Day 3 in Torres Del Paine National Park

Trip Start Dec 14, 2007
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44
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Trip End Ongoing


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Where I stayed
Refugio Grande Pehoe

Flag of Chile  ,
Sunday, April 6, 2008

We awoke to a colder morning and snow capped mountains. We checked out of the refugio and took a shuttle bus over to the catamaran which took us over Lago Pehoé to the Refugio Paine Grande. We decided to do it this way and not hike the middle of the "W" because we heard that Refugio Los Cuernos was a horrible place to stay. The lodge was nice but again, overpriced and as we eventually came to find out, horribly managed, but I'll go into that later.
 
We dropped our stuff off and headed out on another hike, this time to Lago Grey Glaciar. Within 5 minutes of starting off the sun was out and we got really hot, so we stripped off our thermals, jackets, and fleece down to one shirt layer which I almost took off. Then I spotted a fox in the brush. I had never seen one in the wild before so that was really cool. After about 10 minutes of hiking the sun went away and we had to add more layers on again
Guanaco which is part of the lama family
Guanaco which is part of the lama family
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The hike was really beautiful. The whole park is beautiful. This is probably the most beautiful scenery I've ever witnessed; save the Napali Coast on Kauai (I'm biased). We hiked up to the viewpoint where you could see the glacier and the other side the other mountains with a very large glacier ice sheet blanketed for miles. It really was wild Patagonia. We climbed to a peak and enjoyed our snacks while shivering in the cold wind. Everything tastes so much better in the wilderness, especially chocolate! It was getting late so we headed back; a five hike roundtrip covering approx. 12 kilometers. I was sore again but happy I had accomplished my third consecutive day of hiking. I'm sure I'm burning off those Brazilian desserts.
 
We arrived at the refugio right before the wind and the rain began and it continued the rest of the night. It was rough and miserable out there and we felt bad for the campers. We huddled by the fire with the rest of the backpackers. There were only 20 of us. We met one British couple who had been traveling for 10 months all over the world. They had 2 months left.
 
We went to bed pretty early as we were exhausted and tomorrow we were planning on hiking the 35 kilometer trek through the French Valley, supposedly the most beautiful scenery of all Torres Del Paine. I was not looking forward to the hike.
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