DIARIES OF INTROVERT PHOTOGRAPHER OR HOW A TRIP TO PATAGONIA CHANGED ME A BIT

Patagonia has been on my wish list for a very long time. Every time I would see a photo from there, my mouth would open, my eyes wouldn’t blink, and even my heart would stop beating for a moment. But, I’ve always waited for the “right” moment to go there – when I wouldn’t be so busy with my PhD research, when I would have more money, or when I would have fun and interesting travel companions. Life, however, was passing by, and I have only been day dreaming about this beautiful fairy-tale and far-away destination. Finally, in early 2017 (after I have defended my PhD, and got a full-time job), I told to myself, life is here and now, not in the future, or in the past, so I bought the tickets, and started the planning process. In the beginning, I was a bit concerned about travelling alone: I have never camped alone before, and I have never been in such a different place alone as well. I have talked to several of my friends about my upcoming trip, one of whom, my male friend, said something like “As a female, you should be fine travelling alone in Argentina”, and it somehow touched me. I first found it a bit offensive and wondered why did he put an accent on “as a female”: “Did he mean, as a female I could manage the risk factors badly and less likely avoid any dangerous situations?”. But then I started to think. Unfortunately, there are lots of places where it is not safe to travel for male or female, alone or in a group, but more bitter is the feeling that unfortunately it is true that in almost any place, females are at a much higher danger risk. Nevertheless, I haven’t been concerned about my safety, as all reports I had read online were describing extremely friendly local people and, after visiting that place, I couldn’t agree with them more!

“Life is here and now, not in the future, or in the past”

Many people prefer to travel with a company of friends, because they want to be social. I prefer to travel alone, because I want to get social. I think when you travel with people you already know, you are less likely to engage in contact with stranger fellow travellers or local people. I’m quite shy by nature, and starting a conversation is always difficult for me, so I wanted to improve that part of me, and I think, I did a bit.

When you travel in a place like Patagonia, where little information or services are available online, you have to talk. Sometimes, you have to talk using your hands, sometimes with a help of google translate, sometimes, you have to talk to a chain of people, who redirect you from place to place, until you find the right one (or learn that what you’re looking for is not available), but at the end of the day – you are happy. Happy, because every single person you have talked to, tried to help. It is probably not always the case, but I was happy to have the positive experience, and I was happy to be in Patagonia alone. Well, if you are not happy in Patagonia, you have serious problems, luckily I don’t.

Apart from the locals, the road always brings encounters with other travellers, who might be travelling solo as you are, and eager for contact. I had several such encounters, but the most memorable was on my first sunrise in Chalten area. My first night at Chalten, I woke up at 3am, and started hiking up the hill (20km, 1000m up) to take photos of sunrise. I was alone on the trail, except of beautifully curved big and small trees, that looked particularly magical under the bright full moon. The moon was so bright, that I even didn’t need to use my headlamp all the time. After couple of hours, I arrived at the first viewpoint. I wasn’t satisfied with the view, and I continued further up. The trail was going up to the highest point of the hill, when I realised I didn’t want to be too high for a good sunrise composition and I went off the trail. I started to traverse the hill along the slope, instead of going up the hill along the trail (I even have started recording my GPS track, in case I got lost). At around 7am, the sky started to get brighter and I needed to choose my sunrise shooting spot. It still wasn’t the perfect view, but it was better than before, so I decided to stop and go no further. At that moment, I saw some light and sound of hiking poles in the forest a bit below me. I got scared for a moment (could it be bad people?). I assured myself it couldn’t be anyone except for fellow photographers, but wait … I left the trail and went off trail. Could that person have gone off the trail the same way as I did ? I gathered a bit of bravery and said the first “hello”. The person continued moving towards me and finally we saw each other up close. It didn’t take me too long to realise that he was indeed the fellow photographer, as he already had his camera attached to the tripod. We were probably both a bit surprised, so the conversation was dry at the beginning, when I noticed he had a very profound slavic accent. I gathered tiny bit of another bravery portion, and asked if he’d speak Russian (my mother tongue). Of course, he did. He turned out to be Russian expat, living in Canada for years. You can’t mistake slavic accent with any other one. It is also difficult to get rid of it, but at least we can find each other in the crowd by that accent. Honestly, I was a bit disappointed meeting someone there, as I wanted to have the whole space just for myself, and now we needed to share, and make sure we don’t spoil each others photo compositions. But things got significantly better since we switched to Russian, and on the way back down to town, we shared very enjoyable conversation. A the end, I was even sad that he was leaving Chalten, when I’ve just arrived. So, that’s it – the story of two russian-speaking expats meeting up in the middle of nowhere in Patagonia and the story of my level up in communication skills (although it might sound a bit of a silly story to others).

As I discovered, Patagonian forest is densely populated with hikers and photographers, but it is also home to some wild animals, although mostly cute and harmless animals, like Guanaco, Armadillo, Fox, Mice (known as ruthless destroyers of camping equipment), and Huemul (that can terrify relaxed campers with their sounds as well). Every person who visits the National Parks is aware and warmed about Patagonian Puma’s existing population in the area. Puma is rare cat that was almost hunted to extinction, but its population is recovering thanks to the conservation efforts. Some people go specifically to track and see pumas, but I was hoping to avoid them. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), I got to meet this graceful curious cat at a closer distance. I don’t have any photos of the puma, but it was real, and I was scared enough not to even think about photo taking opportunity. One day I tried to go closer to Lago Torre in Chalten area and I started hiking up at 4am from the town. After around 1h of hiking, I saw 2 bright circles, shining in the dark forest. I stopped and tried to analyse it with the light of my headlamp. Shortly, my brain concluded it were the eyes of a large animal and I even could see a bit of silhouette. Luckily, I noticed it from far enough, not to panic, and not to pee my pants … as it was a puma – large predator, eating flesh of animals, and capable on killing me with one hit…

 After seeing the eyes in the dark, I still wasn’t quite sure who it was, just that it were the eyes of the large animal, that moved. I knew there were pumas in the area, but I still hoped it wasn’t one. I decided not to risk and started to slowly walk backwards. The eyes followed me through the forest. After some time, we got out of trees and the animal got up on a little hill – it was when I saw it very clearly – the face, the ears, and the full body. I certainly got scared a bit more, but I knew they usually don’t attack humans, and, after all, I was still alive! I continued walking backwards, holding my arms with hiking sticks up, and always pointing my headlamp towards the eyes. I had lost my balance and felt couple of times, while walking backwards (once, pretty close to the edge of a cliff), my muscles were sore (it is more difficult to walk backwards, than forwards),  and every time I felt, I’d feel extremely scared, but I was getting up and keep walking backwards. It followed me all the way till the town lights were visible. Only after reaching the town, I turned forward and ran to my hostel, but still constantly looking back to check for pumas. After that incident, I became much more cautious and avoided walking at night alone in the forest. Even after coming back to Switzerland, where there are nearly zero wild animals around, I am more cautious about walking at night, as “the night is dark and full of terrors” 🙂 Nevertheless, I feel lucky to have met the puma, and to have that experience I can share with my friends as a funny story.

“I was still alive!”

As walking alone at night wasn’t an option for me anymore, I still had several days left to spend, and since the weather was nice, I decided to turn to a professional climbing guide and tag one of the easy summits in the Chalten range. Apart from securing me during the climb, my guide was a good source of new Spanish words. As it turned out, learning Spanish (I believe as any other foreign language) is a lot of fun. The first Spanish word that I learned in Patagonia was the verb “mira”. Because, even before the plane has landed everyone was yelling “Mira! Mira!” and pointing somewhere. Next words I learned from my guide – they were “listo” (ready) and “vamos” (everyone should know that). So, now I can describe my climb in perfect Spanish: “Listo? Vamos, vamos, vamos … mira! photo. Listo? Vamos, vamos, vamos, … mira! photo. Listo, vamos, vamos. Yummy, yummy, zzzz, yummy, listo? vamos, vamos, vamos, vamos, vamos, vamos, vamos, vamos, vamos, vamos, vamos, …. miiiiiiraaaaa!!!!!! photo, photo, photo, photo, photo, photo, photo. Listo? vamos, vamos, vamos, vamos, vamos, vamos, yummy, yummy, listo? vamos, vamos, vamos, vamos, photo, vamos, vamos, vamos, photo, vamos “

The climb itself wasn’t all that fun all the times, and wasn’t easy for my level of fitness. Braving the cold, accepting the inconveniences of a high altitude mountain bivouac, having little sleep, and exerting high intensity physical exercise – time has certainly filtered out all of that, keeping just the highly elevated, euphoric feelings from the views and the atmosphere. The climb is mostly a scramble up on off trail path, till the overnight bivouac, and then a bit more scramble, followed by glacier climb, and final small rocky pitch till the summit. We started at 4am from the overnight bivouac, as I wanted to reach the summit by sunrise at around 8am – that we did just on time. On the summit, It was cold, windy, exposed, and I wanted to get down, but the light show was on, cameras working non-stop and half an hour passed as a blink. On the way down, I got many blisters, and every step was a pain, but those disappeared soon, while good memories, and urge to come back again remained.

I have been in Patagonia for only around 8 days, but, I believe, I returned a different person. My muscles transformed, my bravery increased, my knowledge expanded, my technical skills improved, and what’s more important for me, my communication skills jumped a few levels up. I did go back to Patagonia one more time the year after, and it was great as well, but it is a subject of a different story. For everyone heading to an adventure, wishing to stay positive, always laugh at yourself, how bad your situation would not be, stay social, and stay safe ! Happy Adventures, and maybe see you on the trails.