Torres del Paine, Day Quattro: The rain in Paine falls mostly on me

Torrential rain. Sub-zero temperatures. Sleet and snow. Cyclonic winds. They sound like good names for heavy metal bands, but they’re not the kind of words you want to hear while you’re hiking through Chile’s Torres del Paine National Park. My fourth day on the W Trek dawned with absolutely appalling weather that saw a number of tracks closed for safety reasons, and left me wondering whether I’d actually get out of my tent at all.

I did finally crawl out around 10am to start a wet, wild and at sometimes dangerous 16km walk towards the ccentral Las Torres campsite. I can’t say the views were breathtaking, because I could see dick-all other than the thick clouds around me and the rain that pelted into my eyes. It didn’t take long before I was wetter than a fat chick with a box of fresh donuts. As the weather worsened, I had to keep going, because there was no shelter or places to divert to. It was just one sopping foot in front of the other for hours.

There’s a section of this track that runs along the shores of Lago Nordenskjold,and that’s where things got truly dicey. The wind was smashing through at more than 150km/h – enough to knock me off my feet and send rocks flying at my head. It was kind of scary, and I was grateful when an attractive Chinese girl asked if I wanted to hold onto her pole so I didn’t get blown away.

“No thanks,” I replied. “But feel free to hold onto my pole if you like. You won’t be blown away by it, either.”

The last few kilometres of the walk felt like something out of a World War II prison camp. Lonely, skeletal figures staggered through the gloom, sometimes falling, never speaking. When I finally reached the camp, it was even worse. Far from the comforts of Camp Grey and Camp Frances, Las Torres is little more than a turd-smeared toilet block and a small tent, which was full of muddy, crying, shivering survivors. To make things worse, the shack that serves as a shop was out of Clos. It was a tragic end to an awful day – or so I thought.

“Hey man!” came a voice, and I turned around to see Antonio standing there with a girl under each arm. He told me he was heading back to Puerto Natales on the next bus, and planned to get drunk and go dancing. I looked around at the horror show surrounding me as I weighed up my options; I could stick around in the mud and misery another day in the slim hope that a miracle would happen and it would clear up enough that I could hike up to the Torres in the morning. Or I could jump on the bus, get epically drunk in a warm pub, and try to pork a stunning Chilean girl. If you’re wondering which way I went, just check the name of this blog.

I made the right decision, because the weather just got worse and I ended up having a top night. After getting back to Puerto Natales at 10, a bunch of us loaded up on boxes of cheap Clos and headed out to a swinging bar, where I got smashed on awesome local beer and worked my way through a kilogram of chips. I’m doing my best to rediscover all the weight I’ve lost over the last year.

Things then took a turn for the bizarre. On the way home from the bar, after killing another box of Clos, Tony and I ended up in a near-deserted pub with only one old pisshead drinking in the corner. At 3am it seemed like as good a place as any to continue the festivities, so we got stuck into more of Patagonia’s finest piss. Then a couple of perverts walked in, and we suddenly found ourselves in a more dangerous situation than anything del Paine could throw at us.

“You are handsome boys, why not you dance on the pole?” asked one of the creeps. At first I assumed he was talking about his dick, but then the barmaid flicked a switch and a sad string of rope lights lit up a pole in a dark corner of the room. The sicko started gyrating to a song that must’ve been playing in his head, saying, “You would look so good on the pole. Don’t be scared, I dance with you.”

I told the idiot in no uncertain terms that I didn’t intend on dancing on any poles, but poor old Antonio was drunk enough to be coerced into the corner. He bopped around a bit while the perverts oohed and ahhed and lifted up their shirts to expose their erect nipples, and I laughed along and did my best to cop a feel of the barmaid’s big tits. Suddenly, my Portuguese pal let out a squeal and raced for the door, spilling out into the frigid night. I skolled my beer and followed him, and when we saw that the perverts were after us, we ran through the icy streets of Puerto Natales until we were sure we’d lost them.

“I’m fine with dancing on the pole, I’m alright with their sexy comments, but I draw the line at them biting my penis,” he yelled.

I just nodded, afraid to ask any further, and then handed Antonio a box of Clos to help him suppress the memories.

“No more Clos,” he wept, throwing the carton into an open drain. “With you, it is always about the Clos! We hike, we drink Clos! We don’t hike, we drink Clos! Because of Clos, I was almost raped by a retarded guy!”

If the marketing team at Clos don’t use that as their tagline in the future, they should lose their fucking jobs.