The Three Towers

I’m going to cheat slightly in this blog as although I’m focusing on a trek we did in Chile, I’m going to have to mix in a little bit of Argentina from our southwards journey to get there.

And what a journey. You know you’ve acclimatised to travelling in South America when 72-hours of back-to-back bussing no longer phases you… but I’ll come back to that later.

In Mendoza, Argentina’s famous wine region, we met up with our fellow compadres from Bolivia - Sarah, Clinton and Noelia - and it was great fun to be a posse once again. We had discovered beforehand that not only were we in the same part of Argentina, but that everyone was also keen to make it down to Patagonia to do a renowned trek, often referred to as the “W” (because of its shape on the map).

Patagonia is an area that stretches across Argentina and Chile, and it is in the latter in an area called Torres Del Paine that the trek is based, very near the tip of the southern cone. Because we all had different dates for onward travel out of South America we realised we would have to make it down there with great haste, or otherwise miss the chance to do it as a group.

That meant we didn’t spend much time in Mendoza, just enough to do a tour of a couple of small wineries in an afternoon (sadly although Argentinian wine can be very good I wasn’t especially impressed with their taste offerings at the end) and a drive around the surrounding countryside. Before we met the others Bern and I had also considered climbing Aconcagua - the highest mountain in the Americas but apparently relatively easy to ascend - until the price turned out to be over a £1,000 per person. Errr perhaps another time then…

So we took a 32-hour bus to Barriloche, which turned out to be a strangely Swiss-looking town nestled beside a vast lake and surrounded by a ridge of snow-peaked mountains. Aping Switzerland even further, every second shop in the town was a chocolate boutique… which at least boosted morale for the girls in our group. We had a brief overnight stay and then took the next bus (only 36 hours) to a place called El Calafate, the stopping point for Los Glaciares National Park, home to the Perito Moreno Glacier. It was interesting that after every bus ride we could immediately feel the drop in temperature and notice the sun was setting considerably later.

To get to the glacier, we worked out it would be cheaper to hire a car between us than individually pay the price of the bus; even better it meant we could arrive before the herds of other tourists. And it IS an awesome spectacle, not only to gaze at the 60-metre high wall of jagged ice but also to hear the constant creaks and groans which emanate from all over its hulking mass. Because of friction, the bottom of a glacier moves more slowly than the top so the latter is continuously cracking to form sharp peaks and crevasses: we were lucky enough to see a huge section of the front wall break away, which is an amazing thing to behold - you only realise the scale of the spectacle when there is a delay between seeing several tons of ice crash into the water below and the thunderous roar a second or two later.

Our final bus took about 12 hours, across the Chilean border into a town called Puerto Natales, last checkpoint before the Torres Del Paine. (Torres is the Spanish word for “towers”, referring to the famous granite peaks which overlook the park. Interestingly the mountainous area is no longer connected to the Andes but is apparently separate and known as the Paines Massiv… which I’m sure you’ll agree has a ring of Ali G about it. Innit.­)

Here we hired tents, gas, cooking pots, waterproof trousers, sleeping bags and mats ready for several days in the wilderness - we had vowed we were going to be self-sufficient and not cheat by paying for hot meals at some of the camp sites. By the time we had bought all our food supplies and packed our rucksacks however (leaving some gear behind at the hostel for pickup on our return) I was mildly concerned at their weight, especially as Bern and I were also carrying the girls’ tent and gas canisters.

Of course the night before the whole thing I had to end up with a stomach bug or certainly something that made me throw up in the middle of the night and put me off eating breakfast. As a result my first day was hell, especially as it was mainly uphill. I simply had no strength or energy and could only plod up the hill like an old donkey ready for knackering. With every step I was getting more and more frustrated: this was something I was meant to be enjoying but how could I do several days if I was ready to throw the rattle from the pram after only an hour?

Somehow I made it up and when we got to the campsite and put up our tents I just crawled in and fell into a comatose sleep. Thankfully the next morning after a breakfast of boiled eggs (Bernard had bravely carried these on the first day so was pleased to be rid of them) and hot dog sausages, I felt ten times better. Earlier, before breakfast we had also got up to scrabble up the remaining 500m or so to see the three towers in the morning sun. They were quite a sight, one of those moments where you have to put your camera away and take it in with your own eyes. However the extra bit of height resulted in being exposed to an icy wind so we couldn’t stay too long.

Over the next three days we trekked the rest of the W, being confronted on each one by different weather conditions - rain could start without warning meaning we had to drop all our equipment to rummage around for waterproofs; likewise we had snow pelting us in the middle of the W along with a wind that could have blown us off our feet, and the final day was scorching sunshine. Along the way we’d walked past glacial lakes, forests, winding rocky paths that became streams when it rained (and soaked your feet!) grassy plains and bogland - certainly never a dull moment.

Overall it was a great experience although I think the Lares Trek in Peru still has the edge simply because you really feel you are out on your own. Here, unless you do some of the extra walks (some people don’t make it all the way to the middle of the W as it can be steep in places) you end up passing other trekkers fairly frequently and of course arriving at busy campsites. On the other hand I’m not going to be too hard on ourselves as we did carry our own gear without the help of porters on this one.

We had also hoped to do a longer trek which goes beyond the W and considered less… “touristy” but it was closed officially until mid-December and probably would have taken more preparation (and certainly better tents - we discovered the poles that made up the frame had broken so no matter how much we tried we couldn’t stop them collapsing inwards when a big gust of wind came along. Quite a shock to be woken up in the pitch of night by the roof of the tent slapping you on the face!)

Next it’s back into Argentina for a trip to the southernmost city in the world!

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