A couple of friends and I arrived in Puerto Natales, Chile from Argentina by bus to stay with a local family in their home. We found the family through couchsurfing, and they welcomed us to stay there as long as we needed before and after the trek in Torres Del Paine to prepare or recover from the hike. They were an incredibly kind a hospitable family. The first night there there were over 20 couchsurfers, and the wife, Gloria still cooked a big family dinner for everyone. There were not enough beds so some people had to sleep on the floor, one or two of the kids even gave up their beds so that the couchsurfers would have beds to sleep in.
The Torres Del Paine trek, perhaps the most famous trek in all of South America is a 4 or 5 day trek around the Torres Del Paine range. Here is Patagonia in it's most beautiful, rugged, and isolated. The weather is extreme, it can change drastically within minutes and during the hike usually did, about every 30 minutes. We would go from sunny, to pouring rain, to literally 50 mph winds in the span of a half hour. The winds would be so strong that if caught unaware it could literally knock you off your feet. On top of this, depending on where you were, you can hear the massive calves off of the Grey Glacier, or avalanches high up on the mountain, rushing water and waterfalls or the constant wind cutting over the peaks and dragging, at perhaps a hundred miles per hour, the clouds and rain along with it. In all of my travels I've never visited a place so dramatic and wild, where you can drink directly from any stream or lake you encounter. The glacier lakes ranged from a milky grey to an almost flourescent green, in contrast with the grey or pure white of the sorrounding peaks.
My friends and I spent 4 days trekking around the peaks, camping at free campsites or hiking up to different viewpoints. The best trek I've ever done, I don't know if there exists a place more ruggedly beautiful as Torres.
