Mark of the Scorpion

Upon arriving back from the hike up to the Torres, I went into the van to change into a dry shirt and get my big thick Marmot fleece that I had carefully left on my seat. Imagine my surprise when, instead of my fleece, there was a baseball cap with the image of a scorpion on it. All of my other things were in exactly the same location, but the fleece had seemingly been magically transformed into a scorpion cap. We asked the driver (well Klemens did as my Spanish wasn't good enough) and he claimed that nobody else had been in the van. We had floated various theories about what might have happened most having to do with a mysterious scorpion cult.

When our guide, Tadeo, arrived back I explained the situation to him. He looked very angry an then had a very heated conversation with our driver. Shortly we all loaded into the van and I was ready to write my fleece off as lost. We headed out of the parking lot, but then without any explanation turned unto a really narrow bumpy road that went fairly steeply up the side of a hill. The van barely seemed up for this trail, especially with all of us loaded into it. I asked Tadeo where we were going and he said "to get your jacket".

Well, after bumping along somewhat frighteningly up this road we came upon a camp filled with filled entirely with those dome tents painted with very cheesy looking Indian images. Tadeo got out and greeted someone whom he obviously knew quite well. They then proceed to go around the camp occasionally ducking into tents. Another guy came out of one of the tents and he and Tadeo's friend went off to another part of the camp. More time elapsed and then eventually the came around the corner caring nothing other than my beloved fleece. I really thought I was not getting it back and was very grateful.

In the end, we never got the full story of who took it (or why), but we were told it was taken by a tourist who was given a ride. It still all seems a bit fishy, but is now just part of the tale.

The rest of the day was spent driving away from the Torres and back to Puerto Natales.


We saw a number of Guanacos on the way back including two of them fighting right in front of our bus.

One angry Guanaco!


We also saw some Emu.


We stopped for one last brief bittersweet stop to take a last picture of the Torres del Paine national park before leaving it for good.