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Published: March 5th 2007
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After Ushuaia, I was back in Chile for a bit more than a week. I arrived in Puerto Natales, a place of passage before heading to the National Park of Torres del Paine. I was planning to do some trekking on my own but got an email from two frenchies I met in Ushuaia and an Australian friend. At the end, I had to wait an extra 3 days for the troop to arrive.
Puerto Natales isn’t the most exciting of towns and got pretty boring. The whole duration of my stay was spent in the hostel as the only customer. It was a special place, the owner was a real “gaucho”, the typical Patagonian cowboy, and the time of my stay was trying to understand his mumbling stories in Chilean slang and drinking “Mate” (the local tea) with the rest of his gaucho friends.
On Thursday 15th, everyone finally arrived and we went on a massive shopping spree for the hike. The plan was to go to the park and spend 5 days and 4 nights trekking around it. It is known as the “W” because of the shape of the trek and it’s the most conventional way to
The W
From the map, we started on the left at the bottom of Lago grey walking toward the Glacier. Walked back down and made our way east. do it if you’re not up for the 10 day circuit.
It took 3 hours by bus to get to the National Park. Arriving there was stunning, after driving through flat pampas you could see on the horizon the Torres with its unique and distinctive peaks. It really felt like seeing a gigantesque amusement park and its Russian mountains sticking out of the crowd.
On the first day and after 15min, I felt the trek being really difficult with all our weight on the back. What really put the icing on the cake was how in some parts the wind was blowing so hard that it knocked you off your feet and into the bushes. After walking and struggling for three hours in gale wind, we could finally perceive our goal, the Glacier Grey falling into the lake. It took us another 2 hours to get to our campsite at the foot of the glacier. Arriving there was a relief. The place was on the beach with huge icebergs floating around the lake. What made it more enjoyable was that bottle of Pisco I had in my bag and that we drank with the loose ice floating onto
the shore. That night, I also bumped into the neck less English girl from San Martin who was finishing the whole circuit with five Chileans. It felt weird and funny seeing her face again…unfortunately don’t have any picture to share and it’s probably not a wise idea.
On day two, it was mainly going back on our tracks with the wind on our backs. It was much easier; you just had to jump and went five steps further into more bushes but at least we were going forward. The second part of the day was walking toward the Cuernos, imposing looking peaks shaped like horns. It took a total of 5 hours to get to our following campsite set on a riverside. From there you could hear constant cracking and rumbling noises. It came from massive avalanches coming down from the mountain facing the campsite. At night and with that roaring sound in the background, one of the French to our surprise took out 3L of red wine concealed at the bottom of his bag.
The following day, we climbed a km higher from the campsite luckily without our rucksack. We headed further up toward what they call
the French Valley, but it has nothing French to it. From el Valle Frances you could see more hidden summits and enjoy the view of the valley down below with each lakes having a different shade of blue. We then walked all the way down to the valley, picked our stuff and continued with our daily rut…walking to the next site.
On day 4, I was woken up by screams from the tent next to ours, which happened to be of that neck less lassie and the Chileans. From what I could hear, a mouse had surreptitiously entered the tent and started eating their provisions. Next thing I knew, when I got up at 8, was that they were long gone. Our journey toward our last campsite was the longest and most boring of all landscapes. On one side we had that dull looking mountain we had to go round of and on the other just pampas. What made it slightly entertaining was spotting condors flying over our heads.
On our last day we got up at the crack of dawn to see the main event of the park, the Torres del Paine at sunrise. These are 3
tower shaped peaks surrounded by glaciers falling into a small turquoise lagoon. We all stood in awe in front of the nicest mountains I’ve seen so far. After having breakfast, we packed all our stuff and walked our way down to get the bus back to Puerto Natales.
All in all, it’s the first time I did such a trek. We ended walking a total of around 75km and surprisingly I only started getting blisters walking down to the bus. Really enjoyed it and it was a greater laugh being well accompanied. At the end, we all went our own way from Puerto Natales. The Frenchies went to Puerto Madryn, the aussie to Ushuaia and myself heading up north to Argentina.
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Cristian
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One of the 5 chileans
Even internet is a small place to meet Have fun in the rest of your trip and I was glad to meet you in Patagonia Cheers Cristian