Blogs from Torres del Paine, Magallanes, Chile, South America - page 2

Got up to pop to the loo at around midnight. Comment to anyone who’s listening that the sky is full of stars. Am just having a wee when there’s the sound of a bucketful of water hitting the floor! Maia has been violently sick, stumbles into the bathroom and delivers another load into the sink as I’m on the loo. Awesome! Try to put the light on, but there’s no electricity. Try to flush the loo but there’s no water. David is up and puts the mobile phone light on. Maia and I are trapped in the bathroom by a sea of sick. David throws me a pair of socks so I can try to hop over it back into the bedroom. I go downstairs in the hope or finding someone who can give me some ... read more

Líe in - yay! We don’t go down to breakfast until about 8.30 - absolute bliss. Surprisingly we have no aches or pains after yesterday’s exertions, so we’re ready for action. Delicious breakfast including proper mugs of tea and coffee, scrambled eggs and yummy cake. All perfect. Departure time is a leisurely 9.30. We drive through more beautiful countryside to get the Paine - Pudeto catamaran to cross the Pehoe Lake for today’s hike to Mirador Francés. It’s allegedly a 16km return trip. There’s an option to do a 24km hike further up the mountain, but the timing of the ferry at this time of year (11am), doesn’t give us time to do that hike and get back in time for the last ferry of the day ?. The catamaran trip is half an hour and ... read more

Thursday 31 January What a day we had today! We spent from 4.30am (waking) to 9.30pm on a tour to Torres del Paine, a beautiful National Park in southern Patagonia which encompasses mountains, glaciers, lakes, and rivers in southern Chilean Patagonia. The park is located 112 km north of Puerto Natales where we stopped for morning coffee and 312 km north of Punta Arenas where our guide picked us up. Throughout the day we drove over 800kms stopping at many view pints. The scenery was spectacular, so I hope you enjoy the photos. There were 10 other tourists with us, and we were the only ones who didn’t speak Spanish. However, our guide who was born in Punta Arenas spoke very good English. We certainly needed our duck-down coats even though the sun was shining. At ... read more

Actually, it was not one, but two Pumas. But I get ahead of myself… I started Thursday morning feeling better after a night’s sleep, but still not hopeful for the day ahead. We had breakfast and as I was grabbing something from my bag at the entrance to the reception/restaurant building when a staff member interrupted me. I managed to overcome my foul mood and be respectful despite myself. I’m glad I did as she was to be our guide for the tour. Her name was Mayi (pronounced like “magic” but without the “c”) and it turns out she had given up her day off to run the tour. And what a difference a guide makes! Mayi made the excursion a much more enjoyable experience than our Pingo trek. In fairness to Nico, some of this ... read more

There is no way I can share the last 6 days in detail, it would make pretty sad reading. I knew the trek was going to be “jolly hard work”, maybe “a physical challenge of unprecedented proportions”, or maybe even “dreadful”. So why and how did I come to be on it at all when I had said quite clearly and loudly last September when the subject first reared it’s troublesome head in the Lowe household those immortal and much ignored words: “I AM NOT DOING THE W TREK”. Now I am not a difficult person and have used this sort of direct language only rarely in the last 30 years and one would like to think that my clear and unenthusiastic response would at least have been noted. But somehow (and I have yet to ... read more