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Published: February 22nd 2010
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The trip is beginning to come to an end so it was time to really organise what we have to do in our last 12 or so days. One of things I did not want to miss out on was The Torres del Paine in Patagonian Chile near the city of Puerta Natales. So after we had seen the biggest continental glaciar in the world we headed for Puerto Natales for one night to get ourselves ready for a two day trek to Torres. Our one night in Natales was nice, we camped near the main centre and met a nice French couple. That evening we went to the Banff Film Festival and enjoyed some short movies on mountaineering etc. We headed to bed after as we were up at 6am to head to the National Park.
The following morning we got up. Packed our gear for trekking and jumped on our bus at 730am. We arrived at the National Park at 10am and began our trek. My bag was roughly around 15-20kg´s and Anne´s around 10-12 kg´s!
The start of the trek was beautiful and there was not too many clouds so the sun could get through but the wind
was ferocious and pushed us around the mountain. It seemed that we were taking off and putting on our jackets every 20mintues as the weather didnt know what it wanted to do but eventually the wind calmed down as we got through the valley. That first day it was all up hill. We ascended somewhere aorund 1000 meters in 4 hours through a well marked trail. We passed many tourists as well as a refuge that you can stay in but must pay. As we our on a tight buget and because its just more fun we continued on to the base of the Mirador to a free campsite.
We set up camp and made some lunch before hiking up the steep trail to the Mirador. If your Spanish is not so good Torres means Towers. In this case it refers to the shapes of the highest peaks in this range which the Mirador looks onto. Once we arrived it was amazing. There is three large towers of around 1000 meters from their base. Apparently they are fantastic for rock climbing but only the brave venture up there. I tell myself I will one day!! We sat at the top
before heading back down to camp for a well deserved dinner and sleep.
The following morning I awoke at 5am to head back up again to the Mirador for sunrise. Unfortunately Anne could not join me on this as she was a little bit too sleepy at that time but I ventured up anyway. I was one of the first up for sunrise so had the place to myself. It was completely dark at this time so I just sat there looking at the stars behind the towers. As it got closer to sunrise time more and more people started to arrive and once the sun hit the towers it was amazing. The rocks turned an orange colour and glowed magnificently. Once I got that out of the way I was back to Anne just in time for her to wake up.
We packed up the tent, had some breakfast and made our way back down. We only took two hours to get down and instead of getting a transfer to the main bus we decided to walk another 8km to the bus stop.
Once on the bus we headed back to Natales and to the campsite to wait for
our "cruise"!!!
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