"Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans"

Torres del Paine

Finally I have time to continue the travel story after a busy time in Buenos Aires and Rio (Rolling Stones last night at the Copacabana...almost 1.5 million people...crazy stuff). So now I will continue where I left off:

Torres del Paine --- Map of the "W" trek here
Day one
We (Me, Kathleen and José) had an early start from our Hostel, it was hard to get up because the temperature in the room was about 5°c I think, felt like below cero. We got our stuff together and jumped on the bus. After about 3 hours we arrived at National Parque Torres del Paine. We took the ferry (catamaran) to the first camp, Camp Pehoe, where we began our walk. Before even starting to walk the landscape was stunning. I have never seen mountains quite as spectacular as in this national park. We then walked through Grey Glacier Valley up tho the Gray Galcier where we camped for the night. Very beautiful walk but a bit longer than it said on our map and we had very heavy backpacks. I think mine was over 20 kiloes!! It said on the map 3.5 hours but it took us about 6 hours....and at one point we thought we were had taken a wrong turn and were hopelessly lost. But everything went well. We had a nice meal that the masterchef Kathleen made:). The camp, Camp Grey, was right next to the glacier lake so we watched Icebergs float by...the coolest thing.

Day two
The next day we had to backtrack down to Camp Pehoe and the plan was to walk on to Camp Cuernos (another 2 hours) to camp for the night, but I was not feeling so good that day so we decided to stay at Camp Pehoe for the night and make an early start the next day. This was with out a doubt my worst day physically and I was really feeling the weight of my backpack. We managed to camp inspite very strong winds and that night I really thought the tent would blow away...but fortunately it did not:)

Day three
In the morning I was feeling a lot better and we started walking soon after breakfast around 10:00. It was a beautiful day and one of the best days for me. The landscape just kept getting better and better. I am glad that we did the "W" (as this 5 day trek is called) in reverse instead of starting at the Torres like most ppl. do. The landscape was getting more and more spectacular every day and it felt good to know that we were heading towards the big highlight...spirits were hight and the packs were getting lighter. José was struggling a little bit and as we came to camp Italiano he took a rest while my and Kathleen walk half way up the France valley...what views! what splendor! Coming back to Camp Italiano we found that José was already gone of to the next camp, Camp Los Cuernos, leaving a message that he would meet us there. It took us about two hours to walk there. For me this was the best day. The weather was perfect and the views were spectacular the whole day through. A perfect day!
We had dinner and drank a nice bottle of chilian red wine. I saw a fox that later stole some our food...just grabbed a bag and dragged it to the forrest. We were also warned to watch out for our shoes as the fox sometimes stole ppls left shoe!!
Mattias at the hostel in Puerto Natales also told us that the Puma would not bother us as long as we did nut run around as a wounded Guanaco!

Day four
Another perfect day in paradise :) I was beginning to like Torres del paine so much that I was already planing to come again to do the full 10 day hike. The worst thing about the day was that José had to leave us to catch the boat from Punto Arenas the next day to take him on a four day sailing trip to Puerto Montt further north. It later turned out that the boat broke down and he had to take the plane. It was sad for him as he had to give up seeing the Torres the next day to make his bus back in time to catch his boat. Anyway, Me and Kathleen went on up to Camp Chiliano where we had a lunch break before the last hike up to Camp Torres. We arrived at camp Torres at around 18:00 and had dinner before hiking up to the Torres (45 min) we were also going up there the next morning to see the sunrise but thought it was good to do it also that night in case it would be clouded the next morning. we had co climb up steep rocky terrain over huge boulders, but it was fun. Even though we were very tired, we were excited to see the Torres, that had been mine "holy grail" for a long time. An spectacular it was...there is nothing that can prepair you for this fantastic sight...seeing is believing...and you just have to bee there...pictures can not do it justice.
It was hard to sleep that night, and we now had only one tent and to stuff all our things into one small tent AND sleep there was no easy task. I think I got maybe half an hour of sleep that night.

Day five
we got up at 4 in the morning. It was still very dark and we made some coffee before starting the walk up to the torres in pitch blackness. My flashlight had just run out of batteries so we had to count on Kathleens headlight for the two of us. It worked fine and we were up just before sunrise. It was cold and a bit windy so we found a good spot and sat down tucked under my small sleeping bag thad I had grabbed with me.
We stayed there for 4 hours and looked at the magic happening right infront of our eyes...WOW! The pictures on my msn spaces link below will give you some idea how it was...notice the coulor changing. After slowly walking down again we packed out things and headed down to Camp Chiliano. We were suddenly a bit late and to catch our bus we had to walk pretty fast (fortunately it was mostly downhill). Getting close to the last refugio were the bus was leaving from, we were getting worried that we might miss the bus so I took both backpacks and Kathleen ran to the Refugio to make sure that the bus did not leave us behind. Fortunately she is a very good runner (she has run 3 marathons) so we caught our bus in the nick of time. :)
We had a relaxing drive back to Puerto Natales and that night we had a very nice dinner at the very nice Maratimo restaurant by the lake. A perfect end to a perfect trip.

The day after we went back to Él Clafate in Argentina promising to return to this most magic place of all places. Magic that will stay in my mind for all times.


Click to enlarge

More Pictures from my Patagonia trip HERE!
(the first pictures are from Argentina, Fitz Roy National Park and the Perito Moreno glacier)

coming up soon: Buenos Aires

posted by Nonni @ 11:22 e.h.