====When being on the GPT: Learn and Adopt====
To The GPT requires a detailed preparation but refuses to be issuedplanned in detail. Therefore regardless how well prepared you depart your hike will be a disaster except if you are ready to learn and willing to adapt to the trail. It’s a trail for the humble; not for the proud. Apply the following principles to the various sections during your hike: Select and Skip, Combine and Flip. Select and Skip: Readjust your plans while hiking. Sometimes you may be forced to skip sections. There might a land owner that does not want to let pass anyone or a river that is too high and powerful to be forded safely. A raging wild fire might force you to wait or to skip a part. But also the numerous volcanoes along the route can change your plans without your consent. In the last 10 years there were 3 major eruptions on or close to the route and numerous “hick-ups” of not so dormant volcanoes. If you advocate connecting footsteps get emotionally prepared that you may need to make compromises. Don’t see it as a defeat but as adapting to the land. Combine: If you want to spend more time on the trail and less time in buses and towns than add several sections into longer hiking legs without leaving the trail to resupply. Especially in the northern half of the GPT resupplying at a “full range supermarket” requires leaving the trail. (And in the south you will have even less such “full range supermarkets”.) Such a resupply trip might easily take between one and three days but a section end is no obligation to resupply; it’s just an option. We combined up to four sections into a long hiking stretch without getting off the trail. Other hikers did the same for equal reasons. Staying two to three weeks on the trail is an excellent immersive experience that becomes even more eye-opening if you resupply with what you can source on the trail. In the Pehuenche region we sometimes filled our stomach with Araucaria seeds (Spanish: “piniones”) that are the traditional staple food of the indigenous people. If you are there at the right time you have an unlimited supply of free food on the trail. We sometimes buy a goat or lamb and ask the seller to prepare it with us and share an extended dinner. We then carry plenty of cooked meat for the following days. Sometimes you can buy freshly baked bread or even cheese from the locals along the trail. That’s why our food rations last often much longer than originally planned. Flip: ... to be continued ...
====When being on the GPT: Be a Sustainable Guest====
