Enter Chile, Torres del Paine

Long day starting with a sunrise drive to the Chilean border with a bus full of day-trippers.

 (On the border, cold.)

On the adventure bus, we amused ourselves about what to
put in the immigration form, under 'occupation'. Chilean officials
are known for being honest and by the book, so in this spirit we arrived at
a few options.

"Taking a sabbatical"
"A bit of time off"
"Career break"
"Motivational hiatus"
"In between things"
"Re-evaluating"

All of which we felt were better spoken (with eyes wide open and using
fingers to denote inverted commas) than written, so we just stuck with
boring old advertising and finance.

During the day-long circuit of the national park, the tour guide kept referring to us as "our two friends who we will be dropping off at the designated point where they will hike their way to camp" which made me feel very special. John the explorer, mountaineer.

All was going well till he asked if we knew what to do in the event of encountering a puma.

"I'm sorry, but no one at Patagonia Extreme ever mentioned anything
about a puma."

"Not 'a'. Quite a few at this time of year. You know what to do, right?"

"Run."

Condescending smiles all round. No John, you do not run. You definitely do not run. What you do is look the puma straight in the eye. Do not go forward or turn your back. Make yourself as big as possible with arms outstretched. Clap your hands, make lots of noise.

Blinking for several seconds, I tried imagining myself doing this. In terms of weaponry, I had half a bottle of orange squash and Graham had his blackberry.

"Just out of curiosity," I asked, "if a puma got in a fight with a Rottweiler, who would win?"  I had been coming up with 'good questions' all day while he was explaining the peculiar formation of the mountains, to the point where he actually answered "i dont know, im not God." Here, the hesitant pause and blank stare convinced me that this was another one. "Rottweiler. Probably."

Up the hills, the first third was fun, chasing guanacos and trying to get close-up shots. Surprisingly difficult, this. Guanacos are relations of llamas. Timid animals, but born with instinctive caution and good hearing. Mind bogglingly, Graham was under the impression that yelling at them while running at full pelt would somehow entice them to come closer, so I distanced myself from him. Slowly, I crept up to one that just seemed defiantly comfortabe in my presence. One shot was all it gave me.

Entering a very quiet valley, the company of guanacos gave way to
guanaco bones and skulls, and later, the still more unsettling sight
of hollowed out guanaco carcasses still bloodied from the kill. This
was not the work of a rottweiler.

Pushing on, I took the lead in double time, my radar panning from left
to right like the guards at Tianenmen Square. At its worst, every ten
yards produced a fresh carcass.  Any rock or bush bigger than a
football were a potential puma. This eerie loneliness was accompanied
by daft yet uncontrollable thoughts of what it would be like to be
eaten alive.

For the rest of the walk, I debated with myself whose side I was on.
Is it better for the guanaco to get eaten or the puma to starve? No
question, between the bull and the matador I would side with the bull
and hope the matador gets the nasty mauling he deserves. But this is
not so straightforward. For sure, there are a lot of guanacos around,
but when you see the carcass in real life, it does make your heart
bleed. I have a photo but have decided not to show it.

Two hours and no conclusion later, a sharp descent signified safety
and the return of my pulse and nerve. I would love to say that one
last look back at the boulders rewarded me with a lone puma silhouette
looking down, as if it had been following all along with the same
curiosity and caution. As you can see, it didn't, and the closest I
came to death was from boredom, waiting a whole hour for the camp's
pick up truck to arrive very late in the cold Chilean wind.