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Published: December 23rd 2011
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We headed out to Puerto Natales in Chile from El Calafate in Argentina. Border crossings in Patagonia are quite common and so we expected this to be a well organised experience, given the bus company does it every day.
What was meant to be a 5 hour bus ride (tolerable!) turned into 7.5 hours as we wasted time at both the Argentine exit point, and also the Chilean entry point. I´m not quite sure why this happened, but the bus driver sat for at least 45 minutes at each point waiting for something, while other buses came and went before we did! It meant a very frustrating day, and we were glad when we reached Puerto Natales.
The scenery on the way did not disappoint - more Patagonian steppe, sweeping landscapes, and finally huge snow capped mountains as we drove past the Torres del Paine massif.
Puerto Natales is on the water and a fishing town. It doesnt have much character and has quite a temporary feel to it - a lot of the buildings are corrogated iron. Colourful, but still corrugated iron!
The upshot of this is that seafood is plentiful and varied. After chilling out
for a bit we headed out for dinner and just HAD to order king crab. It was on all the menus and SO cheap at around $15 for a risotto dish. Jess chose wisely and ordered the risotto and I had a baked cheesy thing with king crab also. Mine turned out to be very rich and hers was amazing. It had massive chunks of king crab, and possibly more crab than rice! I was very jealous and must admit I helped to finish it off. We were in the most random of restaurants - it had everything on the menu you could possibly think of (sushi, pizza, steak, pasta, seafood....) and a sign out the front announced it had just started serving shawarma! The music was equally eclectic and confused also and made for a very funny evening!
The next day we headed out to the Torres del Paine National Park for what I thought would be a short, warm up hike for my big W trek that started the next day. I let Jess choose the route and thought it would be 4-5 hours and we´d make the early bus back. Wrong! It turned out to be
an all- dayer, about 7 hours in total and extremely steep. In fact, it was a whole day of my W hike and the most difficult of all of them!
We entered the park through the main entrance via bus and I´m very happy to say we saw flamingoes. They had been on my list of must sees in the Galapagos and we hadn´t managed to see them, so I was pleased that Jess spotted them here! There were only about 4 or 5 of them, but they were bright pink and easy to spot from far away.
We also spied many sheep on the way, (yummy) cows, and also guanacos, which are the llamas of this area.
We caught a mini bus further into the park and started our trek towards the Torres del Paine - the big tower formation that is a symbol of the park. It was a nice day and fairly warm and the trek started by going steeply uphill. In fact, it climbed to about 450m quite quickly and we were shocked at how steep it was and for so long - around 1.5 hours. We had to keep stopping and I
kept thinking about how I didn´t want to tire myself too much ahead of a big 5 day hike!
Thankfully after this we started to go down into a valley and then caught our first gorgeous view of mountains and a big river. This made up for it! We passed a refugio and continued along the path through the forest for another couple of hours.
By the time the turn off appeared for the Towers lookout (or Mirador in spanish) we were knackered and I was keen to turn back, knowing that I would complete this hike in my W trek. Jess only had a day there and was keen to continue. The path veered upwards very steeply very quickly, and we were clambering over big boulders. I was finding it difficult with my long legs, and Jess was really struggling! About 20 minutes in we reached a nice spot which had a perfect sitting spot on a tree trunk in the sun. I decided I was going to stop there, and save whatever energy I had left for my big hike. Jess continued a little further upwards but came back soon after - saying she was afraid
that once she went up, she would have to come down, and her knee was really hurting. We decided to turn back. A shame, but we did get to see some of the Towers from a distance, and we were really exhuasted by then.
We made the return journey and were sore and tired by the time we made it back to the bus. Needless to say we slept the entire way home - or more likely - passed out!
We were too knackered for dinner so went to bed early. Jess left the next day to head to Punta Arenas and see penguins and then back to the states. I started my W hike, and will continue more in my next blog!
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