and a deep valley to cross to get there.



Below us is cliffline and ravine, and somewhere amongst the two is a promised semi-safe descent into that valley. Here it will be complicated, because the mountain simply rounds off into sheer rock face, with the top entirely covered in tightly-woven ground vegetation, mud, and small wet rocks. As we are searching for a way down, I slip. I was waiting to simply stop, but instead kept sliding faster down the rocks and muck until Mark steps over and throws his leg in front of me. I fully expect to knock him down and send him careening down the slope with me, but somehow I hit him and come to a halt. Mike just did the same thing about fifty feet earlier, so we start choosing our steps more carefully. If Mark hadn’t been there I would likely have kept sliding, and in several more meters would have popped off the cliff edge and into space, which I find both subduing and hysterical at the same time. Either way, I’m officially paying attention now.

After hunting around for the better part of an hour we finally fight our way down a gully which could lead as easily to another cliff edge as to an open meadow of turba. Luckily the latter appears and we start to breathe a little easier, throwing our packs down at the bottom to have yet another pack of cookies and a Clif Bar. On the boat the organizers gave us dried soup packs, jam, and cookies for our trip, but we thought enough ahead this year to bring loads of energy bars. Soon I will likely kill for some chorizo and cheese. Mike is an absolute sugar addict, though he claims that he’s nothing like this when he’s home in Santa Fe. Coco Cookies, sugar candy, Gu, drink mix, everything sugar-based vaporizes in front of him, and I sneakily stow some rolls of cookies at the bottom of my pack before he inhales them. We are supposed to be out here for four more days, and I’m sure I’m going to want cookies to make myself feel better when things start to really hurt. Mike is also far too generous, and every time he opens a pack of cookies he passes it around until it’s finished. I know if I don’t grab a couple each time I won’t have the chance, so I can’t harass him too much about it. Even though Chilean chocolate is terrible on the whole and Mike alleges a hatred for all things chocolate, he also mows through the candy bars, which feature beautiful people kissing on every wrapper. Chileans appear to closely associate love and dessert, as this is a common theme on all their packaging. I have a deep-seated affection for quality dark chocolate, but I think if someone tried to charm me with one of these heinous things I would be more likely to run in the other direction than passionately embrace him.



Off we go again, up steep mountainsides and then down through forest again, through more vines, thorny bushes, and mossy chutes, and nothing but crawling and climbing and heaving and sliding, of course.





After a few more hours of trekking, with a few river crossings thrown in, we are mid-valley and yet on a rise within it, surrounded on all sides by mountains. It has been about twelve hours since we started, and it’s growing dark as the rain grows heavier. I am thoroughly soaked between my sweat and the rivers and the ever-present precipitation, and beginning to think to myself that stopping within the next hour will not upset me. Every time we pause for more than a minute my teeth start chattering and visions of cheese and sausage and hot coffee creep into my brain. My joints are beginning to ache quite a bit from the alternating spongy to slippery to rocky terrain, no doubt experiencing a rude awakening after my having spent more than a week on a plane, in a boat, on a bus, in a truck, or simply standing or sitting around waiting for the action to pass through.




We find our camp spot for the night about fifteen minutes further along the mid-valley rise. This is the area that Ann called the most beautiful place she had ever seen, and there is no denying that this view is on par with any I’ve witnessed in my lifetime. We set up tents on a prominent point at the foot of several mountains, with two giant twin waterfalls for a backdrop and views up seven different valleys. The waterfalls converge into a river that rages thirty feet below us on one side. Note to self: Don’t walk to the right of the tent if getting up in the middle of the night to pee.

No sign of the Americans yet, either. We figured that they would have started out a few hours behind us, and since we stopped frequently to take pictures, tape feet, or filter water, it’s surprising that they haven’t caught up by now. If they pass in the night, which they will if they haven’t already stopped for sleep earlier on, then they’ll probably wake us up. We hope so, anyway. Mike muses that they might have decided to drop out of the race altogether at the end of the last kayaking section, which would mean that the Canadians will be the last people we see for several days, and also that everyone at the finish line will be waiting on us and only us, soon.