Puerto Natales and Torres Del Paine

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After one of the easiest border crossings we have experienced to date we arrived in Puerto Natales around mid arvo.  Really a pretty standard town, except for the expense which was a another step up from the South of Argentina...how much more expensive we couldn't say as we never did get the hang of converting the Chilean Peso (which runs into the thousands) back to Australian dollars.

Checked into our hostel which according to the advertisement had great expertise in helping set up trips to the nearby Torres Del Paine National Park...all we discovered behind the counter was a 14 year old kid who spoke no English.  Wandered around the corner to another place called Hostel Cecilia and in no time they had us sorted with the booking of the refuges for the three nights we would be in the park and all the information we could ever need.

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That night we had a belated celebration dinner for our engagement which was brilliant, barbecued lamb and fantastic bottle of Chilean red.

TORRES DEL PAINE NATIONAL PARK - THE "W" CIRCUIT

Day 1: Caught the bus from Puerto Natales around 7am and arrived at our first refuge around midday after a brief ferry ride.  We had booked a tent and sleeping bags for the first night as the Lodge was fully booked.  Considering the debacle that was our last attempt to erect a tent we were pleasantly surprised to find our tent already set-up and ready to go.  We had learnt our lesson from our walk in Los Glaciers and only brought the bare minimum so took off for our first walk, 11km up to the look out for Glacier Grey with no packs and a spring in our step.  In fact is was so refreshing not having packs that we may have broken the record for the fastest walk to the lookout by two lazy Australians.  At one point we were behind a guy that would just not move over so I was keeping pretty close to him just to apply a little pressure and let him know we were there, well as it turns out it may have a been a little too much pressure for the poor bloke as he took a tumble off a bridge into a stream, Jo was not too happy with me but in my opinion he bought that shit on himself by being a path hog.

A chip off the old iceberg
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Well I think Karma must have been watching as about 15 minutes later I managed to take a pretty good stack face first down some natural rock stairs, ended up on my hands and knees in the dirt at the bottom with (according to Jo) a very bewildered look on my face....which of course she thought was hilarious, in fact I got the feeling she had been waiting six months for just such an event.

I just hit the power button on the keyboard for the second time in one hour!!! and the 50th time for this trip, why anyone would put a key that shuts down your computer right next to the delete key (my most commonly used key) is beyond me!!!! They should be shot.

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Anyway now I have that off my chest....We finally made it to the lookout to Glacier Grey and there was no one around, which could be because we were really lucky or more likely we had probably taken a wrong turn somewhere and weren't at the lookout at all...either way it was very nice.  We spent 15 minutes sitting on a rocky little peninsula enjoying the brilliant view provided by a giant blue wall of ice.  Later even managed to scramble down to the bank and chip off a bit of ice from one of the smaller icebergs, as expected it was wonderfully pure and nice tasting...for ice...if only we'd bought a bottle of scotch.  Got back to camp around 8pm pretty tired so grabbed a bite to eat in the lodge and went to bed.

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Day 2: Started walking early for what we had been told was the hardest day of the trek.  Met another Aussie couple (Rob and Lou) about 15 minutes into the walk and ended up doing the remainder of the trek with them.  The total distance to be traveled for the day was 28km and thought it was going to be easy until we began the walk into Valle Del Frances (French Valley - fortunately we didn't see any).

The walk up was a bit of a toughy with seven or so km of solid uphill but the view from the top was spectacular with a 270 degree view of the surrounding granite peaks.  Spent a while up there enjoying the views, the clear skies and warm weather before making our way back down the valley.  Neither of us are great on the downhill and true to form my knee started hurting and Jo did a couple of very impressive falls, including one very noisy one where she even managed to incorporate a water bottle throw which Rob and Lou were very impressed with.

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Once back down the valley it was a further 6km to our next Lodge (Los Cuernos).  This walk along Lago Nordenskoljd is spectacular to say the least, not too demanding (at least not if your knee is functioning properly) and with views of yet another blue lake creating mirror images of the surrounding snow capped mountains...geez you wouldn't want to have to skull a beer every time we said snow capped mountains or glacial lake in this blog.  Anyway got to our second lodge had a very nice meal and couple of beers before going to bed.

A random deer we met on our walk
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DAY 3: Up early a bit sore and sorry and proceeded to walk the kinks out over the next 11km's.  After a further five km's inland from the lake we reached our next lodge for the night Albergue Chileano.  That arvo we got stuck into the wine with Rob and Lou.  A German lady we had a met on the trail a few times even gave us half a kilo of smoked salmon as an engagement present, setting very high standards for the rest of you....what she was doing lugging a big smoked fish around southern Chile is beyond me.

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Final Day:  Was woken by the sound of the spanish guy in our dorm hitting the floor from the top bunk bed, a good way to start the day.  The final day (or the first depending on which end of the W you start) involves a walk up to a mirador which in good weather affords a great close up of the surrounding Paine peaks.  Unfortunately for us the sky was overcast and it became apparent half way up to the mirador that we weren't going to see anything at the top, still we were stuffed if we were going to walk for three days just to give up halfway through the last one so battled on like the troopers we are.  As expected after a real bitch of a climb scrambling over giant boulders we reached the top to find a view consisting of a pretty little green lake and fog as far as the eye could see, not exactly the mountains we were hoping for.

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On the way back down Jo must have fallen over at least 20 times, I really don't think my advice on foot placements was heeded or appreciated, Jo chose to continue with her own approach of falling down followed by copious amounts of swearing at the offending rock.

After another couple of hours of walking we reached our final destination Hosteria Las Torres were we caught a couple of busses back to Puerto Natales.  Overall it was a great experience with what must be some of the finest scenery in the world, having said that we were both damn happy to be on a bus and not using our own legs like idiots for a change..in fact I think we have both retired from trekking for good.