El Calafate to Torres del Paine

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Long travel day from El Calafate -> Dorotea -> Chilean border crossing. It would have been pretty routine had it not been for some guy trying to cross the border with fruits and vegetables. I heard that he had declared them and ate a whole bag of 3 apples, 2 bananas in front of the border guards but he failed to declare more vegetable in his backpack which held up the entire bus. We then took a local bus to Laguna Amarga by the park gate before transferring to our campsite, which technically is on private land next to the park.

Parque Nacional Torres del Paine is not very far from El Chalten if you draw a straight line between the two but it look the whole day to get around the mountains. It was established as a National park in 1959 but the landowner whose land we would camp at had connections and managed to retain rights to the land.

The weather was lousy the whole day – cold, rainy and windy, and it didn’t change much at the camp site, making it a miserable night. We had a big domed dining tent but it was also cold. Camp food that night consisted of pumpkin soup, chicken vegetable rice dish and some very sweet lemon mousse. I pretty much crawled into my sleeping bag by 9:00pm and went to bed because that was the warmest place at the camp site. I woke up a few times during the night because of the cold temperature as I didn’t cover enough of my face with the mummy bag. I could hear rain drops and wind howling outside.

Hoping for a nicer day tomorrow.

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