Day 2 Torres del Paine: To Campamento Seron
Trip Start
Jan 20, 2005
1
10
14
Trip End
Feb 20, 2005
Torres del Paine,
Chile
Wednesday, February 9, 2005
Nadineīs alarm rang at 5:45am for her pre-dawn hike up to Torres to get pics of them in the sunrise, but with the sky overcast she snuggled back into her sleeping bag for another hour. We started our hike from Campemento Torres to Seron around 8am, a hike that would take us 9.5km back to the Hosteria Las Torres campground and then out another 16.5km to Seron campground. We started early in the morning to avoid the heat that had killed us on earlier hikes. A bit of rain had happened earlier in the night, so the tent was a little bit damp. This was not helped by us being in the damp of the trees. Anyways, this likely made the tent a little bit heavier (which Theo carries, so any extra weight is worth complaining about!).
We proceeded rapidly downstream, running into the first of the day trippers just above Campamento el Chileno
01) Hiking out of the valley on day 2...
. Rapidly we decended back to the Hosteria (in around 2hrs for our 9.5km!) where we purchased ice cream and cokes from the little hexagonal store. Nadine also insisted that we buy some pan chicos (little buns) to have with some hummus we had in our food bag.We continued hiking towards Seron. This part scared Theo, since it was roughly: blistering sun up a ridge, cow shit swamp in the trees along a long fence line, then sun through long daisy fields. Well, it turned out to be pretty much like that but better than his experience from 3 years ago. The sun was a little bit less blistering and assisted by a little bit more wind. It appears that either the Estancia (ranch) no longer has cows in that part along the long fence or not that part of the year, and by the time the daisy field was reached the wind had picked up a little. The kilometers went by with conversations about how our feet were feeling, singing silly songs like "The ants went marching one by one", our bowel movements for the past couple of days, Stanwee and how we had forgot about him in Puerto Natales and at the Torres (sorry Renata, he was safe in Nadineīs pack, we told him all about those trips!), and how we were way too "type A" in our hiking - we wanted to go fast and pass everyone! We did manage to pass 9 hikers on this lonely stretch, not many people do the Torres del Paine circuit, they instead choose to do the "W", or only the front side of the circuit, which is only about 50km instead of the plus 120km that Nadine was planning on (she hadnīt convinced Theo yet that she wanted to do the WHOLE hike, side trips included!). We finished the 16.5km in about 3.5 hours.
The new camp ground at Seron was directly at the small store with newer bathrooms and even a hot shower
02) The day was overcast so we were fast!
! Tents were tightly packed around the store, not the most appealing camping area as we usually are situated by a river at campgrounds as opposed to a store! We managed to snag a prime spot on the edge under two trees with one of the few picnic tables because two Scottish guys (who Nadine later greeted simply as "Hey Scots!" when we ran into them again) were about to leave to try to make it further towards the next campground Dickson. Nadine then had a cold shower... Theo went a bit later and discovered that the heater had been turned on (Nadine now realizes that she was not turning on the correct knob, in Chile hot is usually the right knob and not the left as in Canada!)After a nice first dinner of hummus with pan chicos, we chilled a bit and washed a few clothes. At that point we realized that we had brought too little money on the trail, since we had not completely factored in the camp fees we would have to pay at most campgrounds. It would cost us $7000 pesos for two to camp each night, and we would need money for 4-5 nights (depending on where we camped, there were a few free campgrounds that were small with no facilities). This was not such a huge issue, as we had enough money for that, but we bought no extra food (only food for barely 6 nights as there was food to be bought at some campgrounds and we wanted to reduce weight) and we wanted to have tetra pack wine and chocolate some nights as celebration for our efforts
03) A glimpse of the Torres as we left the valley
. More importantly Theo wanted to take the boat at Refugio Grey (to avoid 1-2 days of what he thought was boring hiking) to view the glaciers from the water, and we did not have the extra $20 000 pesos it would cost us for that. We hoped to resolve our money issues somehow, hopefully finding out that we could use our credit cards at Refugio Grey for the boat (although Nadine wanted to keep hiking past Refugio Grey!).Later we had second dinner without any extras like wine or chocolate to save money and then we retired for the night with ear plugs because the Mochilla boys (a bunch of Chileans who we passed on the trail) were in full swing. A few drips of water from the sky had terrified them and they proceeded to spend the next hour discussing where to put their backpacks (Mochillas) in case it rained hard. It was very frustrating since they were camped next to us and you could hear the word "mochilla" over and over in their conversation, but actually it also kept us chuckling for an hour. No game of scrabble tonight, we were tired after 26 km!
We vowed to leave early. Maybe we bothered them as we were packing up in the morning :)
