Oh those mountains.....

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Torres del Paine has been on our list for a long time and I won't try to describe it but hope the photos do it some justice. We’d treated ourselves to a stay at one of the very few hotels located inside the national park which included a 5 hours transfer from Punta Arenas. Ruben, the driver didn’t speak much English but I ended up sitting in the front of the bus and so (where I could!) ended up acting as translator for the Australian family that were with us. Ruben was very chatty, telling us lots about what we were seeing as we went along and stopping every now and then to let us take pictures. For lunch we went to an estancia owned by the family that own the hotel. We had a tour of the original house that they lived in when they first started the farm when they arrived from Croatia in the early 1900s. This was followed by a huge lamb asado lunch – the start of never ending food for the next few days!

After lunch they took us into the sheep shearing shed, rounded up a few sheep and gave us a shearing demonstration – very impressive. The guy who did it said that he held a record for shearing 318 sheep in one day!

He was slightly less successful at his attempt at One Man and his Dog..... The intention was to show us his dog and sheep handling skills so he brought a small flock of sheep around the barn with his 2 dogs and it was all going well until one of the lambs decided to make a break for it. It was incredibly fast and the dog that went after it couldn’t keep up. The shepherd went trotting after them but before he knew it, the lamb had jumped into a small lake and was swimming across. The dog stood on the bank barking for some time and only went in after it as the lamb scrambled out the other side and set off again along the bank. It was another 5 minutes before the dog managed to chase the lamb back across the lake but it was last seen disappearing behind the shearing shed....that’s one lamb that should be saved from the asado!

Back on the bus the scenery began to get more spectacular as we got closer to the park – it was a beautifully clear day, certainly not guaranteed for the area, so we managed to get some great pictures and Martin, the twitcher in the Australian family, managed to get a few new birds for his collection.

We finally arrived into the hotel about 6pm. This was probably the nicest room we’ve had since we’ve been away but somehow we never really got time to relax in it.... For dinner in the restaurant we essentially chose roast vegetables as none of the other options suited us but they turned out to be the most amazing vegetables we’ve had this trip – all from their own organic garden with carrots that tasted nearly as good as our own home grown ones.

A couple of quite different trips the following day - first to a waterfall of milky turquoise water coming off the glaciar and then the Blue Lake for great views of the Towers and alls sorts of interesting birds. In the afternoon we set off with Roberto the puma hunter..... They had had an incredibly successful trip that morning having seen 2, and watched one with a guanaco kill for some time. Roberto was hopeful that the puma might still be in the area so we headed back up there. Most wildlife watching requires a large amount of patience and significant amount of luck - we had lots of the first but not much of the second. After a while hanging out around the kill that was still there, unfinished, we tried a few other areas, carefully watching the behaviour of the guanacos - a good sign that a puma is around if they start to make noises and look skittish. After a few hours, Roberto took us for a walk along the edge of a fence that surrounds a piece of private land which is an estancia. Apparently the pumas use the fence to trap guanacos as, although most of them can jump the fence, the old or infirm are unable to. It was beautiful walk with fantastic views of the Paine massif as the sun was beginning to drop and then Roberto told us to wait for him while he carried on a bit scouting around. Suddenly he shouted up to us that he had seen one and eventually we all found it in the binoculars - must have been at least a kilometre away and was sitting under a rocky outcrop.....how on earth did he spot that?! We sat on the rock watching for a while and he did move out from under the rock and sit down behind another bush but that was about it. It was a beautiful place to sit and watch the world but eventually we had to get back to the hotel slightly disappointed that we hadn't seen more.

Next day was our walking challenge! We had signed up to do a trek up the French Valley to a look out point. After a short journey to Lake Pehoe we got on a catamaran for the 45 minute journey to the Paine Grande refuge. By the time we got off the boat the wind had whipped up and it was generally grey and cloudy. There were tiny tents around the refuge being battered by the wind and we were very glad that we had decided to have some comfort! The first 7.5km walk is relatively flat although very uneven underfoot and took around 2.5 hours at a reasonable pace, with a bit of rain and a lot of wind and not much to see due to the cloud. This took us to the Italian camp which is really just a place for people to pitch tents under the trees and we sat for 20 minutes to have a snack before setting off on the last tougher part of the trek. This involved, at times, scrambling over rocks and tree roots and was a steady climb up for about another hour with tantalising views between the trees every now and then. And finally we arrived at the look out to find that the clouds had almost completely cleared so we had the most spectacular views over the glaciers on the Grande Paine, across to Los Cuernos or the horns and down the valley to the turquoise water of lake .... - most definitely worth the pain. The wind was still howling and we huddled on a rock amidst the others admiring the views and ate our sandwiches - possibly one of the most amazing lunch spots I have ever been to. All too soon we had to set off back down as we had a deadline for the walk of the last catamaran back across the lake. Going down was, in parts, as difficult as going up and I slipped at one point twisting my leg a bit - not a great start to a long walk home. Back at the Italian camp our guide said that we were 15 minutes behind time so we didn't have much time to stop and set off at a cracking pace. By this time I was really tired and my knees and hips were hurting so this was quite a challenge. And the pressure seemed to be kept up all the way back though I eventually had to slow down considerably as I was getting shooting pains in my right knee with every downhill step - this is something I've had before but not for some years and different from the knee problem I had thought might affect me going uphill! The others went ahead as the guide had food and drinks planned at the refuge and H and I limped along for the last hour or so, the pain bringing tears to my eyes at times. The wind and occasional lashing rain didn't help but at least our wet trousers dried out before we finally stumbled back to the refuge and met the others who were already tucking into a fantastic spread of cheese, meats, fruit, cakes, wine and beer. On the way back we'd realised that if it had not been so cloudy in the morning we would have had fantastic views of Los Cuernos to keep us going but we had not even known they were there!

I was very pleased I'd managed to do the walk (12.6 miles according to H's gadget) and delighted to have seen the views but wish it hadn't all been quite so painful!

It turned out that Rodrigo, the guide, had told us a little white lie to us about the last boat (to make sure we got there!) and there was another half an hour to go but being South America, it also turned up late so we were very tired when we got off the boat at the other end of the lake and fought the howling wind back to the car park.....to find our bus wasn't there. Everyone else on the boat gradually disappeared and Rodrigo went to the ferry cafe to try to find out where our driver was, then called us over to sit out of the wind in the cafe telling us it would only be 10 minutes. It became clear this was a lie when we heard the guy in the cafe on the phone asking somebody if they had the phone number for the hotel! To cut a long story short, we waited about an hour for the bus so arrived home, tired, dirty and very hungry as it was well after 9pm.

In less pain than we expected the following day, we joined another all day trip to see the main sights of the park and take a boat trip along Grey Lake to Grey Glacier. We were again spoilt by the weather, which can often be cloudy and wet in the region, and had almost completely blue skies all day allowing for fantastic photos. There were a couple of times that H was just standing waiting for the last tiny wisp of cloud to move away from part of a mountain in order to get the perfect picture! Lunch was another great spread on the shores of a lake looking up towards Paine Massif and then to the Grey Hotel for the boat. To get to the boat, we had to walk for about half an hour across a stony beach which doesn't sound like much but reminded me of a winter's day at Filey with powerful winds almost blowing me over at times. As you can imagine, therefore, being outside on the boat was equally challenging but worth it for more amazing views, the beautiful floating icebergs broken off from the glacier and then the close ups of the 3 faces of the glacier. The guide on the boat told us that in the 4 years he had been working on the boat the glacier had receded a long way so that where the cliffs now come down to create the 3 separate faces had all been glacier and there had only been one much higher and very long front to it. The boat ride back was finished off with pisco sours containing glacier ice....which made the walk back across the windy beach even tougher!

We were all tired on the way home but perked up as we came back past the known puma hunting area. We were all scanning the landscape and there, as we turned a corner in the road, I spotted dark eyes watching us on the hill above the road. The driver slammed on the brakes and we watched as he waited a moment, then slowly turned up the hill, turned back to look at us then padded up behind the rocks. It was like something out of the diaries they do on wildlife programmes where they have been searching for something for weeks and 'then on the last day....' it all comes good. We were so happy!

Dinner was in the hotel restaurant where we had eaten every night. Nothing ever lived up to the beautiful food on the first night, though some of it was still good. However, the waiters endlessly created entertainment. They were all men - the older ones just seemed to wander around in a dream, walking out of the kitchen looking as though they couldn't remember what they had come out for, the younger ones looking scared as rabbits caught in the headlights. None of them could get an order right, could understand enough English (or even Spanish it seemed!) to get any special requests right and all seemed permanently confused!

And so the following morning we picked up our transfer bus to El Calafate for our flight to BA. The sun was out but the clouds were sitting low on the mountains and we watched for a while as they disappeared behind us, very sad to leave such an amazing place. I think we'll be back one day....

So, nearly at the end of the trip. Am finishing this on Christmas Eve so hope you are all safe and warm at home with friends and family and that you have a lovely day tomorrow. We're basking in the heat of Buenos Aires but more of that in the final blog for this trip.

Merry Christmas!

S + H x

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Comments

[Helen Eberlin]

Final blog
What an amazing trip!! The Paine Massif photos are amazing!! Hope the knees have recovered and will be 'sorted' for the next trip. Thank you for an interesting ,informative but personal blog- have really enjoyed sharing your adventures. Good travelling in 2016!!