After Calafate we headed back into Chile and into Torres Del Paine, the same boring drive in reverse. Torres del Paine is a huge park, and its mostly known for its multi day trekking routes, but with my injury and Charissa’s love of flat land, we decided to just tour it by car. The mountains themselves rise up dramatically from lowland hills, huge chunks of gray or black granite jagged peaks tipped with snow amnd irredescent blue glacial lakes at their feet. The view is truly awe inspiring. The roads offer many views as they skirt the lakes and mountains, and all around are small herds of guanacos.
We also hoped to see the elusive Puma, as Torres del Paine has the highest density of them in Patagonia, but we weren’t lucky enough for that. While we did lots of hikes, 2 stick out. The first was out to the glacier viewpoint of Lago Grey. The first part was through the woods and then crossed a sand spit out to a little island. Just as we stepped out onto the sand spit the wind picked up, it was quite strong hitting 60-80kph, which had us leaning quite strongly being peppered by sand and spray, wondering if we were still safe to continue. In the end it was safe and we really enjoyed the experience.
The other hike only I did, it was the 5.2 mile trek up to mirador Torres del Paine. The Torres refers to 3 grey granite towers in almost a W configuration jutting up near the top of the mountains. The hike was busy and steep, I wasn’t sure if my leg had healed up enough at this point, but it performed well going up. Coming down was tough, but I made it, and was only slightly more sore the next 2 days. The view at the top was breathtaking, the weather alternated between calm blue sky and good views to windy rain and a blocked view. I spent an hour up there eating lunch and starring at the peaks. It was hard to tear myself away, but Charissa was waiting for me at the bottom.
We stayed in a nice hotel just outside the park, about an hour north of Puerto Natales. The hotel was more expensive and a bit closer to the park. While the hotel was nice, and the shorter drive seemed like a good option, in practice it didn’t work out so well. The only gas was back in Puerto Natales and their were no restaurants in the area. The hotel had a restaurant, which was twice the price of anywhere else and the food was mediocre at best, yet we ended up eating there twice because there were no other options. The other night we drove back to Puerto Natales to both fill up on gas and get a reasonably priced meal. So in hindsight I would either pony up for the even more expensive options directly in the park, or use Puerto Natales as our base and do day trips via different routes into the park.
