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Puerto Natales, Chile
51° 44' S 72° 31' W
Nov 11, 2008 13:42
Distance 192km

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Other entries in Puerto Natales

Towers of Pain in Torres del Paine

Text written in: English (UK)

We went up to Puerto Natales as the closest town to the Torres del Paine National Park which has mountains, glaciers, lakes and rivers. The big thing to do there is called the W trek (because it´s shaped like a W) as it goes around the mountains (which are separate from the Andes).  Hardcore people do The Circuit and go all round the back of them too.  The cheapest way to do it is to camp, although that does mean walking with all your gear and food for 5 days .....

 There was a guy from Spain who was on our bus journey from Osorno to Punta Arenas who we kept bumping into and was staying at the same hostel as us in Puerto Natales too.  So we decided to travel together in the park and share food etc.  It turns out we picked one of the most atheltic people to travel with.  Jose runs up mountains for fun, does marathons and had just cycled 800 km from the north of Chile through the desert. 

It took about 4 hrs to get to the start of the trek including a ride on a catamaran and the weather was looking ok.  Then we started our trek up to the first camp site which was supposed to take 4 hrs and go past a glacier.  Patagonia is ridiculously windy and you can get 4 seasons in one day so we were expecting it to be difficult sometimes.  But that day the winds were 90 to 100 km per hour and the rain just didn´t stop at all!  So we were struggling up the hills with our packs (ok Jose was just skipping up and down the hills and over the puddles) until we got to a point were the wind was making it impossible to stand up and we couldn´t hear each other speak, or see anything because the wind was driving freezing rain into our eyes.  Then we saw some other people who were not even carrying packs who said they had to turn back because with the wind it was impossible.  So we turned around and headed back to the campsite near where the catermaran dropped us off.  

Spent the evening in the cooking area of the campsite drinking cheap red wine and coca cola as they do in Bilbao according to Jose.  Dried off a bit and had a hot shower but then we went out to find Jose´s tent had been broken by the wind. One of the poles was snapped in the middle and it ripped through the whole tent material.  It was rainy and windy all night horrible!

But the next day was sunny and nice.  Jose got up at 6am and ran up the path we abandoned yesterday to see the glacier.  Was done in 4 hrs (22km round trip).  Then we all set off on the next leg of the journey.  Went up a valley and saw another glacier which was pretty impressive! Set up camp in another refugio where this really nice woman from Amsterdam heard about how Jose´s tent broke and we didn´t have much sleep in the storm and invited me to spend the night in her cabin which was really really nice, had a good time out of the wind in an actual bed! We all drank red wine and coca cola again mmmm.

The next day we had a lot of ground to cover so we got up at 6.30 am and had a really hard day trekking up steep hills with our packs.  Then after 7 hrs or so of walking, we had to scramble up a load of rocks for what seemed like hours to get a view of the famous Torres which were impressive and we were lucky that it wasn´t cloudy. There was still snow up there!  Was totally exhausted and actually slept pretty well in the tent even though it was so cold we had to wear all of our clothes inside our sleeping bags!

The next day we walked for about 3 or 4 hrs to the bus and had the best pizza and wine (without coca cola) in Puerto Natales. Mmmm!  We walked 65 km in 4 days with all our gear, my whole body hurt.