South America Day 10

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22nd January

We woke to the alarm 4am, it was chucking it down & the cloud was in the valley. There was no way it would be safe to go up to the lookout and unlikely that the rain would stop anyway so we went back to sleep. I woke at 7am and it was still raining. The sky was clearer but you still couldn't see the Torres from the valley. We needed to leave the camp by 9am to walk for the bus so it was now or never. I decided that I would go in the vein hope that it might clear - it did not! So I have got photographs from the famous Torres view point minus the Torres - one for the storybook if nothing else! So I returned just before 9am very wet but pleased that I had gone.

So for the final day we had 4 1/2 hours walking back the Laguna Amarga where our bus would leave at 1430 hrs. The weather turned good around 10.30 am & we could see the Torres from the valley once more. The walk to the Torres Hotel at the entrance to the valley was pleasant as the majority was downhill. Then something rather strange happened - we purely by chance met a Hostel Manager from the Lakes also on his holidays walking in the National Park that day just outside the hotel, neither of us knew the other was even outside of England let alone on that very spot at the same time - the odds must be huge! The next section was not as pleasant as we had 7km of road walking on a dusty gravel road. There was a minibus running but there was no real information at the Hotel & we had plenty of time so we walked - it may have been a bad decision. As we were about a 1/4 of the way there the sun started beating down & the road under our feet was hard going. To top all this off all the rain the previous night had flooded the final 1/2 Km section of the road to near waist height. We had little choice but to wade across which a good few other people we doing along with us. We changed into dry clothes at the other side & caught the bus on time back to Punta Natalas.

Back in Punta Natalas we found a great little hostel with small windowless rooms of hotel standard, very clean with helpful staff & about the same price as dirty Erratic Rock 0.5. We sorted our gear & slept well, the first night in a real bed for 6 nights.

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Comments

[Bob]

Hope the trip's going well. I love the Torres del Paine photo. I think you'll definitely need another holiday to recover afterwards.