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From Ushuaia the southern most city in the world to Punta Arenas in Chile, this trip took us around 12 hours and we did an overnight in this city before heading to Puerto Natales - the launching pad for our accent on Torres del Paine National Park. Nothing interesting to note about Punta Arenas except that the price went up and that we had the best Lomito (steak sandwich) ever.
We arrived late into Puerto Natales and were greeted by an old lady from Niko´s a Hostel mentioned in the lonely planet who offered us a price we couldn´t refuse and wisked us off to her accommodation. This women had seen us coming, she had seen the tourists come and go and we would be no exception. She organised us a trip up to Torres del Paine National Park with a phone call and gave us a map with a resturant already printed on it to grab a feed. The next day I spent nearly all of it writing you the reader(s) maybe, my blog and at 10:30pm we still hadn´t proccured a tent for our journey. To the phone again and 15 minutes later we had a tent
Torres del Paine
This was where we were going for 5 dayssuitable to the alpine conditions (so we thought).
8am the next morning we were on a bus to Torres del Paine National Park. It was freezing cold but a good day so a few of the photo´s you see are on the good day, not the next 3. We had a 17km hike to do the first day to reach the basecamp for where we would hike the ¨W¨and see the glaciers.
It was tough going, we took too much food & water and the tent we rented was bloody heavy. Five hours medium grade and we were there at the refugo, but wait, it was under construction before the masses arrived in the pleasant summer conditions.
There was no functioning toilet or showers outside the building, no tables bins or areas you´d expect for camping or cooking. The sole toilet and shower was inside the Refugo (hotel under construction) and shared with 30 workers. We camped the first night in our borrowed tent (it was crap) and we froze. It was so fucking cold. We realised the next night that we had forgotten that our lightweight sleeping bag we had gotten for all conditions was rated to
Torres del Paine - the team
There was us, 2 Scot's, one Frenchman and 2 Quebecan's from Canada and for most the park was closed but all we saw was a challenge 5 degrees, not 0 to minus 10 that we were experiencing.
The next day we got up tired, cold and broken from the 17km hike the day before and left before sunrise to hike to Glacier Grey a round trip of 7 hours. On the way there we hiked up the first valley and oh the wind, it was so strong we could hardly stand up. This was apparently normal for Torres del Paine and when we were close to the glacier at 1pm we had to turn around otherwise we would be hiking back in the snow and the dark.
That night we were cold. Our running shoes that we brought for running were wet and we were cold. Lisa could not handle another night in those freezing conditions and no could I. We would be customers of the refugo for the remainder of our stay.
The next day was the valley Frances but after half an hour, you could barely see the trail let alone any of the mountains. Back to the refugo. The final day we had to hike out the 17km of the park back to our pickup point. When we got back
This is just nuts!
Yep you wouldn't want to be anywhere else would you?
Well maybe Mexico on the beach to Puerto Natales we were wet, we returned our camping gear and went to dinner in our thongs (in the snow) the lady at Niko´s arranged a bus to El Calafate to see Los Glaciers and the next day we were off.
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