Torres Del Paine 5

Saturday 29th

Day 5. Day 5 starts before dawn.

To people that know me, that is not normally possible, and there is no such thing as "before dawn". Days end and magically start again the following day without this mythical "dawn" business.

But this place has a strange effect and Jeff and I duly rose and hiked an hour up a steep boulder field by torchlight. Well we started by torchlight, until we realised that we could see enough by the half moon glowing in a perfectly clear sky. Hiking by moonlight is cool!

Just enough time at the top to break out the stove for Jeff to brew the Mate (pronounced mat-ay) - a foul tasting, bitter, tea like herb drunk by the gallon in South America, then test the valley sides for echoes (very satisfying), before the sun rose.

Clear days are about 20 per year here, and we got the number one! Sunlight strikes the tops of the towers and it´s like a neon show after that with the tower tips blushing crimson, which slowly creeps down the rock like blood as the sun rises higher. Awesome is a good word here.





For about an hour the colour slowly heats up through burnt orange to amber, all set off by the bluest sky I´ve seen since Buenos Aires. The sun strikes the tiny glacier which starts to grumble and rumble and melt down a crack in the rock. It was just a truly magical natural son et lumiere show. To cap it there´s a small lake and as the wind was curiously absent, the towers are doubled in reflection. Perfect.







And the rock wall looks just like the gates to the Mines of Moria. I spoke "friend", but the damn things were broken by the creature in the lake and remained obstinately shut. I could not enter.



After 2 1/2 hours I managed to tear myself away, hike down and break camp.

And the mice had got me. Hung all my foodstuff up a tree - but they can obviously levitate.
And open zips.
I swear the top pocket of my pack was closed, but my chocolate inside was shredded.

Hiking back down the steeps back towards the lake I wimped out of doing the full "circuit" as this is the end of the shorter "W" hike. Sore leg for 5 days - iced in rivers every night - and the prospect of 5 more days, I justified it to myself that I would not top dawn at the towers. And wimped out.

Someone was watching, so I missed the bus - I literally saw it go. Jeff left the towers before me as he was finishing anyway and I saw him in the window looking like a man who arrived slightly before me. I was 1 minute late and for once a bus in Chile left on time. So I waited 5 hours and got back just in time to claim an overspill bed in "The Cave" at the "Erratic Rock" hostel - the best hostel in Puerto Natales. Bill the owner made me say that, but it´s true.

Torres Del Paine 4

Friday 28th
Day 4. Nice easy day today, just 10kms up to camp by Los Torres (the towers) for which the park is named. Slight snag is the incline up the valley, and my magic gravity creating lead pack.

But another just great hiking day up a steep sided valley above a river. Yeah tough climb, but great views and then an up-down hike through some beech woods to camp just below the towers in the most idilic setting for a camp site.

Torres Del Paine 3

Thursday 27th
Marcin left early today - in a way I´m glad - he was a machine and was trying to kill me.

My excuse is that I´m nursing an ankle that I broke last year that flared up on the bike on the way to Puerto Natales. I just thought cycling and hiking are different so it wouldn´t affect me, but no, it´s large, red, painful and too slow to keep up with him. Not sure the enormous pack helped either, which was made entirely from lead with straps fashioned from barbed wire, where his was made from gossamer and velvet.

Or perhaps he´s really a machine....


Day 3 is a really nice hike along Lago Nordenskjold which is entirely lit from below by giant light bulbs.
Not really, but it is a really vivid creamy green from all the glacier melt water. The wind was up and sheets of lake wash over you as you lean in to it and make slow headway, watching ever changing rainbows. The route takes you from Valle Frances round to the Valle Ascencio and gives relly great views as you pass more closely to the horns. I really enjoyed this day, it´s just a beautiful hike.





Camp was at the bottom of Valle Ascensio and is set at the wrong end of a pair of binoculars, meaning you can see it in the distance for about an hour before you get there, but it never gets closer. Until you get there. Strange.

Torres Del Paine 2

Wednesday 26th
Day 2 began with mouse tales (tails?) over breakfast. Who´d lost what food, whether to eat or bin it, how many got into the tent, tactics for the next night - a regular feature of camp life for the next few days.

After hiking to the next site, we dropped packs and set off up the "Valle Frances" a glaciated valley between the main Paine Grande massif and Los Cuernos (the horns). About a six hour round trip takes you up the most beautiful valley overlooking the Glacier Frances which creeks and groans below you, to the viewpoint at the top. Awesome is an over used word, so I´m going to go with "humungous" - the ampitheatre of rocks surrounding you and the ever present horns in their two-tone splendour.




The view out over Lago Nordenskjold on the way down is nice too....

Torres Del Paine

Tuesday 25th
Hired the back pack, bought the copious quantities of pasta, rice, oatmeal and dried fruits to take on a nine night "circuit" of the Torres Del Paine massif with roughly 65lbs of camp gear, fuel and the most boring food known to man. Rudely optimistic as I´ve never hiked with more than a day sack, I set out with a Canadian hiking machine (Marcin) and an over enthusiastic American (Jeff) who shot off like a man on a mission.
(The team members - Marcin, Jeff)

Torres del Paine is a seperate range to the Andes and rises 3000m over otherwise flat land, with light coloured granite spires pushing up to form the characteristic horns and towers, the horns being capped rather incongruously with black sedimentary rock.

Starting at the park administration, the first days hike gives an overview of the whole range that you don´t get from closer up and is well worth the extra time. The view point over the lake is amazing.

First night camp was 20kms away in an organised site by a lake with an over large mouse population lying in wait to chew through anything not hung in trees, including backpacks and tents.

Getting to Puerto Natales

Thursday, Friday, Saturday
Punta Arenas to Puerto Natales is 250km of windswept pampas and the scenery is pretty dull until you get within 40kms of Puerto Natales and start to see snow capped Andean peaks again - first viewing since a day out of Ushuaia.

A few pictures
Punta Arenas has a pretty amazing plaza (Muñoz Gamero) with a huge statue of Magellan - kiss the foot of the Ona statue for luck...


And another amazing cemetary (Cenetario Municipal) with family mausoleums. I´m sure I´m spending too much time with the dead....


Flamingoes!! Honest - check out the pink blur in the middle.


This guy wanted to share my tent at the roadside - I know I smell pretty bad, but to be mistaken for a fellow skunk.....


The road may be dull....


But the sunsets are really nice....


And so are the moon rises....


You get to meet the locals....


A llama parked outside of the first cafe/shop/business I saw in 160kms at Morro Chico. And they have a rock too...


Individual accomodation for the night....

Seriously this bus shelter/hotel room provided the luxury of not having to pitch the tent in 100kmh winds. Made to measure too - my head touching one side, my feet the other. But just to be out of the wind felt so good.

Speaking of wind see if you can guess which way it blows....


Saturday was the hardest day so far - 86kms to get to Puerto Natales in the most brutal winds yet. Some real strong gusts and vicious cross winds which have you see-sawing from side to side, on and off the road. Legs of jelly and a rest day whilst I plan some hiking in Torres Del Paine National Park will be the order of the day for Sunday