Finding a bush in the Torres Del Paine

Trip Start Sep 03, 2007
1
66
106
Trip End Jul 03, 2008


Loading Map
Map your own trip!
Map Options
Show trip route
Hide lines
shadow

Flag of Chile  ,
Thursday, February 21, 2008

The reason for coming all this way down through Patagonia is trekking in Chile's famous national park Torres Del Paine, where the surreal granite towers crown the massif. All geared up with our camping gear we set off to the park for our 4 day trek. Jamie armed with most of the heavy equipment and myself carrying a fair load wondered how we will cope lugging our packs about. In fact it turned out that Jamie's natural ability to trek very swiftly meant that his heavier pack handicapped him so we had an equal trekking ability (which actually meant he didn't have to moan at me to hurry up all the time).

The route we took is known as the ´W´, starting the glacier side of the park we trekked for 4 and half hours, covering 12km of arduous terrain arriving at Los Guardas campsite fairly shattered. The view was well worth the trek, as we stood overlooking Glacier Grey admiring the colours and crevasses of the glacier Curanto
Curanto
 . We had been told the water from the streams was fine to drink - big mistake! The following morning I was forced to use the hole in the floor; the one and only toilet on the campsite, little did I know this would be the most luxurious use of toilet facilities I would have for the next 3 days!
 
We set off back down the same route we trekked up the day before, this time taking a little longer as Jamie discovered he was suffering from the same tummy bug as me! We arrived at the park entrance and wondered whether to carry on, feeling awful and very weak as nothing we ate or drank we staying inside us or too long. Determination kicked in and we trekked another 8km to the next campsite, in all we had trekked 20km that day! Early night as we crashed out as soon as we put our tent up.
 
As the rain lashed down we decided to leave out a little section in the middle and to push on to the next camp as it was still a long way to the end. The weather cleared up but we were still not feeling great, luckily we bumped into Tim, an ex army guy who we´d met on the Navi Mag, being very prepared (unlike us) for all possible crises camping was armed with Immodium. 6 and half hours of hard trekking later we arrived at Las Torres campsite again absolutely shattered but relived to find proper toilets for once.
 
Getting up at 5.30am was a bit of a shock to the system but we clambered out of our tent to set off and try and see the sunrise over the Torres Del Paine (which is basically 3 huge granite towers placed in a very inconvenient spot in the national park. We managed to get to the towers in record time 3 hours but just missed sunrise.  
 
Slideshow Print this entry Puerto Natales hotels