Puerto Natales / Torres del Paine, Chile
Wake up call was at 5:30am today because we had to get walk to the bus station, buy our tickets to El Calafate that we couldn't buy yesterday, and then get on our 7:30am bus. We accomplished all that with no hiccups...success!
The trek we are doing is called the W-Circuit...google it! Anyway, we decided to book through a company because making reservations yourself is extremely complicated and involves going through 3-4 different companies. We also decided to stay in the refugios/shelters instead of camp because after calculating all the camping gear rentals, it wasn't that much cheaper than the shelters and we didn't have to carry all the gear!
We start our trek on the far right side of the W, at the Torres. Once we got to the park we had to pay our entrance fee, watch a safety video, and catch another bus that took us to the Torres Central region. The bus drops you off at these two super swanky Patagonia brand stores...talk about marketing. We walked through the stores to get on the main path to get to our refugio. We saw a giant hotel like building and thought that it couldn't possibly be our refugio so we continued past it to a smaller building, which wasn't our refugio either. I eventually asked someone cleaning the bathrooms where it was, and e pointed to the big hotel building we had just walked right past. We checked in, dropped out bags, loaded our day packs with our gear and headed towards the trail, as the plan for the day was to hike up to Las Torres.
We ended up leaving around 11, so we still had plenty of time to do, what was on the map as, an 8 hour hike. They said this day would be the hardest and I think they were right. This hike was uphill, tough, and we were really happy we didn't have to do it with our full backpacks and camping gear! We made it to the top and the views were breathtaking. The whole way up there were unique bridge crossing, streams, rivers, and rock scrambles we had to get through to make it. It was cloudy that day but luckily it didn’t affect our views of Las Torres. Our way down was equally as beautiful but our legs were starting to get tired. With one hour left, I slipped and fell on some rocks and landed on my knee and left hand. No major injuries just some cuts and bruises from the fall.
We got back to the refugio and were ready to cook dinner. We had asked at all of the kiosk stores for matches or a lighter because we couldn't remember if our rental camping stove had an igniter or not. Unfortunately all the stores were sold out, so that left us hoping it had a starter or trying to find other campers or smokers who would be able to help us light our stove. Luckily our stove had a starter, so we cooked our mac and cheese and mixed veggies for dinner. Our room was nice and the beds were comfy so we crashed early because we had another long day ahead of us and the next day was going to be with our full backpacks.
*****
Lodging: Torres Central Shelter
The trek we are doing is called the W-Circuit...google it! Anyway, we decided to book through a company because making reservations yourself is extremely complicated and involves going through 3-4 different companies. We also decided to stay in the refugios/shelters instead of camp because after calculating all the camping gear rentals, it wasn't that much cheaper than the shelters and we didn't have to carry all the gear!
We start our trek on the far right side of the W, at the Torres. Once we got to the park we had to pay our entrance fee, watch a safety video, and catch another bus that took us to the Torres Central region. The bus drops you off at these two super swanky Patagonia brand stores...talk about marketing. We walked through the stores to get on the main path to get to our refugio. We saw a giant hotel like building and thought that it couldn't possibly be our refugio so we continued past it to a smaller building, which wasn't our refugio either. I eventually asked someone cleaning the bathrooms where it was, and e pointed to the big hotel building we had just walked right past. We checked in, dropped out bags, loaded our day packs with our gear and headed towards the trail, as the plan for the day was to hike up to Las Torres.
We ended up leaving around 11, so we still had plenty of time to do, what was on the map as, an 8 hour hike. They said this day would be the hardest and I think they were right. This hike was uphill, tough, and we were really happy we didn't have to do it with our full backpacks and camping gear! We made it to the top and the views were breathtaking. The whole way up there were unique bridge crossing, streams, rivers, and rock scrambles we had to get through to make it. It was cloudy that day but luckily it didn’t affect our views of Las Torres. Our way down was equally as beautiful but our legs were starting to get tired. With one hour left, I slipped and fell on some rocks and landed on my knee and left hand. No major injuries just some cuts and bruises from the fall.
We got back to the refugio and were ready to cook dinner. We had asked at all of the kiosk stores for matches or a lighter because we couldn't remember if our rental camping stove had an igniter or not. Unfortunately all the stores were sold out, so that left us hoping it had a starter or trying to find other campers or smokers who would be able to help us light our stove. Luckily our stove had a starter, so we cooked our mac and cheese and mixed veggies for dinner. Our room was nice and the beds were comfy so we crashed early because we had another long day ahead of us and the next day was going to be with our full backpacks.
*****
Lodging: Torres Central Shelter
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