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Published: March 6th 2008
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View from the Valle Frances
Each lake in the park seems to have its own slightly different colour of water Why do so many good things in life have to begin with an early start? Holidays, Christmas day (well, if you´re 8), and erm... other stuff. Like the 5 day trip to Torres del Paine, a particularly jaw droppingly lovely national park in the south of Chile, on the border with Argentina.
As usual, we´d put in hours of meticulous preparation the night before, only to blow it all by getting pissed on Chilean wine, coming home with Mr Gorilla (to borrow from Mr Collins), and trashing the carefully laid out piles of clothing and equipment in a red wine haze. Various essential bits of kit were subsequently lost, trodden on and sold to Dutchmen, leaving us with roughly 7 gazillion things to do at 6 in the morning.
Miraculously we made the bus, only to find it peopled by a series of hardcore outdoorsy tourists, each more grizzled and weather-beaten than the last. My two main concerns - would we be able to obtain a sufficient supply of Aged Nicaraguan Rum in the wilderness, and would we be consumed by wild Guanaco? Natalie was by contrast, significantly less caffeinated than I, and spent the trip in the land
The W trail
A photorealistic representation of a thousand zzzes.
A sensible precaution, as we spent the next 4 nights sleeping in a tent roughly the size of a thimble, reclining on rollmats thin enough to qualify as 2 dimensional objects, and sleeping on various rocks, boulders and dinosaur bones of improbable jaggedity (no O´Connor, you can´t have that in Scrabulous). Camping sucks!
However Torres del Paine is one place (Glastonbury being the other) that´s worth the effort of getting your tent out. It reaches heights of almost impossible loveliness, as hopefully the photos will do some justice to.
We spent 5 days in the park, completing the route known as the ´W´, which basically takes you round some of the best bits of the park, but is significantly less hard work than the 9 day circuit, which you should do if you´re Grizzly Adams, or not in to washing, man.
Being hardened city dwellers (and southerners to boot), we found it hard enough to cope without a decent chrome juicer for 5 days. For what it´s worth, this area is one of the more testing places to hike. The weather is unpredictable, but generally renowned for it´s wind, which can literally
Preparation for the Torres del Paine trek
Putting dried fruit and nuts in daily portion control bags (amongst other things). Turned out to be fruitless as Si ate his way through all five portions by the third day! knock you off your feet out of nowhere.
Anyway, for the short of time and frankly bored, here´s a synopsis of our trek:
Day 1: Get up early, get Catamaran across Lago Pehoe, hike to the Mirador across Glacier Gray. Nearly die of cold. Nearly drown from rain. Eat shit food, get pissed on cheap red wine, and sleep on rocks in damp tent for midgets.
Day 2: Rise
some time after the crack of dawn. Set off to climb the Valley Frances, one of the more beautiful spots (now this is saying something) in the park. 9 hours later return (exhausted). Eat shit food, get pissed on cheap red wine, and sleep on rocks in damp tent for midgets.
Day 3: First trek with all our gear. Set off a bit late, arrive a lot late. Eat shit food etc. etc. Sleeping on rocks in freezing cold experience made all the better by the rich toffs in the nearby mountain refugio moaning profusely about the fluffiness or otherwise of the pillow in their private room. This night was also significantly improved by having no clouds whatsoever... When I woke in the middle of the night
for a bathroom trip, the stars were so incredible bright that I had to wake Natalie to see them! You could see the whole arc of the milky way, and they were so bright you could see by them. Unfortgettable!
Day 4: This day is properly tough! We have to walk with all our gear up a freaking mountain, and for about 8 hours. We´re so tired when we arrive at the last shop before the campsite at the top, that somehow we end up paying about 15 quid for the last bottle of red wine, and worse still about 3 quid for half a loaf of stale bread (by now we´re out of munch entirely). However the insects of the forest have no such bad luck, and dine richly on prime English corn-fed meat.
Day 5: Wake some time before the crack of dawn to catch sunrise at the Torres (big, tower like mountain peaks). This envolves an hour and a half scrambling up loose rock and shingle. It should be an hour, but we get lost following a halfwit, and nearly end up statistics on the mountain-side. We just make sunrise with our necks intact. Freeze
on mountain for an hour, then slowly limp back down to get the bus back to nearby (and splendidly named) Puerto Natales. Job done!
Post script: Following an enforced proof read by Natola I´ve come to realise that I´m a sarcastic bugger that could really do with cheering up a bit. Torres del Paine is definitely one of the best things we´ve done (ever), and I´d recommend it to anyone in a flash! Seriously, it was an amazing trip that even my hatred of camping couldn´t dampen in any way.
Right, I´m off to anger management classes.
Take Care
Si xx
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barrygahan
Barry
The Torres look great
They were completely clouded over the day we visited, looks like you had better luck. Great map too!