Bring on the Paine

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So, after our cross-continental detour, we got to Puerto Natales last Tuesday afternoon. This was the furthest south we were due to go in the whole trip. We liked it straight away and found a really nice residencial about 5-10 minutes walk from the centre with the best hot shower we´ve had so far and breakfast included.
We went out on the first night and treated ourselves to lomo a lo pobre which is fillet steak, chips, fried onions and two fried eggs. We´d had it a couple of times in Chile before but this was the best yet, we´d read and heard about Patagonian beef being good but it was even better than expected.
The second day was spent rushing around Puerto Natales buying everything we needed for the 7 day trek that we planned to do in the Torres Del Paine National Park. We bought sleeping mats, water bottles, a flask, dried fruit, nuts, sausages, salami, pasta, rice, packet soup, porridge, coffee, sugar, chocolate, cereal bars, biscuits and bus tickets to take us to the park the next morning. We also went out again for another fix of lomo a lo pobre before the pastafest that lay ahead.

The bus picked us up at half 7 in the morning for the 3 hour ride to the park and we caught a few glimpses of what was to come. We had looked forward to Torres Del Paine above all other things on the trip and we were hoping that the weather would hold up for us because we had heard lots of people talking about the park being flooded in February and many people having to give up on treks and come back to Puerto Natales due to paths being unavailable. If the weather was good in Torres Del Paine, all the cancelled boats and buses wouldn´t matter any more. If we knew how to do a sundance, we would have done one.

Anyway, we won´t bore you with all the details of the trek, just a quick outline.

We trekked across pampa grassland, past lakes, up steep paths, down steeper paths, past mountains, up mountains, around mountains, scrambled over large rocks, small rocks, walked over streams, through streams, over bridges, over fallen trees, under fallen trees, across gorges, up ladders, down ladders, up steps, down steps, over morrain, through 1 foot deep snow, on ice, on pebble lake beaches, through valleys, in energy-sapping sunshine, in the windiest conditions we have ever seen, through an entire day of continual rain, (Day 4) we fell over, got stuck in bushes (Sarah), slipped, slid, skidded, splashed, saw mountains, glaciars, icebergs, an ice field, lakes, lagoons, got hot, got cold, got very wet, slept well, slept bad, slept really bad, slept in coats, hats, socks, gloves (Sarah), carried all our clothes, tent, sleeping bags, cooking gear (Dave), 7 days worth of food, laughed, almost cried, and emerged after 7 days, intact, tired, hungry, happy, satisfied, hairy, smelly (Sarah again) and with lomo a lo pobre on our minds.

We managed to cover a total of 123 Kilometres (99 of those with our backpacks) in 45 hours of trekking and it was the most challenging thing either of us have ever done. The weather was almost perfect the whole way through the trek apart from day 4 when it rained from the moment we left the tent till we got to camp. That was a very, very hard day.

We´ve managed to get quite a lot of photos on here so we´ll let them tell the story a better than we can.

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Photos

View from start of trek
Only 7 days to go

Start of Valle Frances. Day 5
The glaciars at the top are about 50 metres thick.