Patagonia - Torres del Paine (15 - 24 October)

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What did we know about Patagonia before this trip? We knew it was cold, it had extreme weather, it was wet, but it was beautiful, and that it was way further south than Tassie. How relevant these ideas were would remain to be seen...

We arrived in Puerto Natales in the southern part of Chile to blue skies and not a breath of wind. We chose to stay at a hostel called Erratic Rock as they are known as the people to talk to about hiking in Torres del Paine National Park. We checked in and were greeted by a lovely pair of American friends who own and run the business. We arrived too late for their famous pre-trek talk so we decided to wait a day to leave for the trek we had been looking forward to this whole trip.

The next day we attended their 3pm talk that was given by one of the owners, a guy called Rustin who was obviously very passionate about all things Torres. The talk started with some of the logistics of the park; how to get there, what time things arrived and departed, and the average cost of the transport. The talk then moved to accommodation options within the park. Now, as far as we were concerned, we had already decided against camping (we were attempting this hike within the first month of the park being open to trekkers for the season), but after this talk it sounded like you had to have rocks in your head to consider camping despite Rustin insisting that it was the only "real" was to experience Torres. If he had not painted such a bleak picture of the weather that we would be encountering over the 6 days we planned to be in the park, we might have considered it. He told us of wind so strong it can knock grown men off their feet, and even pick up rocks and blow them into you (maybe he got a little carried away with this part of his story!). We were told the gusts of wind sneak up on you without any warning... one minute no wind and then BANG, a huge gust of wind and you're on your butt or off a cliff!! We were told rain and snow can, and will, come at any point and the rain, combined with the wind, will make it feel like someone turned a fire hose on you. Then, Rustin said, the sun will come out and you will be dry again in a matter of minutes. All this would happen in the space of a few minutes and then the cycle will start again and this will continue the entire time you are in the park. He even told us a horror story about how the wind blew a tourist off a lookout while he had his pack on and the guy broke his back. This guy lay there completely helpless and no one knew he was there. He wrote letters to his family, died within 24hours of his fall and was not found for 2 months!

Hmmm... sounding like a great place to hike doesn't it?

The next section of Rustin's talk was all about the clothes we needed. We were told to pack light and that all you needed was a "stink uniform" to trek in and clean clothes to relax in at night. The stink uniform should consist of hiking pants, a light weight warm top, and light weight boots. The clean, warm set of clothes was for after you have set up your tent and were ready to eat and relax. His advice was to avoid what he called the "gortex dance" while hiking... panicking about the rain by diving into your pack for that expensive gortex jacket only for the rain to have already soaked you through before the sun comes out and it's too hot to be wearing a rain jacket! His advice was that the rain would not last all that long and it would probably be gone by the time you got your jacket on - it may keep you dry from water on the outside (if you weren't already soaked anyway) but it would make you wet underneath as you would soon be sweating like mad under that gortex jacket. His advice was basically that all you needed to do was to keep your core warm - if you were cold then just walk faster to warm up and if you were wet then just walk faster to steam dry! We were also told not to try and dry your clothes from the hike, rather "just ball them up, shove them in a bag and leave them". Then, the next morning, you put those wet stinky clothes back on again and hit the trail... I was not so keen on this idea! Rustin's biggest drive home point, however, was that "your feet will ALWAYS be wet"! He said not to waste time picking a path of stones or branches through puddles and rivers because a big gust of wind will come while you're doing this and knock you in the river, so resign yourself to the fact that your feet will always be wet and just step right into that river.

Sounding like fun to anyone yet?

Next on Rustin's list was food and the general take home message was that good nutrition was for after the trek, not during. His advice was to live on cups of soup, muesli bars and energy packed snacks with only one hearty meal a day at dinner. In fact, we were advised that we were probably going to eat more snickers bars over the next 6 days than we will eat over the next year! We were assured that we would need all this fuel as the days were long and the going tough. The final part of Rustin's talk was to ask if anyone had changed their mind about going to Torres! No one admitted to giving that idea a second thought, but I think a few of us now had a very different view of the next few days.

We left this meeting to go get ready and buy food for the next 6 days. We decided to follow the advice from the talk; our meals would consist of a cup of soup and muesli bars for breakfast, muesli bars and snickers for lunch and nuts and fruit for snacks. We opted to eat at the refugios each night rather than do our own cooking for dinner (this was the more expensive option but much easier). We booked our nights at the refugios as well (mountain 'lodges' with basic hostel style accomodation) before we left so we would not have to worry about paying for things while in the park. After our shopping trip it was time to get our packs ready back at Erratic Rock. The hostel gave us bags to store all our unrequired gear in for the time we were on the trek. It is amazing how much stuff we had that didn't need to come with us on the hike. We got our pack weight down from about 18kg to about 8kg! This made for a wonderfully light pack in comparison to what we had been carrying around up until now. After this it was off to bed for a good sleep before we headed off in the morning. We fell asleep listening to the wind and some rain... not what you want to hear when you're heading out on a 6 day trek the next day!

DAY 1: We were up early to have one last hot cooked breakfast. The wind was still blowing and it was a grey and overcast day but no rain which was a bonus. The bus arrived at 7:30am to take us to Torres del Paine National Park. We loaded on the bus with three other couples from the hostel and others from around town and set off. The clouds continued as did the wind but as we got closer and closer to the park the sun came out.

Our first stop was the ranger hut to pay our entrance fees and also fill in some paper work for park statistics. As we had opted to hike from the west side of the national park to the east side (from Glacier Grey to the Torres del Paine towers), we had to catch another bus to a ferry that would take us to our starting point. While driving into the national park we could see the burnt remains of bushes and trees. Last summer a tourist decided to use his camp stove in windy conditions and outside the camping areas and burnt down a large section of the park (this is not the first time this has been done either!) It was really sad because the fire burnt across 128 km² of the park and destroyed about 36 km² of dense native forrest.

Where the ferry leaves from there is a 15min walk to a waterfall, called Salto Gande. We decided to do this while we waited for the ferry. It was really quite pretty even if it was missing all vegetation. From a hill near the top of the waterfall we had great views over to the main peaks of the park. After a few photos, we walked back to catch the ferry across Lake Pehoe. We were told that the lake had the potential for some reasonably large waves if the wind was strong enough. As we left the jetty, the wind began to pick up and by the time we had made our way to the top deck, the lake was covered in white capped waves resembling the type of conditions that had been described to us. Once we arrived at the ferry dock to start our hike, we were feeling pretty confident as the sun was shining and the wind had died down enough to give us confidence that it was not the strength that would knock us off our feet. This section was the worst affected by the fire the previous season and there was no vegetation left, just bare rocks and dry creek beds - it was really sad. The trail to Glacier Grey is an 11km hike that took us up to a point where we could see out over the Patagonian Ice Fields that feed the surrounding glaciers. We hiked some of this section with one of the couples we had met at Erratic Rock back in Puerto Natales, a lovely Irish/English couple, Kerry and Ed, who were on their honeymoon. We arrived at Refugio Grey about 4pm and were welcomed with a drink before being shown to our dorm (we were the only ones staying in this room which was nice). This was a stunning refugio; it was more like a lodge than a refuge really as it had leather couches, a beautiful view up to the mountains, and finally some vegetation! After settling in, we headed out to look at Glacier Grey, which was only a matter of 15min walk away. We found a little trail that took us down to the rocks at the edge of the lake where we sat and watched the massive icebergs in the lake. We heard a few big cracks from the glacier but from where we were the glacier face was a reasonable distance away. The time we spent looking at the glacier and the surrounding icebergs was amazing as it was really pretty and peaceful. We eventually headed back to the refugio for dinner where we met up with another couple we had met at Erratic Rock, this time a lovely Dutch couple named Dirk and Jorien. We ended up having an early night as we were both pretty tired from the hike.

DAY 2: The next morning we woke to beautiful blue skies and had our nutritious breakfast of a cup of soup, a muesli bar and a coffee/hot chocolate. The plan for the day was to hike further up the shoreline in order to look out over the Glacier Grey and to see if we could get to the final campsite before the track turned inland. We set off about 9am and walked to the next campsite, Campamentos Los Guardas, where we sat and looked out over the face of the glacier. It was really pretty. Glacier Grey splits around a rocky island and then falls into Lago Grey. We sat and watched and waited for some ice to fall but we decided that it was still too early in the morning for this so we headed off. We walked about 40m to be greeted with a sign saying that the trail was closed and in order to walk further we needed a guide... hmmm... we ignored that sign and continued on the path. We eventually came to a frozen river that was covered with a thick layer of snow and had very steep banks/cliffs on either side. On the far river bank was a metal ladder that was for climbing up, (or down depending on which direction you were walking... :p), but on the side we were on there was no ladder, and while we were surveying the way down we heard a few little rock falls. Luckily a guide and some people came though and we got to see the best path down. We crossed this without any problems and continued on. The path wound it's way through beech tree forrests and up over little ridges where we got some amazing views out over the glacier. We walked on and arrived at another steep banked frozen river with metal ladders, but this time the ladder on our side had partially flipped over and was upside down on one section and sideways on the other. We decided we didn't need to climb down the ladder so instead we climbed down the bank using the side of the ladder as hand holds. This was quite a challenge and as we reached the riverbed below, I did have half a thought about how hard it was going to be getting back up. Isaac, of course, only saw it as another challenge to conquer and encouraged me to follow his path to the relative safety of the riverbed. We walked on after our "river" crossings with the sun now beating down on us. At one point we stopped on a high ridge to look out over the glacier and saw a group of people on the glacier near its edge. We stood and watched them for a while but they were not moving anywhere so we walked on. We eventually came to our destination, Campamento Paso, which is not far from the John Gardner Pass (the highest point on the trail and where it turns inland). We decided to backtrack to our little lookout over the glacier and the icefields to have our "lunch" which was more muesli bars. We sat there for a bit and watched the people on the ice. We also spotted two more people on the ice but this time a little way out from the main group. This siting (well, more like who these two people were) would later become quite a story and be the focus of a little bit of controversy. We decided we should head back to Refugio Grey as it was getting a little late. At one point on our way back to the refugio we heard some loud tapping sounds and then spotted a big woodpecker drilling into a hollowed out tree stump with its huge beak. It was such an amazing site as we had never seen one in real life. For the return walk we had absolutely blitzed the suggested time and made it back with plenty of daylight to spare. We walked a total of 20km for the day and once we arrived at the refugio, we had dinner and another night with the dorm to ourselves which was great.

DAY 3: The next day we got up early as we had a really big day ahead of us. We had our breakfast of a cup of soup and muesli bars and headed out at 8:30am. We had to walk back to the place where the ferry dropped us off and then along further to Refugio Los Cuernos. This was a 24km hike with our big packs. We set off expecting the hike to be tough as we'd seen a few people struggling back out as we'd come in two days before. We did really well and got to the high point without any problems. It was a rather windy day though and we defiantly got buffeted around by the wind coming through to Paine Grande (the 5 star Refugio near where we started on Day 1). There were even a couple of moments where we both thought we were close to being blown over, but it was a clear sunny day to go with the wind, so we couldn't really complain. We continued on to what they say is the easiest part of the trek, the track through to Campamento Italliano which is situated a number of kilometres before Refugio Los Cuernos. About half way between Paine Grande and Campamento Italliano the vegetation starts again, which was a relief. The campsite lies at the beginning of Valle Frances, which divides two of the main mountain ranges of the park and where we planned to hike in during the following day. For today though, we had to walk further on to get to Refugio Los Cuernos which was our next accommodation. This path took us down hill to the edge of Lago Nordenskjol, where we got a nice surprise in that the walk took us along a rocky "beach". We arrived at the refugio at 4:10pm and had a chance to relax outside sitting in the sun, condor spotting and getting roasted by the late sun. At one point in time we spotted 11 condors flying overhead, which was pretty cool given the reasonably rare occurance of a clear sitting of these huge majestic birds. We also met up with Dirk and Jorien again here and had dinner with them in the refugio. We had another reasonably early night and again had a dorm room to ourselves. This refugio was nowhere near as nice as the one at Lago Grey, unless you wanted to spent a mear $145USD a night and get a private cabin with access to a hot tub... but for those who did not want to spend that much it did have some beautiful views of the mountains.

DAY 4: We started walking early again (8:45am) as we had a 26km round trip heading back to explore Valle Frances. It was a little overcast and threatening rain, but we pushed on. On the way we bumped into the Kerry and Ed who had spent the night at Campamento Italliano and were heading to the refugio for a splash of luxury (they could understandably justify the cabin and hot tub as they had been tenting up until now... oh, and they were on their honeymoon too!). It was great to catch up with them again and to know we would be able to hang out back at the refugio with them later that night over dinner. We talked to them for a bit and they advised us to push on all the way to the final mirador (lookout) at the end of Valle Frances, if at all possible. They also told us they had sat for ages the day before watching snow avalanches on one side of the valley. We had heard one and seen the big cloud of ice already as we were walking along the path from Refugio Los Cuernos and we were still a long way off where the action was happening.

Valle Frances was a beautiful contrast of scenery; the valley has a river running through its centre surrounded with green shrubs and trees, rock fields and sheer cliffs on one side of this central corridor and snow/glacier covered mountains that regularly have ice falls and avalanches on the other. We walked through more beech tree forests; these trees were so ornate looking that they were in a way like large bonsais so when we walked through them we felt like giants. We walked on through the changing landscape all the way through to Campamento Brittanico and then on to the mirador, arriving about 4 hours after leaving our refugio. Here we had amazing panoramic views of the valley and the surrounding mountain peaks. The walk ends in a beautiful basin surrounded by sheer rock faces and huge mountains. It was really beautiful and so we spent an hour there enjoying the scenery and taking loads of photos. We also bumped into a Canadian couple named Jean-Michel and Angela who we'd met back at Erratic Rock (clearly the place to be in Puerto Natales!). While chatting to them it was clear to see they had a good story to tell about a run in with the park authorities... it turned out that they were the two people we had seen out on Glacier Grey a few days ago! They had been walking on the glacier and had scared the group of new trainee guides out on the ice when they had popped up out of a crevasse completely unannounced! They were fully qualified to be on the ice as they had studied at an outdoor education university in Canada, were very well equipped for such an environment and they even decided they would go out on the glacier to practice their crevasse rescue and were completely prepared for such shenanigans. Unfortunately for them though, the group of guides did not appreciate the surprise as they did not have the proper authority or permission to be on the glacier. They then had to have a serious talk to the park authorities about being out on the ice without a guide. They were even threatened with being booted out of the park but managed to escape with a stern word and "careful monitoring" from there on in (whatever that meant?!!).

Anyway, we chatted to Jean-Michel and Angela for awhile and then headed back to another mirador halfway back down Valle Frances to watch for avalanches. We sat there and watched and waited for an hour or so in keen anticipation of seeing something spectacular. As it turned out, we did see a few smaller avalanches but nothing the size of what we had hoped for. Having said that, even the smaller ones were pretty impressive and made awesome cracking sounds. From here we walked back to Refugio Los Cuernos for our second night there. We spent the evening chatting to Kerry and Ed over dinner after they had managed to prize themselves away from their hot tub. We also met another dutch couple who were also on their honeymoon, which was nice. Another early night as the longest day of walking lay ahead of us.

DAY 5: We woke early again as we had another 26km day of hiking. We headed out at 8:45am walking towards Refugio Chileno, which sits on the far western side of the trek. We were going to be arriving at this refugio on the first day that it was open for the season. We headed out in beautiful sunshine and very little wind. We walked up and above Lago Nordenskol, which was calm and a beautiful blue colour, for some distinctively "Torres" photos looking over the lake. We had beautiful views over the lake on one side of the path and then over to massive sheer mountains on the other side. We walked along until we came to a point where there was a clearly marked "short cut" to the refugio. Here we had the worst path we had encountered yet; at times it was quite difficult to follow and at others it was really wet and muddy. At one point Zac was standing at the edge of a creek trying to work out our best path forward when he slipped and one of his feet went deep into the mud, completely covering his boot. As it was almost a quick sand type surface, it took both of us to pull his foot free. The path then took us down river from a brand new looking bridge that we onlt saw once we got to the rivers edge. We were sure we had not taken a wrong turn and couldn't work out why we were not crossing at that bridge about 500m up stream. We had to rock hop across the river instead, gracefully managing to avoid the dreaded "Rusten" slip into the river. We eventually hit a more obvious section in the path and it went much smoother from there. We saw our first mammals in the park at this point, spotting five large hares and then some wild horses. The trail took us on a constantly uphill path in the sun for what seemed hours until we met the main path again. This path then turned up into Valle Ascencio that lead us towards our refugio destination. The majority of this path was fairly narrow, with a number of rock slides coming down the mountain to our left and a steep rocky drop to the river below on our right. The path was also covered in horse hoof prints, which made us wonder about the chances of meeting a horse on the path and made us dread even more the steep slide down the hill to our right.

We arrived at Refugio Chileno, dropped our packs off in our room and had a very nutritious lunch... one snickers bar each and a few hand fulls of peanuts. We sat here and enjoyed some sun before we then continued on towards Mirador Las Torres (the lookout for the towers), the best known attraction in the park. (We wanted to do this in the brilliant sunshine as we were planning to get up to the mirador before sunrise the next day, which would mean a 4am start in the dark). We walked through another beautiful beech tree forest that lead us back into the national park... yes, you read that correctly, back into the national park! (Torres del Paine is a strange national park because right in the middle of the park there is a large stretch of private property!) The last stretch of path to the mirador is 45mins of hiking up a 45 degree bolder strewn hill to the lookout. We got up here and were not disappointed. The towers are three sheer granite monoliths that loom over a small glacier that spills over into a small lake. Due to the time of year, the majority of the lake was covered in large sheets of ice as it had been frozen during the winter. We found ourselves a great rock to sit on and soaked in the beautiful surroundings in the warm sun; I even fell asleep on the rock while Zac explored. After many photos and a relaxing stop, we headed back down the hill and ran into Kerry and Ed again. They were staying at Campamento Torres and were just heading up the mirador themselves. We chatted to them for a bit and then went back to Refugio Chileno. We planned on a hot shower, a good dinner and then early to bed. Unfortunately, the refugio only had hot water for the men's bathroom (after a wait of about 30min) and, after a 26.2km walk, I was not so keen on a cold shower so I hijacked the men's bathroom with Zac standing guard at the door. We had a great dinner with a complimentary glass of Chilean red wine and then crashed out early with our alarm set for 3:30am!

DAY 6: At 3:30am when the alarm sounded I was very ready to turn it off, roll over and go back to sleep. We resisted the urge with the advice from Rustin echoing in our ears "if you turn the alarm off and go back to sleep that will be a huge mistake...", so we got up. As this was the first night we had to share a dorm, we snuck out of our room, got ready to go, had our nutritious breakfast of a snickers bar each and set off in the pitch dark with only our trusty head lamps to guide the way. The best thing was the huge amount of stars that were out. We set off at a cracking pace as we didn't want to miss any of the early light... and probably because neither of us really wanted to spend too much time in a dark and creepy forrest, though we certainly weren't admitting that to each other! I lead the way for practically the first time during our trek. Isaac was happy to let me take the lead as he felt more comfortable keeping an eye on me and also later called me out for not wanting to be taken from behind him by a puma lerking in the dark! Despite my head torch dying a slow death, I managed to stay on the track with the help of a trusty wind up torch... not very practical but still pretty effective (thanks Shiploads!). We made it to the start of the tough rock scramble section in record time. It was still dark but we could start to see the first light of dawn so we pushed on. The path had little pieces of reflective tape stuck to the occasional rock or post, so that made it a little easier to stay on the path. We had almost arrived at the top when we realised that the slushy snow we had walked through yesterday was now frozen solid because it was so cold. We made it to the top at about 5:10am and found we were the first ones to arrive. We had smashed the time we set yesterday for the same path and this was in the dark! We found a good spot to watch the sunrise and then we layered up and watched the towers emerge from the dark. At about 5:45am other people started to arrive, so we had the place to ourselves for over 30min as the sun's first light began to awaken the sky. The sun itself didn't actually appear until about 6:20am. As the direct sunlight hit the towers, the granite began to glow a beautiful red colour. It was one of the most stunning views we have ever seen. We then sat with Kerry and Ed and Jean-Michel and Angela and had a cup of tea with jam and bread while enjoying the beautiful surrounds (cheers Ed... that $10 loaf of bread didn't go to waste!!). After an amazing yet freezing few hours we headed back down to the refugio for our last walk heading out of the park. On the way back through the beech tree forrest, Zac needed to make a quick pitstop. In his words, the story went a little something like this... like any responsible bush walker he made sure he took at least 5 giant steps off the path, in this case down a fairly steep and leaf covered bank. As he was watering the local vegitation, he noticed what he thought to be a chocolate bar wrapper. Like any other responsible bush walker he decided to pick the rubbish up and take it with him. When he returned to the path, instead of having a screwed up chocolate wrapper in his pocket, he was proudly holding up a 10,000 Chilean peso note worth about $20! Not a bad way to end an early morning hike!

We arrived back to the refugio, had a hot drink, packed our things and headed down to the bus stop to wait for the bus to take us back to Puerto Natales. We walked down to Refugio Torre Central, stopping in briefly at the massive hotel that sits at the western start of the circuit. This is a pretty impressive building and it's main clientele are the hoards of tourists that just bus in to do a day walk up to the towers and spend a night in luxury. As we had a few hours until the bus would arrive, we wandered around for a bit and then lay in the sun and chatted to Jean-Michel and Angela while waited for Kerry and Ed.

We only had one small hiccup on the way back to Puerto Natales when the bus we caught started over heating and then wouldn't start again about 16km from our destination. It did start again eventually and we arrived just a little later than we had planned for. After getting our bags out of storage and having a great hot shower, we headed out for an awesome pizza dinner with Kerry and Ed, Jean-Michel and Angela, and a few other people from the trek.

So all in all, the ideas we had about Patagonia before we attemped the famed W-Trek were found to be wrong... well, accept the bit about it being beautiful. We were so blessed to have beautiful clear days, sun and warmth, and no rain! That's right Rustin... NO RAIN!! We did not once have wet feet! Take that Rustin! 😊 I do think that our experience with the weather, however, was not a common one for this time of the year but we would not complain about that at all.

From Puerto Natales we headed back to El Calafate to fly out to Santiago via Buenos Aires. The day we flew out of El Calafate was a cold, miserable and very windy day, so that made it a bit easier to leave. We could only wonder what the weather was doing back in Torres and how those poor people would fair who were starting their adventure with such typical Patagonian weather. Our whole experience in Patagonia was truly amazing. We both loved our time here and would recommend travelling to this amazing place if you ever get the chance!

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Photos

Puerto Natales
Pointing out where we were... just in case it wasn't obvious enough why I was standing under this massive sign!

Puerto Natales
Looking at the distances from Puerto Natales to Torres del Paine National Park.

Puerto Natales
A statue of the big bear-like creature that lived in this area. I was sure this big guy was just looking for a hug.

Torres del Paine
Day 1: Salto Grande.

Torres del Paine
The view of the park from Salto Grande.

Torres del Paine
The view of the peaks surrounding Valle Frances from the ferry ride across Lake Pehoe.

Torres del Paine
Having just made the ferry crossing, we were ready to start our trek.

Torres del Paine
The view from Paine Grande near the ferry terminal, the start of our trek to Glacier Grey. The grass in the background was only a brief touch of green before the burnt out vegetation.

Torres del Paine
The result of the fire from 2011.

Torres del Paine
Renee showing just how sad it was to have lost practically all of the vegetation.

Torres del Paine
Danger? What danger? "I'm scared sarge." "We're all scared sarge." (RIP Jim Varney).

Torres del Paine
Our first glimpse of Glacier Grey with Lago Grey in the foreground and the start of the Patagonian Ice Fields in the background.

Torres del Paine
The Refugio at Glacier Grey.

Torres del Paine
Glacier Grey icebergs.

Torres del Paine
Glacier Grey.

Torres del Paine
Glacier Grey.

Torres del Paine
Glacier Grey.

Torres del Paine
Glacier Grey featuring the large island that divides the head of the glacier.

Torres del Paine
Day 2: The viewpoint from near Campamentos Los Guardas looking over the face of Glacier Grey.

Torres del Paine
Crossing the snow covered frozen river on the way to Campamento Paso.

Torres del Paine
Climbing the ladder on the other side of the river.

Torres del Paine
The ladder was fairly long but at least it was firmly tied down at the top (of course we only found this out once we had climbed it. This knowledge, despite coming a little late, was still kind of reassuring!).

Torres del Paine
See, perfectly secure attachment at the top of the ladder...

Torres del Paine
One of the many viewpoints looking over Glacier Grey on our way to Campamento Paso.

Torres del Paine
Renee doing her best to not give away just how sketchy it was cimbing down next to the twisted ladder at the second "river" crossing.

Torres del Paine
Another viewpoint showing Glacier Grey dividing into two around the island of Lago Grey.

Torres del Paine
The view looking up towards the mountain range from our lunch stop a little way before Campamento Paso.

Torres del Paine
Our lunch stop viewpoint this time looking up Glacier Grey towards the southern edge of the Southern Patagonian Ice Fields.

Torres del Paine
The woodpecker we spotted on our way back to Refugio Grey. We were excited to see it... our friends from the UK and the Netherlands were not sure what all the fuss was about!

Torres del Paine
Day 3: On the walk to Refugio Los Curenos, via Campamento Italiano, having come back to the Glacier Grey starting point from Day 1.

Torres del Paine
A fairly dodgy looking bridge we crossed just before Campamento Italiano. I was obviously doing the noble thing and testing the bridge before Renee had to cross (and not just goofing around on a wobbly bridge!).

Torres del Paine
I took this photo of Cerro Paine Grande looking up Valle Frances from the bridge just before Campamento Italiano. I think it really highlights the contrast in scenery within Torres del Paine National Park.

Torres del Paine
The view of Lago Nordenskjol from the track to Refugio Los Cuernos.

Torres del Paine
The same viewpoint as the Lago Nordenskjol photo but looking in the opposite direction up Valle Frances - an incredible turquoise lake on one side and huge snow capped mountains on the other!

Torres del Paine
The amazing contrast in rock structure and colour of Cuernos del Paine range on the walk to Refugio Los Cuenos.

Torres del Paine
A gap and waterfall between two of the peaks of the Cuernos del Paine range on the walk to Refugio Los Cuenos.

Torres del Paine
Day 4: The view from Mirrador Brittanico at the end of Valle Frances. Behind us, on the far right of the photo, is a peak called Cerro Catedral (2168m).

Torres del Paine
Day 5: Cuernos del Paine range having just left Refugio Los Cuenos (bottom left corner).

Torres del Paine
The famous Towers of Torres del Paine with the glacial lake in the foreground.

Torres del Paine
Day 6: The reason we got out of bed at 3:30am! Sunrise striking the Towers of Torres del Paine - the million dollar shot!

Perito Moreno Glacier
Whoops! This really belongs in the "Patagonia - El Calafate and El Chalten" blog! Didn't delete it from here as we can't upload anymore panoramic photos!

El Chalten
The view down the valley on the way to Laguna de los Tres. Again, whoops! Belongs in "Patagonia - El Calafate and El Chalten"... Didn't delete... etc etc ;)

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[Maree Lucas]

Amazing Weather
Every time I read where the weather has been unpredictably amazing wherever you have travelled I can only Praise Our wonderful Lord as it is He who is in control. Of course I pray regularly, as I'm sure you do, for the weather to be favourable for you, and for your safety, as you treck into some awesome places created by the hand of the our Creator God. Continue to have a magnificant journey. We miss you but feel you near through the emails and blogs!!! xoxox