Puerto Natales & Torres del Paine
Trip Start
Mar 28, 2006
1
80
94
Trip End
Ongoing
Torres del Paine, Patagonia, Chile
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Good start to the year. Up with like 2 hours sleep, and on a bus ride first thing from El Calafate to Puerto Natales.
The scenary was typical patagonian, flat, dry, dusty and not much to look at to be honest. The highlights in patagonia ar definately stunning, but it reminds me alot of Australia. Such great distances with absolutely nothing worth looking at inbetween.
We got off the bus and got taken to a hostel by one of the most cooky girls ive even met. Slightly mentally retarded if im going to be 100% honest about it.
Phillip and Robert arrived about an hour later on another bus, we got them, checked them into the loco hostel and went out to rent tents and things we would need for the famous Torres del Paine 5 day W trek.
It was a public holiday due to new years, so we couldnt get any food until the morning. So we booked our bus out to the national park at 2:30pm in the afternoon, sorted what clothes and things to take with us and headed out for a big meal of pizza. The last decent meal for 5 days!
2nd January- 6th January
The morning of the 2nd involved simply buying food, packing and stuffing our faces again before being picked up at 2:30pm to be driven to the park which is abit over two hours away from town.
The Torres del Paine W circuit
Day 1 - 9.5km Hosteria Las Torres to Campamento Torres
Day 2 - 20.5km Campamento Torres - Mirador - Refugio Los Cuernos
Day 3 - 20.5km Los Cuernos - Campamento Italiano - Mirador - Campamento Italiano
Day 4 - 22.6 km Campamento Italiano - Campamento Los Guardas
Day 5 - 15km Campamento Los Guardas - Refugio Lago Pehoe
Total km: 88.1km
5 days of tough walking, fully loaded with packs, sometimes for 8-10 hours a day. It nearly broke men (namely Allan, who was cooked half way through the second day and skipped one 15km section on day 3), but overall, its an experience I will remember for the rest of my life, and something I was glad to be able to do for my grandpa on mums side, who was massively into trekking. He had been hiking in China, America and all over Australia, and used to drag Allan and I camping and bushwalking with him all the time when we were kids. We had near perfect weather for the 5 days, something im sure is rare in that part of the world, plus i rolled my ankle about 5 times without any major injury, so i think he might have been watching over us a little, as corny as that may sound.
Its going to be impossible to describe the 5 days, so the pictures will have to do it justice, buts its one of the most beautiful places ive been on my trip. You can also feel the remoteness, really being in the middle of nowhere.
The one negative thing I will say, is that with all these refugios they have along the trail, it basically allows anyone to do the hike, not carry food, get to a refugio and have a shower and eat. For some people that might be what they want, but I think part of the experience and appreciation of the hike and the things you see come from it not being so easy, and from it pushing your body to the point where your feet feel like they will drop off, and your shoulders will collapse from the weight of your pack as you climb another hill.
There is also the point that the free camping sites we stayed in where better than where you had to pay, and in areas of the park that were much more beautiful also.
Every area of the hike was beautiful in its own way. Huge granite towers, little creeks and streams where you could stop to get more drinking water, waterfalls, lakes both big and small some of which were the most amazing blues that people will think the photos are photoshopped, sleeping next to and eating breakfast next to the face of our own private glacier, the cold nights and the ever howling wind.
Torres del Paine, truely an experience, and if your ever going to do it, do it the hard way and lug your own gear, it will make it that much more rewarding.
At the end of the hike we took a ferry across Lago Pehoe to get the bus back to town where we had showers (first in 5 days) dinner and went to sleep for the first time in 4 nights without being freezing cold.
We had to wait until the 8th to get our bus out of town to started heading north again, so we spent the 7th pottering around town, taking photos and eating at a restaurant that had the biggest hamburger ive seen in my entire life! Puerto Natales is the first tow in patagonia that felt really, really remote to me. The other locations were packed full of tourist, and just didnt feel so isolated. Puerto Natales to me, really felt like it was in the middle of nowhere, which if you bother to look at a map, you will see it is.
I realise this blog is all over the place, and logically doesnt make sense, but there is no way to write properly about something like this hike. Its something you have to experience to understand fully. The cold, the wind, the packs and the endless kilometres of walking. The pictures will be able to show better than any words I could string together just how beautiful this hike turned out to be.
