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Published: November 26th 2005
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The bus journey down to Puerto Natales was pretty uneventful. We did see the Torres del Paine mountains in the distance however the only point of note was marvelling at just how long the border crossing process took. We passed this time with Rory, Emer and Bettina who we first met on the ruta40 trip and had met again in El Calefate and their stories of taking nearly 24 hours to cross a border in Africa!
We arrived at about 10pm on a Sunday night and therefore we weren´t hopeful of our chances of being able to get to Torres del Paine the following day (having tried to arrange this from Argentina and failed miserably). 30mins later we had all our transport and logistics sorted and booked. The other 3 even managed to get their onward travel to Ushuaia booked and hire some camping equipment that evening so we were all set for Torres del Paine the following morning.
The boat took us up towards the Balmaceda Glacier in the Bernado O´Higgins national park passing colonies of cormorants, sea lions and a number of condors. At the glacier, most of the tour returned the same way but, after a lovely 3 course meal near the foot of the glacier, we continued on up the Rio Serrano by ´Zodiac´(motorised inflatable) with ever improving views of the Torres del Paine as we got ever closer to the park.
After such a smooth day to that point it was a bit of a shock when our progress ground to a halt. The planned itinerary involved a change of boats to get around a waterfall however when the boat above the waterfall failed to start we were left languishing by the river while we waited for another boat to come down from further up river to pick us up. When this eventually arrived sometime after the original ´10mins´ it was only big enough for half the group so it took a lot longer than expected to get to the administration centre in Torres del Paine. Fortunately we were just in time to catch our onward transport to the start of our trek the following morning up to the Torres lookout.
For Toni and I this ´walk´ started a bit earlier than I care to mention as Toni was keen to see the Torres at sunrise and we were camping about 10km and 1000m lower than this point. We arrived there at 6am after 2 hours of what felt like KIMM training (I was carrying all the warm clothes we would need to hang around at over 1000m in the Patagonian mountains at sunrise) to find about 15 others already there (they had had the luxury of camping much higher up than us). Although it had been light for sometime, the sun didn´t start hitting the nearby rocks until just after we arrived but unfortunately never fully reached the Torres themselves due to some cloud. The view of the Torres was superb although we actually stayed around for nearly 2 hours (not as long as some!) in the hope of the perfect cloud free and sunny view. As we left, the cloud came in and it started to drizzle. As we neared the bottom we passed Rory, Emer and Bettina who had set off at a much more sensible time. Fortunately for them the changeable weather cleared enough to give them a good view as well.
After a couple of hours sleep we packed up our tent and headed along to our next campsite underneath the imposing Cuernos. A fantasticly colourful walk through red and purple flowered bushes and alongside the turquoise Lake Nordenfjosk (not sure quite how that one was spelt). We were very glad to reach the campsite after covering over 30km in the day but not as glad as the others who ´staggered´ in an hour or so later. We suffered a not so tasty dinner of cous cous, tomato puree, peanuts (and salami for me) but at least the view of the Cuernos 2500m above us where Condors could be seen circling 1000+ metres above us could clearly be seen.
The following day we made a leisurely start - not a great plan when we had another 30km to walk. First stop was Camp Italiano where we left our rucksacks in the secure holding area (aka a blue tarpaulin by the hut) and headed up the Vallee Francaise. The track wound its way through native forest, past the glacier francaise and ultimately to a mirador where we enjoyed lunch surrounded by a fantastic 360 degree panarama. The sensible ones amongst us (i.e. the other 3) headed back down the valley after lunch whilst Toni and I headed on up to try to catch another close up view of the Torres. Although we succeeded it possibly wasn´t worth the additional 2hour scramble. Several hours later we collapsed into camp Pehoe and headed straight for the chocolate in the mini shop.
In need of an easy day we´d decided to catch the lunchtime boat out from Pehoe but this did leave enough time for a quick (3hour) return trip up to the Grey Glacier mirador. Although we thought we were suffering from glacier overload it was definitely worth the effort. Needless to say we slept soundly on the bus back to Puerto Natales. After a quiet night watching a video we said goodbye to the others as they were heading for Ushuaia the following morning and us for Punta Arenas.
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