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Published: April 10th 2008
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We travelled north and across the border back into Chile to Punta Arenas, where on the way we visited an out of the way penguin colony. It was a fantastic location as it was in the middle of nowhere, and just our tour group and the penguins. We got there late afternoon and the penguins were just wandering up the beach to return to their nests on the main land, so we got to see them waddle up, and some of them would walk out in front of us really close... they didn´t seem too bothered about us being there!
We stayed in Punta Arenas just for the night, to collect supplies for our camping expedition in Torres del Paine national park, i.e. wine & beer, and then set out early the next day. We arrived in the park and found our tent, all looked clean and we even had showers in a nearby block so not too bad. We set up with sleeping bags and air mattresses etc and we then headed out for a quick hike which took us up a hill behind the camp. It was only a short walk but up hill all the way, and
by the time we got to the top it was very windy... so windy we struggled to stand up with out falling over! We didn´t stay up there too long, just enough to catch our breath and take a few photos, before we made it back down. On the way back we passed a little restaurant which was closed for siesta... we found the owner and asked what time it opened, which was 6´o´clock... it was about 4 o´clock at the time and we didn´t really want to wait, so we mentioned cerveza (beer) and he opened up for us...hurray!!! It was definitely worth them opening as by the time the 20 of us left 3 hours later we had pretty much drunk them out of beer!
That night we all tried to stay warm by huddling around the fire and enjoyed marshmallows before heading off to our tents for the night. Unfortunately, our group were not alone in our little camp site as we soon discovered, mice had also made it their home and found their way into some of the groups tents to nibble on anything they could find, shoes, water bottles, soap etc. That night, we
didn´t get much sleep with the noise of scurrying mice running past our heads just outside the tents and praying they would not chew their way in, which they did in a few tents during the night. Finally it was morning and we had to get up early to hike one leg of the famous W trek, the Towers Walk. This was a tough 7-8 hour walk with the 1st hour up a steep hill but with great views once we´d made it up to the top of the valley below, it then flattened out where we walked for another hour through a river valley until we reached the end of the trail. From here was the really tough climb up the boulders and scree, we were not intending to climb this as we thought we´d see the towers from here but unfortunately you could only just about see the top of one. Having come all this way we didn´t want to miss out on them so we decided to climb the boulders which looked really daunting from the bottom. Climbing our way through streams and slippery rocks we made the climb up around large boulders and across loose scree...
and an hour later we stood at the top with the most wonderful view of the towers. We were so lucky with the weather as we didn´t have a cloud in the sky and we were told that the week before no one could climb due to snow, so we sat and enjoyed our ham & cheese sandwiches beneath the towers for a while before making our descent slowly down the same way. We were absolutely exhausted but what an amazing walk!
The next day we took a boat trip to the grey glacier, which was anything but grey! Before we even got on the boat we saw huge icebergs floating in the water and as we sailed closer the colours were stunning, so blue. The captain of the boat told us that the night before some of the ice had fallen off the glacier into the water and we were extremely lucky to see the ice like it was. He drove up to one of the huge icebergs close enough to lean out and touch the ice, which was a deep, deep dark blue. We sailed around for and hour, enjoying a Pisco sour on ice or two,
Stunning blue icebergs
who named this the Grey Glacier!?! before making our way back to the camp site. It was the last night of camping which everyone was thoroughly glad of! In order to celebrate and keep warm we conducted a pub crawl to the 3 hotels/restaurants which were in walking distance of our camp site...
We all woke up the next day, sad to be leaving the fantastic scenery but happily knowing we were leaving the camp site and mice and heading for a warm hotel room with hot showers, before heading off back into Argentina to El Calafate and the Moreno Glacier.
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