From El Calafate we got the bus to Puerto Natales, Chile. So we had to cross the border again. From Puerto Natales we wanted to go to the Torres del Paine National Park and do some walking and camping. The plan was to walk what is known as 'the W', a series of walks that create a W shape. It went pretty much like this:
Day 1.
Bus and Catamaran to the West side of the W. Set up tent. 2p.m. Leave camp and walk for 3 hours to get to Glacier Grey. Very pretty. Not as impressive as the Moreno glacier but still very cool (as Dave would say). Walk 3 hours back. Cook food, (Here we discovered our first mistake, while you can hire tents, mats, sleeping bags and buy food and drink, you CANNOT hire cooking equipment. Bugger. Luckily the first campsite sort of had equipment we could use.) go to bed, get very little sleep because the ground is hard and it's very cold at night.
Point of interest - it was possible to see how super fit others are when we passed them coming back and we still had an hour to go before we got there.
Day 2
Take down tent, pack bags, eat cereal with a fork. Walk for 2 3/4 hours with all of our stuff. Get to the campsite at the bottom of the middle bit of the W. Set up tent. Walk for 3 1/2 hours to a look out point. It's supposed to be a lovely, pretty walk. And it was pretty but we were both tired from the lack of sleep and it seemed really tough. Walk 3 hours back. Sandwiches for tea. Into bed at 9. Slightly more comfortable night as Dave ingeniously padded our mats with our spare clothes.
Point of interest - whilw crossing a little muddy stream via stepping stones, I slipped, jumped to avoid getting covered in mud, and ended up head butting a tree.
Day 3
Cereal eaten with a stolen fork (couldn't find a spoon) for breakfast. Pack tent. Leave camp at 8. Day 3 was always going to be more difficult because we had to walk a long way to the next camp, carrying all of our stuff. So, a mere 9 hours later we arrived at the last camp site on the eastern side of the W. Although this walk was difficult it was prettier than the walk the day before and having to cross many rivers made it interesting. It was actually quite enjoyable until the last two hours when we were just to knackered to care. Arrived at 5 ish, set up the tent, took a long awaited shower (there weren't any at the previous camp site), eventually cooked some food and went to bed.
Point of interest - there were a lot of fairly big rivers to cros this day. Most of them you could eventually find a way across by stepping stones. We got to one pretty big and fast one and couldn't see and bvious way across. An Australian couple had just crossed and the lady indicated that you had to take off your shoes and socks and wade across. The water was bloody freezing. Really, really freezing, like ice water. Dave was not happy.
Day 4
Left camp at 7:45 to walk to the Torres del Paine, big pointy towers after which the park is named. The first hour was ok, the next 40 minutes were basically climbing up a cliff. Tough. The towers did look amazing. We had seen them at different angles from other parts of the park, but here they looked really cool and there was a nice lagoon at the bottom of them. When we were at the top we realised that if we hurried we might actually be able to catch the half two bus instead of the half seven one (we really wanted to do this as the next day we had to be up early again to catch a bus to Ushuaia). So we climbed back down and then walked extrememly quickly the hour back to camp (got it down to 45 mins by occasionally breaking into a downhill jog). Took down the tent and left for the hostel from which the connecting bus picks you up. It was such a relief to get there.
Point of interest - despite my clumsiness it was Dave that fell over on the way down from the towers, he landed on his arse where there is little padding but he was ok.
Overall we walked somewhere between 80 and 85 KM in around 28 hours. The Torres del Paine park is very, very bautiful and we did enjoy it. The mountains are high and you see the occasional mini avalanche at the top. The lakes and lagoons are amazing colours. There are loads of rivers and little streams and waterfalls. The forests provide some welcome shade and cover the lower slopes of the mountains. However, if we could do it again we would leave ourselves more time so that we could walk a bit slower and enjoy the views a bit more. Plus we'd take cooking equipment and inflatable beds.
