 Hello, Han. How are you doing? Gordo the Texard here. Welcome to another thrilling and exciting episode of Hibachi Tuck. I'm here with my good old buddy, Andrew, the security guy. Hey, everybody. It's good to be back. We're going to have a real no guest today and no angus today because you did a pretty incredible 80 mile hike a week or so ago. We're going to talk about the Patagonia Hiking the O. Yeah, Hiking the O. Yeah. So how many people know or even know where Patagonia is? Yeah. I'll tell you what. We signed up for this trip. Sort of a friend of ours wanted to go do it. And my wife says, well, that sounds great. Let's go. So we actually committed to the trip before we figured out where Patagonia is. So grab a libation, pull up the chair. Let's get into this exciting undertaking. So where the hell is Patagonia? So you are old story. Yeah. So it's bigger than I knew, but the region really spans Chile and Argentina in the very, very southern part of South America. So you're at the tip of South America? All the way down to really the Straits of Magellan. So one of the towns that we linked through sort of the gateway town into the National Park there at Torres del Paine is called Porto Natalis. And that's on the Straits of Magellan. So there are, you know, Tierra del Fuego. There's a little bit of other land and islands and stuff south. But by and large, you're way, way down there. You know, you're definitely in a few hundred miles of the tip. Now, did you take any photos that you're going to be able to show us? So whenever they're ready, they can start to run those. And we'll just walk through the mini of them. Yeah, because you've got a bunch. We flew, I can tell you for us, it was LA, you know, Honolulu, LA, LA to Mexico City, Mexico City to Santiago, Chile, which was, you know, those are six hours and then five hours and then eight hours. And then here we are, we got to Santiago. That looks like Pinchbull. Nice and hot summertime down there. So this was on top of, we climbed up, go to the next picture, we climbed up to the top of this, oh, I forgot the Pope was in town. Oh, really? The Pope was in Chile. There he is. He was cruising by in the Pope mobile. Do you realize that Cardinal Secola had become the Pope? It would have been Pope Secola. Pope Secola? That's a play on words, isn't it? He, but it was interesting that he was there. So that was kind of a thing. Oh, was that you? Did you take this picture of him? Yeah, there you go. Oh, did he know who you were? No, he just, I think he's just cruising back. Okay. But the next pictures were the first one was shot from on the top of this, I think it was a fort in the time. It's really from the early 1800s. Hidalgo, it's up on the town, kind of in the middle of town. So Santiago is huge. I had no idea. Eight million people there. Oh, wow. It was a big city. And so you get there and we had a one night layover there and the next day we had to take off to Porto Metallis, which I mentioned earlier. Is that the night you slept in and missed your bus? And we kind of slept in and missed our flight there. So we were a little late catching up with the crew that we were hiking with, but we made it. Oh, you're kidding me. It wasn't terrible. So go ahead and give us the next shot. And we're in, this is, this is on the drive. So obviously, you know, you're headed and you start to see the park because you, we're kind of going down along the coast in a lot of areas. And there's this a lot of coastal area down there in the, in the southern part of South America. So is this a glacier? Are you heading up to it? Sure. This is a glacier, right? Yeah. And so the park itself is really situated at the southern end of, I believe it's called the San Juan Glacier. And it is the largest ice sheet, the third largest ice sheet in the world. Wow. So, you know, you've got Antarctica and then you've got Greenland and then you've got this ice sheet. And I'll show you the terminus is where we are one of the spots that we hike to, which is really where the melt is occurring. We got hooked up once we got there with our guy, Pablo, a native Chilean guy. He was a biologist by training, spent a lot of years in the lab. We're in a white lab coat and a really intelligent guy and decided he wanted to experience the world out in the world himself. So he became a guide and he was really, really fun to work with. This was actually at the entrance to the park. So you do have to sign in. They know how many people are actually inside the park. So it is a controlled area. Wow. That's a government controls thing? Yeah, the government of Chile. Wow. Yeah. And so, and there's park rangers and things just like we have here. Oh, look at that. Yeah. So this is a view when we started to leave, heading out of the park. You can see some of the campsite down there. Mm-hmm. And we were headed out away from that lake. We drove in from that end. And the first part of our day, you know, after all that travel, you know, you spend a day and a half, you know, nearly two days of traveling and you get there. And the first day, our hike was not being about 19 miles. The first day. Pretty big, 32K. So we're starting off this morning. That was about 7 a.m. Oh, okay. Hey, Christine, lay down in the field and take some pictures. Summer there. So the flowers are blooming. It was a nice start. You know, you start off on a day like that. You're not sure what to expect. We had great sunshine, which was fun. How does it manage 19 miles after all that travel? Yeah. And so you get, well, you get out of bed and you go. This is a very interesting spot we got to in a few hours. It's called Windy Pass. And you can see me standing over there, holding my arms up on the right-hand side. But the wind was about a steady 100K. Oh, wow. And at 60-something mile an hour, we're sort of laying down. I actually laid on that rock at one point, like an airplane. It just was flowing in. But the videos, which we didn't bring today, but the video show how this actually pressing on the screen, the winds blowing so hard when you're trying to film it, it made the video look kind of crazy. But we are headed back into those mountains. You can see back there and in the back of the screen and down along this lake for a while. So this was a kind of turn in a corner where we'd been hiking north for several hours. And then from this point here, we kind of started to deviate east along the top of the park. So you're not staying at hotels here? No, this is camping. This is camping, right? And so this is interesting when, oh, what was his name? Not the dictator in Chile. I'm just going to blank on his name right now. But when he took power, he protected a lot of different families. And so many of the families that had ranches and estates around this property got protection. And so they still have these. So in some areas where you're in the park and some areas you're crossing outside of the park into boundaries that are actually still private land that they allow you access to and through and for the park. Pinotchet. So Pinotchet, he protected a lot of families. And actually these families own the water. They own the water rights. They own the energy rights, the hydroelectric. So it's kind of interesting. So there's a bit of a give and take there. They are a major employer down there, obviously. And here we are heading down. This is Enchanted Valley after leaving Wendy Pass, headed back along the stream. You can see the Torres del Paene River, which snakes out of there, which really comes from all those glaciers that we're going to be heading into. It must have been Chile. Oh, no pun intended. Chile. These days were in the 50s and 60s. I just made that up. I don't even know where it came from. There were some nights that were in the, I'd say it wasn't even 40. It got cold. That's for sure. You know, it's not at high elevation, but it's surey. It's windy and cold. Oh, that's beautiful. And some of the hikes. So you had beets, really beets forest. Some mature and some immature beets forest. Primarily that's which, and there's also an evergreen beets. There's a lowland highland. We did get educated in that. A lot of stuff to forage along the way, a lot of different berries that we were able to pick and eat, which was really nice. That's nifty. Just a beautiful little hike. This was a spot through the woods. Periodically, you know, they'd have their camps. Dixon was our first night. We were headed. So this is at a point where we had reached one of the police camps at Los Perros. And then this was letting us know we had about another eight and a half K to go to get down to Dixon. To get down to Dixon. And they count K a little differently. And we could, we'd have eight and a half K to go and it seemed like it could take us another 12 K. But anyway, and here's our first glimpse of, this is Cerros. I think the hanging glacier there at Cerros. So that's the glacier right there. Well, that's one of the smaller ones. So that one's just hanging there. It's, you know, it's just some frozen ice that does drift up into the field. But it's not one of the larger ones. But it was our first sighting. You know, the time you're headed in there, you start to see a glacier like, wow, you know, we're starting to get back into this place now. Pretty. And it's the summertime. And there's another view of, so zoom out on that one. You'll see that one is a, that's a picture of that same hanging glacier down over and some of the lake. I mean, you can see the glacial marine. All that's been carved out, right? By the glacier. So is the glacier retreating? Yeah. I've got some evidence of that for sure. You'll see all that stuff. But this, this marine, this stuff all happened because of the, they had what's called an, an intrusive volcanic eruption there where it went up to the sedimentary layer and just filled in. And then when the glaciers carved it out, so you get all this sedimentary rock and then metamorphic rock and then sedimentary rock on the sides of the walls. And it's really beautiful. And that's why, where it's like an extrusive volcano like we have here where it blows out the top. Right. So, but, but this one, the magnet was contained between layers of sediment. Yeah. So it's really interesting. And that was finally Camp Dixon. You can see it there. We're finally dropping down. You can see Dixon Glacier. There's a huge one in the background there on the left. That's Dixon Glacier. This is Lake Dixon. And we finally made this camp about, it was about six or seven that night. You know, we started, I think it's six or seven that morning. So it was a nice long day. Is there fish in those waters? No, that's just too much mineral, minerality. They're too close to the glacier. Too close to the glacier so you don't, there's nothing in there. Further, you know, obviously 50 miles downstream. Yeah. But not, not at this point. These are, you're right up near the glacier terminus in most of these. So this was the next morning, headed out of Dixon. It's been a good night. They're beautiful stars at night. I had to get up and use the restroom at like 2 a.m. And it was just, the sky was just lit. You can see the Milky Way, just crystal clear, super beautiful. Cause there's no ambient light. No light at all. Yeah. There's no one up here. I mean, we were out, you're out in the middle of nowhere up here. That's very beautiful. Really beautiful. So this is our way up Gardner Pass, which is the other corner after traversing East, sort of along the top of the park. And you can see this moraine. All this is carved out. This is pretty rough going. You know, it's, it's, it's kind of rock. You just want to roll your foot off of and twist your ankle up there. This is, this is not for the faint of heart. Yeah. And you see, obviously we're out of the woods now. We're very exposed. It's not super high, but again, the glacier just carved everything off and there's nothing there. Plenty of water though. You can take your, your water, you have to carry a small bottle cause there's streams constantly. You just fill your water bottle up right out of the glacier waters. You don't have to worry about any bacteria. Yeah. Nothing moves up there. So it's perfectly clear. And this was, I think I just, I shot this was kind of a last look back at that big valley we had come through and we'd come from, you know, behind us and then back around to the left that morning. It's probably early afternoon by the time we got up here. This is the top of Gardner Pass and we're, this next shot, you're going to see what was before us as we hit it, as we had to look out. Wow. This is, this is actually the top of it. That's pretty incredible. And then so, the next shot's going to show us gray glacier which was our goal for the day was to get to, our next campsite was at gray. So there's all, there's a good shot of our guide. This one zooms in. So Christine's on the right and then Pablo. And then we had another guide, Katie with us. This was her first time doing the O as a guide. So she was sort of a guide's helper. And then behind us there, you start to see all the other glaciers. I think the next shot's a good panorama of them. And this is a, yeah. So there's a, so that's gray, gray glacier in the bottom of the picture and you can see behind it there. There's another one. There's actually five glaciers in this picture total. And I'm pretty sure the one coming up is a, what do you call it, a wide angle view. So was this the first time you'd seen a glacier? No, I got on some in New Zealand. I got on some up in, up in Alaska as well. But how do they compare? So, I'll be looking at it. So there you are. Look at the size of this gray glacier. And you can see off to the right, that disappears up into that huge ice field I was talking about. It goes for hundreds of miles to the north. But to the straight across, you can see there's one glacier there. There's another one above it to the left. And then on the left, there's two more. You can see five glaciers from this view here. It was really beautiful. So here's an interesting question. It's like define a glacier because everybody, yeah, I hear the term used, but what does a glacier mean? Well, a glacier exists where the amount of, of snowfall is greater than the melt. Okay. Right. And so that only occurs at certain elevations. And the thing about global warming is that elevation is continued to fall. Whereas it used to be, or it's, I'm sorry, it started to raise. So it used to be much lower. So glaciers were much bigger and much larger down low. And they're held more. And they keep moving. Oh, they're constantly moving. Yeah. They're constantly flowing towards their terminus. Yeah. That's where all of that rock that you see deposited there comes from. There's no glacier behind us there. Yeah. That's not the, that's not a glacier. And so I think the next shot is, we made our way down gray is, so we, you know, we showed up at John Gardner Pass at that top of that thing. And then you went to head left, right? And so we're going to work on our way from here down towards the left, back down towards, I forget gray actually is gray. That's not, yeah, we made all the way to gray campsite that night. Do you actually hike on the glacier or you go around it? No, it's too dangerous. So it's best to down here. Like this is the crevastis of a very crumbly. So it would be super dangerous. And that's, you know, probably I don't even know on the surface or several hundred meters thick. Yeah. So this, and so there's actually the terminus of gray, gray glacier on the right hand side. Right. And about 40, 50 days ago now this iceberg broke off. Well, it broke off from that other piece. And so this is a kind of a sign of that glacial or global warming you're talking about in the melting that glacier broke off. That's about 200 meters by 200 meters across and it's about a thousand meters tall. So, you know, maybe only 10% of it sticks out of the water. All the rest of it's underneath. It's very, very deep right there. So this will just now float. Yep. And I'll show you where it's going. And then the actual glacier 10 years ago used to disappear off to the left in this picture all the way. It would go all the way down here. You, you would see nothing but glacier all the way around where now that's all the lake. And 10 years is going to track it back to here. Yeah. Yeah, beyond four or five K at this point. Wow. There's an example of some of the, this was interesting. The national, the US National Park Service went down to help these guys erect some of these bridges, which we heard saved us a few hours a day from hiking up and around range out. So these are, these are well done and welcome after the kind of hours of hiking we've been doing. So I was happy to, happy to have some shortcuts. I guess you might call them. You know, we've been yakking here. Do we want to take a break? Are we keeping going? Let's take a break. Yeah, take a break. All right. Okay. This is pretty cool stuff. I didn't want to stop. Anyway, Gordo the Tech star here with Andrew, the security guy. We're talking about, I like that sound. So we back in a minute after we pay some bills. Thanks a lot. This is think tech Hawaii raising public awareness. Match day is no ordinary day. The pitch hallowed ground for players and supporters alike. Excitement builds. Game plans are made with responsibility in mind. Celebrations are underway. Ready for kickoff. 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Yeah, and we've done some some nice interesting shots. And so let's continue on this, this, this journey, this journey, which was a total of about 80 miles. He said, yeah, we hiked about 80 miles and how many days seven total days of hiking, seven total days of hiking. So that's it. Yeah, not too bad. Yeah, so put some work in. I bet you lost a few pounds. I think I did. You looked like you were on a scale. Yeah. Anyway, so pick us up where we left off with the Glacier. Yes, we finally made our way around to great Glacier, which was, you know, just one of the, if you don't do the, oh, a lot of people hike the southern part of this particular national park, which is called the W. So if you don't do the, oh, you really don't get up to this view up here at the top, which was really just amazing, which is, I guess, why we subjected ourselves to it. But you can see all the glaciers in the background and this is great glacier coming down Great Lake, obviously. And this is down near the terminus down near where we camped and we finally got this would have been about day three into the hike. Day three of seven and what elevation are you at? The elevation is pretty low. I think a few, I think we stayed between three and five thousand. Okay, so you're not going to get, deal with any of that, that kind of challenge. Yeah, there wasn't any, it was, the hiking was wonderful. And we really, you can see about the sky. We caught great weather. I mean, you can have all four seasons in a day here easily. You get, can get hot coat. Now here's a good, this is a good shot of the terminus at Gray. So you can see some of the icebergs coming down the lake and that, you can see the, the terminus up in the left hand side. That's the, the glacier up in the lake now. But it used to come all the way, it used to be right up against this shore here. So that's about four or five K distance right there. So that's how much it's retracted. And do you know over what years and 10 years? So over 10 years, it's retracted back to that location. Yeah. Interesting, very interesting. Yeah, I was, and this is quite obvious, you know, when you, when you hear him talk about it. So this was like, this was actually a great, great having the campsite is actually down on this is this lake, I had had a lot more filtration for the water guy here. So this was the first time we saw blue water in four days, you know, everything had been really gray and full of mineral content from the glacier water. And this one had, this one's downstream and around, roundabout way that a lot of the filtered filtration had occurred. So you can drink that right out of the. Oh yeah. It's beautiful, but absolutely just beautiful. I bet, I bet it has a fabulous flavor. Yeah. And so Pee Hoay was, was where we stayed. First shot of the Tories. You see the Tories in the back. Yeah. So, wow. This was a hike. We, so we worked our way on around and then we got to Camp Italiano is on the way back up into the Tories there. So this is, you know, so the signage was pretty good along the way. You were, they never came quite soon enough and they always had more on them than you, than you wanted to have left. You know, it was, it was one of those kind of, kind of hikes where every corner, you know, once you made it around one bend or over one rise or, or, or out of one valley, just all of a sudden there was another beautiful and in front of you. The scenery was just really big. Wow. And here's one of the guard spots. Of course we didn't, I didn't have any Spanish in me. So I, I, I typically just had to talk and they were very good about knowing a little bit of English. And they, they were good about letting you know they would, if you got there too late, they wouldn't let you continue for the day to the next guardhouse because they, they kind of knew what it would take and they didn't want you out there in the dark. Okay. That makes total sense. Yeah. So it's kind of interesting. So obviously there was opportunities like this and really rough, rough water. Wow. Very cold water. That water is all below 40 degrees. And when you fall in or something like that, you're probably, you know, in the dark, especially you're probably going to have a difficult time recovering. Well, that's terrific. All right, keep it going. You've got about seven more pictures, I think. Yeah. So this is headed up. This is down around the other end of the W headed up into the Torres. Our goal is to get up to those peaks you see there. You see the different color. You can see that, how that sedimentary rock was on the top and then the granites in the middle. Right. And this is a really good view of the sort of the, the action between the volcanic action, the glacier action that carved all these mountains out. It's just beautiful. And it was really something. This is a, another tough day. A lot of elevation, you know, a couple thousand feet of elevation, as I recall. And a lot of it hits you all at once. There's a look back at one of the Glacier Lakes, you know, just beautiful. I think this might be a, this looks like horseshoe lake, maybe. It's pretty impressive. Nice hat. Yeah. You had to stay out of the sun, obviously. So, you know, a little sunscreen and a wide brim hat wants to help out. I think Christine was making me, trying to make me lug her gear. Yeah. That was going to be one of my questions. When we, as we got through all the shots, it was like how much gear you had to take and all that stuff. Yeah. It wasn't too bad. So here we're getting up pretty close. So this is Lake Moreno. When we get, finally get here, but you can see these towers approaching. And you can see the difficulty hiking that, that terrain there. I mean, it's just wide open and rock. There were footpaths. Obviously, there's a lot of traffic on the trail for these. These are, this one's one of the epic like little routes there. And there are people who can actually get up there just for the day. They come in by boat and they're able to get close enough that they can do this hike in one day up and out. So there was a lot of foot traffic. Andrew, that's me. I found a spot to take a nap there by the lake. That's nice. Once we got up there. Someone's standing on a rock. Some lady, I climbed out there to get a photo of herself out there in the water. And I did sample that water. It is, I could hold my feet in it for about 40 seconds. It was really, really cold. Wow. But you see that, and there were some hikers. There's some climbers actually up on that middle tower there, kind of on the right hand side while we were there. There's some guys, some of you can actually see a couple of the cracks there. They were working. They were hiking up, they were climbing up. Yeah, they were rock climbing up in there. Yeah, it was really beautiful. That's incredible. And this was, might be the kind of the closing shot. Is that the last shot? Closing shot I've got for the day. But that was a, that was a goal. Once you got all the way around, sort of the goal was to finally get up to the Torres and back. So, seven days, eight days? This was a seven days on the trail. Seven days on the trail camping. So how much did you have, gear did you have to carry? So we carried only our, you had to have several layers for the weather. So, you know, a shell, a sweater of some type for something under, then you're, I usually wear like a light layer of nylon or like Patagonia. I have some, maybe it's like mixed with wool or blend or something, a very light layer. I'll have that. I don't typically hike in it. I did have a pair of board shorts just in case the water was inviting, but it never was. I carried those and didn't get to use them. I had some gloves, you know, lightweight gloves, had a hat. You carryin' your lunch. A good thing we didn't have to pack was a lot of water. So again, you could just have a little bottle, which we had, which is enough. You just could fill it quite often when it ran out. You drink a lot of water, but you just fill it as you go. Now, what about food? So you met, we mentioned food. So, did you stop for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? Yeah, so we did have, this was, this wasn't like totally glamorous camping, but we did have, in the morning, we had to cook at the campsite who would cook breakfast. So we went and they made our lunch for, so you got a lunch in a bag, right? A brown bag lunch and packed that up and go. Use you a piece of fruit, sandwich, a couple of bars. And then when you got to camp at dinner, again, there would be someone to cook camp at dinner. And we also, the campsites were set. So we didn't have to haul our own camping gear, our sleeping gear, our bags, all that. We had porters. There were three porters that attended our group of eight. These guys had about 35 to 40 kilos on them. Whoa. And ran these hikes that took us, you know, hours. They ran them in a few hours with our packs on their back. With all of you. With all of our gear. Not just mine and Christine's, but with all of our gear. They would, and their own gear. And they would just take off. And they took off, yeah, and they would go. Yeah, yeah, really, really amazing guys. Really strong and young and friendly guys. And we had dinner with them at night. And they were, they were really great. Were they there as, as careers? Or were they there as porters searchers? Yeah, portering's a way to start to break into the guiding business there. Our guide had started as a porter. And so kind of like in the, in the Himalaya, they have the asherpa. Right. So it's a similar, similar path. Wow, that's pretty cool. Yeah, they were great guys, you know, and strong. So what, what, what kind of things would you, would you recommend to the viewers that, you know, things to, if they want to do something like this or, because you just, you can't just say, oh, I'm going to do this and not do any training. You have to get yourself, you have to be in some kind of conditioning. I'd call it moderate, you know, and the day, the day after day, you know, if you're not used to something like that, you definitely want to have it in you. We kind of do a long day, short day, long day, short day, but the short days were still six hours. And, you know, you got, you know, maybe a little bit less than 20 pounds on your back. So you need to be able to make sure you can handle that so you can enjoy it. If, if that doesn't appeal to you, then I would definitely look into something that's more of a day hike. The boat and then the hike in and out. Yeah, you can, you could definitely stay there and get some multi-day things. But you know, you have a day arrest in between perhaps or something like that. It's kind of one of those places that's so inviting that once you get there, you just want to go out in it. You know, the, the guanacos, which we might call Lama is the protected version in Chile. And they run wild. There are just thousands of them everywhere. So they're like alpaca. Yeah, they look like one, but they're a little, a little different. But, but they're not, they're not, they're protected too. So they're not hunted. There's puma there that hunt them. We didn't see any puma. We did see a fox. There's condor. The condor were beautiful. We saw a lot of those guys. There's a lot of hawks and eagles. Big fish just are not big fish, but big bird, you know, big birds and big game like that. It was just, just an amazing thing. And they also do some horsebacking down there. So if you're not particularly a hiker and you'd like to do some horseback riding, a lot of these trails, because of those families, I said they kind of ring the park. They have, they bring all supplies in about horse. As a matter of fact, anyway, but they also have guided horseback on some of the trails. Not all that would be for me. Anyway, this is great. Thank you for sharing. That was, it was great. Thanks for, thanks for listening. I mean, I'm glad that when we, when you said you were coming back, I really thought this would be kind of a cool thing to see. Awesome. And you're always doing these neat things. So I'm, I'm off to doing some hiking and another. Yeah. You'll have to, you'll have the next video. So the next 10 days. Photo show. We'll see what it's like, but I'm not doing it near as rough as you are. I'm too old. All right. Anyway, Gordo the Texar, Andrew the security guy. Thanks a lot for watching the show. And like we say at the every show, how are you doing? By the way, I think talk is sponsoring a golf.