Torres del Paine

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  Puerto Natales, Argentina
Thursday, March 9, 2006

Another long bus journey back into Chile. Arrived late in a town called Puerto Natales to be surrounded by touts looking for folk to come to their hostel. We ended up camping out the back of a restaurant, felt a bit strange wandering through the kitchen to get to our tent. Stayed a couple of days to stock up on food for the trek, man their supermarkets are crap, goodness knows what people eat around here.

So, 20kg of food later and Allan´s rucksack is groaning at the seams, as am I every time I try to lift it. Then there´s the sleeping bags, pans, clothes, toiletries, water bottles...can´t believe how much stuff we have! The first few days were hard work, well for me at least, still getting used to doing exercise and carrying all this weight. We hiked up a valley to camp beneath the peaks of Torres and clambered up the hill in the dark the next morning to catch the famed sunrises that turn the granite red...well that was the idea, we fought our way through the drizzle to get a view of...nothing

Allan and dodgy bridge

! It was a complete white out as the peaks were completely hidden by cloud. Got to laugh eh? So the next morning it was back scrambling over boulders for an hour, this time to a wonderful view but no sunrise, that one waited till the day we were leaving and had stayed in bed.

We then headed back down the valley and round the back of the mountains, most folk don´t have time to do the full trek so it was pretty quite, only passed a few folk each day. Set up camp in the woods. We´d been warned about the plagues of mice so hung all our food up in the trees - which is quite something when you have enough food for 18 days - looked like a plastic bag forest. We hadn´t been warned about the mosquitoes though and Allan´s face and head soon became a mass of lumps and bumps. I managed only one bite on my face, just on my eyelid but, of course, it swole right up in the night so I looked like I´d been punched. And this is fun?

The next couple of days were stunning, just what you hope for on a hike, wonderful scenery, a clear path and no real slopes to hike up. Then we hit the mud, rivers of thick, oozing mud, and then snow and a wind that could lift me off my feet. Just what you want when you´re heading over an exposed pass. Made it in one piece though and had the joy of a two hour, 90 degree, muddy slope to descend

Caracara

. Found ourselves in a tiny campsite with the friendliest park guards ever, who let us dry out over their stove and filled us with coffee. And then there was the glacier, which just gets more stunning the longer you look at it. We may not have got a sunrise over the mountains but we got a beautiful sunset over the glacier.

And so the hike continued, met a few really nice folk, clambered up and down a few ladders, cooked pasta in the prettiest spots ever and took about a million photos. Came round a bend to find a couple of Huemul deer grazing - they´re very rare so I almost scared them off in my excitement. They´re meant to be really shy but these two didn´t seem in the least bit bothered and we were under their spell for an age.

The next valley continued to be full of surprises, each view of these huge grey peaks seems different from the last. So we stayed a couple of days and just soaked it all up. By now we´d gone without a shower for over two weeks and I was starting to really feel it was time to head back to civilisation - besides my hat had become permanently glued to my head. We took the long route back, through fields of golden grass feeling very pleased with ourselves. Then we hit the last campsite and the night of MICE TERROR! They surrounded us before we´d even gone to sleep then proceeded to run round and round and OVER our tent! Never met such cheeky mice. They were up in the trees gnawing at the bags we´d hung there and they started on the tent itself - now we love our tent, it´s brand new and wasn´t cheap. At first Allan laughed at me but soon had to agree that they only option was to take turns to sleep in shifts while the other stayed on mouse-scaring duty. It worked but we were knackered the next morning. No holes in our tent though, unlike a Canadian we met who woke up with 50 holes and a mouse running over his head!!!

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Chara and Glacier Grey	Chara and the beautiful Glacier Grey	Chara and Torres del Paine	Chara on ladder
Cooking pasta...again!	Glacier Grey	Huemal deer	Torres del Paine

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