Day 24
We caught an early 7am bus from El Calafate to Puerto Natales. This bus ride took around 6 hours and included a border crossing back into Chile! We got through in no trouble.
We met an Aussie couple on the bus who have been in the UK on a 2 year working visa and are on their way back to Australia, doing a little South American trip. So practically the opposite to us!
We checked into the hostel and organised a few things for the W-trek in Torres Del Paine National Park which we depart for tomorrow such as; food, sleeping bag (for Justin), bus out there. Map is below of the W-Trek in red. We are walking it from West to East.
We went for dinner at another pub for lots of carb loading (like we haven’t been doing enough already). We then packed all our gear for the hike beginning tomorrow. Woohoooo.
Day 25
5:50am wake up to head to Torres Del Paine national park! Just as we were about to leave the hostel to the bus Ellen realised she couldn’t find her wallet anywhere. We frantically looked all over the place and turned both our bags upside down. We think she has left it at the pub the night before. Oh well – Ellen emptied her bank account so no one can use her card and we took off almost at a run to make the bus in time! We made it of course.
The bus takes around an hour to get from Puerto Natalas to the National Park. Once we arrived and after a bit of confusion with mostly the English speaking tourists, we successfully got through the park rangers confirming we have paid the entry fee already. We then caught the catamaran on a small lake to our first campsite called Camp Grande. The views from the catamaran were spectacular, with massive snow packed mountain peaks sitting over the very blue lake we were zinging across on the boat.
We arrived at around 1pm, checked in and set up our tent. This campsite has an indoor kitchen, flushing toilets, showers, minimarket & a restaurant. This isn’t camping! There are also double bedrooms that are available for a small fortune a night. Not for us!
We hiked the first portion of the W-trek, a 7km out and back portion to ‘Glacier Grey’. It was so windy, but otherwise the weather was nice for Patagonia. The hike had some sick rock formations and cool views of the glacier.
For dinner we had dinner of one of our freeze dried meals which we smuggled into the country – Chicken Tika Masala. You beauty!
Day 26
It rained alllllll night last night. But the weather was clear in the morning, we had awesome views of the mountains which the luxury campsite sits beneath. It got to -4 degrees last night, lucky I now have my own sleeping bag!
We had a quick breaky and packed up camp to walk the 7.5km to our next campsite called ‘Camp Italiano’. Again, just as we were about to leave, Ellen realised she left her poles in the kitchen last night. She went back to check and also asked the staff if they had seen them when they locked up last night. But they hadn’t 😦 Ellen is on a bit of a roll, 2 lost things in as many days. I am hanging on real tight to the passports & my wallet. Ellen isn’t even allowed to look at them.
We headed off to camp Italiano, having a coffee with a view along the way.
knocked off the walk to camp Italiano in no time and set up camp. This campsite is way less luxury. It is run by the national park service, and is free. So all there is available is drop toilets and a clear creek nearby for drinking water. That’s all we need really!
After we set up camp we set off on a hike up to Britanico lookout – which is a 6km out and back hike with around 700m of vertical gain. The terrain was very tough and sections of the trail were completely under water due to flooding of creeks. This trail had been closed due to heavy rains recently and had only just opened again a few days ago. We can see why!
The views were worth the hike. Half way up we got some cool views of some mountains with a few glaciers sitting at the top of them – so, so high up! Every now and then we would hear a big bang, like the sound of thunder. It was a big of glacier breaking and falling down the mountain.
We kept heading up, once we reached a certain height it started snowing on us! It was a bit of a white out at the top but we could still make out some of the mountains.
The ones in the below photo are called the horns, leaf & sword (from right to left). We think they more look like an oven mitt, salmon, oven mitt. We headed back down fairly quickly once we got to the top – it was very cold!
Early bed and green thai curry for dinner. I am starting to get a bit sick I think. Probably too many burgers. No regrets at all though.
Day 27
Very cruisy day today – only a 5km walk to our next campsite called ‘Camp Cuernos’. We spent the majority of the morning siting beside the river at Italiano reading and looking at the mountains.
We arrived at around 1pm, checked in, set up our tent and had lunch. Our Nutella has frozen solid! It still tastes delicious – like a fudge! We could still hear the rumbling of the glacier falling back at the hike we did yesterday. We also had some good views from our campsite over the lake.
Very relaxed day of sleeping and reading!
Day 28
A bloody mouse ate a hole into one of our bowls during the night! Unvelievable. It was also the good bowl (the other bowl already leaked). So now we have 2 holy bowls, fantastic! Out of the last 4 nights the following has occurred – Ellen has lost her wallet, Ellen has lost her poles, a mouse ate our bowl. What will happen next!? I am excited to see what else Torres Del Paine can throw at us.
We packed up and headed off to our last campsite which we would spend 2 nights at called ‘Camp Central’. It was a very rainy day, but the visibility was still good and the views were still spectacular. We arrived after around a 4 hour slog.
We set up camp, had some delicious frozen Nutella sandwiches and read some more for the afternoon. I am glad we aren’t hiking up to the Torres peaks today – the clouds are covering the top of them! We will try to do that hike tomorrow, pending weather! We have left ourselves 2 days here to do the hike so hopefully we get some banging weather.
Day 29
I woke up to blue sky’s yippee! I went and woke Elle up, I have never seen her wake up and move that fast. We wanted to get to the top before any clouds came and ruined our views of the peaks!
We left at 7:40ish – a lot of people up already and have the same idea as us. We were on a mission though and wanted to make it a bit of a workout to the top. Ellen set an absolute cracking pace up all the hills – overtaking or ‘chicking’ a lot of guys. It is around 1100m of elevation gain to the top. We arrived to the top in 2 hrs and 40 mins – the time they tell you to allow for is 4 hrs 30 mins. We were pooped, but we smashed it!
The views were amazing – the sky was like straight from the promo photos for Torres Del Paine national park. Blue beautiful sky’s and massive jagged peaks in the distance.
We hung around up there for a couple of hours before the day hikers started to arrive and it started getting busy. So we ticked along all the way back down to camp. Arriving at around 3pm.
In the afternoon we had some soup in the sun and just hung out. We treated ourselves to some celebratory beers and some overpriced but delicious choccy as well. The W-Trek is officially done and dusted – approximately 76km & 3300m of ascent. Ellen ‘chicked’ like a 100 guys as well, even without her poles for most of it!
Tomorrow we aren’t going to hike to the peaks again. We can’t have any better weather than today!
Day 30
Very, very relaxed day. Blue sky’s, we were in t-shirts, shorts and thongs. Who would have thought we would be doing this when we are so close to Antartica and we were suffering from sub 0 degrees last night again!
We hung around at camp until around 1pm and then went and caught the bus back into Puerto Natales. When we arrived we checked into the hostel, Ellen was eager to find out if they have her wallet. And you would not read about it…. they had her wallet!! Ellen was so excited, I thought she was going to kiss the guy (he did have a nice beard). So it turns out, Ellen has only lost the poles in the end 😦
For dinner we went to a Chilean restaurant. The menu was all in Spanish as usual, but this time we were a bit tired and couldn’t really be bothered working out exactly what we were ordering. We ended up ordering something and we were gobsmacked. Out came this massive meal which was a whole plate of chips, on top was 5 different kinds of meat (chicken, beef, pork, sausage, chorizo), on top of that was cheese and on top of that was a weak excuse for salad consisting of avocado, egg, tomato. We also ordered a side salad to make ourselves feel healthy! It was delicious – we finally got a real Chilean feed I think. My heart hates me now though.
Day 31
Rest day!
I went for a run in the morning, my heart now hurts, probably because of the blocked arteries from last nights meal. On the run I went past this strange looking statue, it is called Mylodon – it is a type of dinosaur related to a Sloth & Armadillo! It was 2.5m tall and weighed around 1 tonne. Bones were found in a cave nearby Puerto Natales – I am glad we didn’t run into one of those things during our hike!
We read and watched some Netflix for the day. Tomorrow we head off to the capital of Argentina, Buenos Aires.
Torres Del Paine is amazing and definitely worth a visit if you are into your hiking & trekking. Elle & I both think the Fitz Roy hike in El Chalten has it beaten though!
More photos located here.
Justin & Ellen's travels 