Chile? - It's Freezing! (Parque Nacional Torres del Paine)

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After a few days settled in Argentina and Parque Nacional los Glaciares, it was time to hit the road again and head back to Chile and Chile’s first national park - Torres del Paine. It was about 4 or 5 hours drive and a border crossing from El Calafate. It was another late evening arrival and we found somewhere to camp at Campamento Torres. If we’d thought we were on the gringo trail in PN Los Glaciares, we were well and truly on the trail now. The park is full of hotels and campsites and the campsite at Torres was a sea of tents. Unfortunately, we had arrived at the park with hardly any food, due to the border restrictions when crossing over into Chile, which do not allow fresh produce (fruit, vegetables, meat etc) to be brought into the country. So having pitched the tent, as far from other people as we could, with a fantastic view of the Torres and parked the car for shelter from the winds we suspected would get up later; we headed off to the 5 star hotel for their buffet dinner.

It was a very cold night and we were in bivvy bags again (for the cold, which will be down to the proximity to the southern icefield, but at least it wasn't raining.) The next morning was an early start as we were due to be meeting a guide (Alejandro) for some trekking in the park. (Alejandro used to live in Cambridge and work as a cleaner for Nick and Jean, Steve’s brother and sister in law.) We weren't sure what the plan was for the couple of days we would spend with Alejandro, so we had taken the tent down and packed everything up. But once we'd met him and agreed a plan, we ended up pitching the tent again. After a lot of faffing about, we eventually set off hiking.

Although it had been very cold overnight, it was a dry day, with a lot of cloud, but even some patches of blue sky and sunshine - a nice change! Our first trek was to the Mirador Las Torres, which was about a 7 hour round trip. The trek routes were as busy as when we did the Annapurna circuit in Nepal last year, and funnily ennough, at one of the refugios where we stopped for a quick break, we heard a familiar voice. It was a guy called Steve who we had bumped into on the second day of our trek in Nepal. Small world!

It was quite a climb up to the mirador, steep and slippery, with the last section being a traverse across glacial moraine and huge boulders, but the view at the top was spectacular. The clouds cleared momentarily so that we could see all three of the famous Torres and the aqua marine glacial lake below. We sat and took in the view, eating chocolate and oranges.

We arrived back at camp, hoping for a promised hot shower, but the facilities were awful and the water was glacial. Steve braved it, but Sarah bottled it and ended up smuggling herself into the refugio showers - nice and hot! Wrapped up warm in all our layers again, the three of us had dinner at the refugio and then headed back to the tents for an early night.

The next morning, we set off early towards the other side of the park. This was a day of shorter walks. We saw the Salto Grande, a big powerful waterfall and then continued on up to a mirador of the Cuernos - which are actually more famous in picures than the Torres the park is named after. More dramatic too. We had lunch by Lago Pehoe, at the campsite, where we also pitched our tent, ready to come back to later and then we headed off further west in the park, to walk down to the beach at Lago Grey and walk to another mirador of Glaciar Grey.

Our campsite for the night was spectacular, with views over Lago Pehoe and the Cuernos and in the morning we hiked up the hill to Mirador Condor for an even better view. It was a steep 25 minute climb and the wind at the top was so strong you could almost lean on it, but the view over the park was fantastic - the peaks of Paine Grande, the Cuernos and Torres and deep blue and aquamarine lakes in all directions spotted with navy blue patches of cloud shadow.

From Torres del Paine, we headed south to Puerto Natales, sunshiny, but blustery and freezing cold, the nearest town on the edge of Seno Ultima Esperanza (Last Hope Sound) for an overnight stop and then on to Punta Arenas (another cold, but bright and blustery town) on the Magellan Strait and our access point for Tierra del Fuego.

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