The Birthday Hike

The 28th of January I turned 50 years old. When I, during the summer of 2013, was thinking about how I wanted to celebrate my birthday I pretty quickly arrived at the idea that I wanted to be abroad and I wanted to hike. I have for a long time thought about going to Chile and Patagonia and I felt that NOW was the time to do it. So on my 50th birthday I had my first hiking day in Patagonia. What a great way to spend MY day!

Our hikes in Patagonia originated from the Eco camp. When we arrived to the camp the first night it was quite cold and rainy. It didn't look good. But on the morning of my birthday I woke up to a lovely sunshine. There was a beautiful light on our tent domes. See picture below. It felt like the sun was shining just for me and I was so happy.

Tent domes

The tent domes was an unusual place to sleep in. They are like any tent but a little more fixed and with a proper wooden floor and real beds. But they are as cold as a normal tent. Since it was only around 5 degrees Celsius during the night I was quite happy that the beds had a lot of covers and blankets. But it required some extra effort to step out of the nice warm bed in the morning.

A nice and easy trail to start with

The weather was shifting a little bit during the day, but we had never any rain. We just walked through a beautiful landscape and enjoyed the scenery every step of the way. It was a quite smooth start to our hike, since we walked only 12 km during the day and it was only around 300 m elevation. It took us about 7 hours including all the snack breaks and a long lunch break.

The birthday girl

Lunch break

In the late afternoon we arrived to our first stop - the refugio Los Cuernos. We were told before hand that we would sleep in dormitory rooms, but to our big surprise we all got nice little cabins to sleep in. I shared mine with Juliet from England. The cabins were extremely nice and had a beautiful view and even heating!!! On top of that there was a hot tub we could use. Juliet, Michael and I were the first ones that stepped into the tub with a beer in our hands. Life was good!

Lago Nordenskjold, next to our Refugio

We saw the lake from our cabin

The hot tub with Michael and Juliet

In the evening  we had our dinner in the refugios restaurant. To my big surprise the travel company had arranged for a birthday cake and the whole hiking group sang to me. :-) That was just enough birthday attention for my taste. So we ate, drank good wine and then I fell into bed, very tired with a happy smile on my face. It was a GREAT birthday. 

Birthday cake! And I had 2!!!! pieces!