Day 1 of Torres del Paine: To Campamento Torres
Trip Start
Jan 20, 2005
1
9
14
Trip End
Feb 20, 2005
Torres del Paine National Park,
Chile
Tuesday, February 8, 2005
For a map of Torres del Paine click here or try this link.
The bus took us to Laguna Amarga, park entrance, where we had to pay 10,000 chilean pesos as a park fee, about $20USD or so, each. After this for 3500 pesos a little shuttle bus took us to Hosteria Las Torres. Their little ticket also gave us free camping at one of the pay camp sites around the loop, and a free bus ride back from Hosteria Las Torres to Laguna Amarga if we needed it. It was funny to look at other people and their hiking gear, as many people were wearing jeans (mostly Chileans) and some people´s smaller sized packs were loaded up with all kinds of gear hanging off (pots banging as they walked or plastic bags swinging). We loaded up with our SPF 60 and hats and headed on our way.
The first day, we hiked up to Campamento Torres camping area, up the main Torres valley (Nadine convinced Theo that they should see the lookout of the Torres (towers) first!).
01) On the bus with views already!
The Lonely Planet book makes it sound somewhat flat, but that is hardly the case. The hot sun beat on us as we trekked up a morraine siding the river, finally peaking, and dropping down to the El Chileano hut. Many day hikers were on this trail, having camped or driven in for the day to the Hosteria Las Torres camping area or hotel complex, and it was fun to pass them with our huge knapsacks. This was campground with a hut, for people who were hiking without tents (slackers), and it was full with people who would use this as a base to hike up to the Torres lookout. From there we continued under a greater tree cover, up river to finally get to Campamento Torres situated around a park ranger cabin. Setting up camp on mainly level and shady ground, and after first dinner, we quickly decided to run up to the lookout using simply Tevas since our feet were sore from being in hot heavy boots all morning. The day´s hiking had only been 9.5km but we wanted to give our feet a rest as tomorrow would be 26km of hiking to the next campground.The hike to the lookout proved to be quite a challenge for our little Tevas, but we were able to pass a multitude of people to the eventual rocky and very scenic end. From here, standing in a giant boulder cirque, we could view a lake underneath the glaciers and spires of Torres. Just before reaching the summit, we were stunned to see four gigantic condors coming up valley beside us. They were so close Theo could hear their wing tips trilling in the wind. Unbelievable. They spiralled their way towards the top of a summit aptly named after them. It was then we realized that we had left Stanwee at camp and he had missed the views. Sucks to be a stuffed flower who can´t walk for himself! Many people were lounging on large rocks in front of the Torres, taking in the stunning view. As the sun began to set we left, but Theo had to make a tiny cairn first (about 1 cm high) as there were literally a hundred made by other visitors (a cairn is used to mark a hiking trail, a bit of a joke here at the Torres as no cairns were needed to mark the trail, you just needed to look up!).
We ran back down the hill, by the time we reached camp it was becoming a large question in our minds: why the hell did we try to do this using tevas?!?!? But it was ok. We proceeded to make dinner. After dinner a woman from a tent near ours offered to give us some of their extra food, we declined on the dehydrated meals, but took the snack bag. It all turned out to be Columbian food, with water treatment tablets included, and the dehydrated meals we declined were likely military rations! It was quite funny how we eventually clued into this. The best part was the Manitoba peanuts from Columbia!!
That evening it rained lightly. We slept very soundly. Nadine had her alarm set for 5:45am to do a dawn run up to Torres to catch the towers glowing red.
Next morning...
