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Published: April 10th 2010
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El Calafate - Puerto Natales - Torres Del Paine - Puerto Natales - El Calafate ¡Hola all!
After a cancelled trip to the Perito Moreno Galcier and two cancelled bus rides, the trip continues!!
We finally made it into Chile to take on the W trek through the Torres del Paine national park. Can´t recall a time that we wanted to leave a town or hostel quite as much...! Not that Calafate was bad, it was just twice as long as we wanted (and budgeted) to stay. And to be fair, as Catherine was so sick when we were there, I was really bored.
It started out with a 5.5 hour bus ride from El Calafate in Argentina to Puerto Natales in Chile. Scrutiny at the border was so extreme, the police officer that checked the passports had the television on... When we arrived in Puerto Natales, we got a bit of a shock. There were maybe one or two houses in town that were constructed of more than corrugated iron sheeting and rather dodgy looking brickwork. When we went looking for our hostel, we intially thought we had misunderstood the directions we had been given. All
we could see down the street from side on looked like derelict sheds, but there was the sign for KaWeska (the hostel). Once inside, the place actually looked pretty normal, however, the stairs were very steep and sketchy, and the floors creaked every time you moved a muscle. Didn't matter that much really, we were out hiring in bits of kit and shopping for food etc. most of the evening, and our bus arrived to pick us up at 7.30 the next day.
For the trek, we were told to expect quite a bit of rain so we loaded up on bin bags. I swear, half the weight we carried was bin bags..... And to cap it off, we didn´t get rained on except for one 10 minute spell.
The walk itself was absolutely stunning. All up over the four days of walking we covered about 97km, approximately a quarter of which involved carrying full packs and days varying in length from 6 hrs to two days requiring 12 hours. The weather, as you can see from our photos, was quite overcast and a little cold, it was also very windy in parts, usually when walking on paths
that were about 30cm-50cm wide with a 80 degree slope dropping off to the side. Catherine actually couldn't walk in a straight line at one point - thankfully this was not on a narrow path but at a relatively flat part of mountain. Quite a challenge, but very very worth it! There are some incredible natural sites to see down there - the rock formations are amazing in both scale and colour, and the landscape changes from harsh steppe type terrain through lush vegetation, to glacier and ice clad mountains. The detail is all too much to explain here but, all we can say is it was so so so worth it and we would recommend this walk to anyone, even with three sore knees, a sore ankle, a fat lip, and 4 sore shoulders between the two of us...
In brief, some of the highligths included:
1) Crossing the threshold at the midway point on the first day's walking to see the peaks over the top of a big valley. It made us happy to keep going (even though we had to go down into the valley and then even further up to the peaks...)
2) Moving
to the last mirador (viewing point) on the first day after a decent scramble to the very top. The cloud was out when we got there, but there is a lake at the top that we weren't aware of and it is just on such a massive scale... It was bloody cold at the top and we even got snowed on, but it was really cool!
3) Day 3 as a whole was totally spectacular and our favourite day all round. It was a long long day but the summit was absolutley amazing - the photos will not do it justice. At the end of this day, we were really exhausted, following about 5 hours of hiking with full packs and 6 hours of walking the steep French Valley, Catherine was trying to get the water bottle out of my bag, which had become a bit stuck, and when it finally came free it smacked her in the face, giving her a nice little fat lip and a lovely bruise which looked like a hitler moustache but on her bottom lip!
4) Seeing a group of about 5 Condors cruising the air currents in search of food. They
W Walk Day 1
climbing....climbing are so elegant and huge - must have been 3 meters wing span. Just a pity they are vultures and ugly as sin!
5) the people we met - we kept running into the same people along the way and becane quite good friends with an american couple and a dutch couple
If you are interested in reading more about the Torres del Paine this is some wiki information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torres_del_Paine_National_Park
One thing we definitely did learn in the South of Chile, is that there is no such thing as flat trail in Patagonia, and if you suffer from any form of vertigo or have a fear of heights, stay away!!!
We have added a lot of photos here and they are not in order but the days are correct in their titles... So if you get the urge to got through them............
Will update again!
A&C
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benjalina
non-member comment
fantastic
looks amazing... cant believe you got the 'big man's' wheels in motion.... keep enjoying. Benj x