I was travelling at this time with 2 guys I had met in Ushuaia. An Italian, Luca and Swiss, Olivier. We arrived late at night in Puerto Natales, Chile, the main gateway town for beginning Torres del Paine trips. This national park, unlike the Tierra del Fuego park is enormous and would take weeks to experience all of it. It is famed world-wide for its splendid trekking and scenery. The park is full of intriguing rock formations, snow-capped mountains, blue lakes, and enormous glaciers! The two most common treks are the O and the W, both of which suprisingly remained open after the immense fire that around 50 percent of the parks area. While these trails were tecnically considered open, parts of them were not in the good shape, being surrounded by dead, burnt trees and landscape with the entire ground covered in ash. Many of the free campsites were closed... how convenient.
Upon being given this information the morning after we arrived we made a quick descision to just do the V trek. a short 3 day trek where we would not encounter any ash and not ever se evidence that the park experienced any fire what-so-ever. The standard W takes about 5 days and the O can take around 8 to 10 days. These two treks do not include any of the trails on the southern half or third of the park (where the main fires took place) I tell you this to attempt to give you an idea of the size and grandeur of this park.
Luca, Oli and I set out that same afternoon after buying all the food necissary for 3 full days and renting a stove. The food was extremely basic, consisting of rice for 3 dinners, ham & cheese sandwiches for 3 lunches and fruit/cereal bars for 3 breakfasts. The main exciting descisions we jokes about making each day was ¨so boys what sauce do want to eat with the rice tonight¨. After 3 days of this we were all quite done with eating rice, as I think all of you could imagine!
We took the 2 hour bus ride out into wild rugged landscape to reach the entrance to the park, where we got another shuttle to a point where we began to walk. We didn´t start walking until around 6 PM and the expecting time was about 4 hours until the campsite where we would be settling in for the night. Sun goes down at around 10:30 PM here so we figured we could make it. The walk was a struggle. The wind was constantly blowing in our faces at torrential speeds, making the walking much harder. I was already much more tired than both Oli and Luca from having spent the entire week previous this walking as well. It was beginning to take its toll on me. The wind at times was so strong it would blow you in the complete opposite direction, off the path, or change the course of our legs during mid-stride making us stumble all over the place. The wind would come from all dirrections making you never really know where to put your weight. It was like recieving consecutive left and right blows from a boxer that kept changing the combination. It sent you swirling all over the path and leaving you constantly paranoid about what was coming and when. This left me walking more like a waddle, with legs spread wide, knees bent and ready for the next attack. It may sound quite amusing but I assure, at the time, it was not in the slightest.
We ended up completing the walk in 3 hours getting us in at 9 PM. We paid for the campsite, which was a whopping 12 dollars a night, absurd for a campsite! We quickly realized after walking around that this was no campsite at all. There were not designated camping spots. It was basically just find a nice piece of ground and put up your tent. By the time we arrived, there we not many nice peices of ground, there were not many to begin with! I was tired and the wind had not let up what so ever. I was getting quite annoyed with this park already its management. ¨This is a national park!?¨ I thought, ¨it does not even have a suitable campsite, even when you pay for it¨. I was disappointed. We found some nice ground next to the rich cabin´s that some fools pay gold to stay in. The ground was good but there was no protection from the wind, which decided to blow all night long! I didn´t sleep much that night because of constant worry that a part of my cheap tent would simply break and fly away! This was insane I thought, my tent is not going to survive the Torres del Paine. We had 2 more nights like this and my tent would not survive another. It had already broken at several places where the fly is pegged down to the ground. I had to improvise in the middle of the night and use some of my own elastic chord which I happened to have and make some extra one, to stop the flapping of the half-loose fly. I went to bed with near-constant sounds of wind blowing the roof of my tent down in on me. The winds could be heard building up over the lake slightly below. As the rose off the lake and got closer and louder one could almost predict the exact moment it was going to attack and the tent practically immediately implode around you for anwhere between 2 - 10 seconds straight! The next morning I was unhappy and knew we needed to find another, better place for our tents. Luca and Oli fared a bit better than me, they had a small tent that could be secured much more. We found a place but during the moving process another part of my tent broke, one of the rods that holds up the roof cracked losing all of its tension and strength. I felt defeated. I ended up finding a rocky spot in trees not far off, just enough room for my tent, I quickly took the space and it proved to a much better area.
We spent that day doing one of the sections of the V walking a number of hours into a valley where we would go by a glacier and a few good lookouts. Leaving in the morning the weather was even worse than the day before. The wind was insanely strong, just when I thought it could not get any stronger. We were now down, level with the lake and the wind on the lake was blowing showers of water up onto the shore several feet high. Luca and I both got hit by these showers and were immediately soaked. From where we were the weather in the distant valley looked even worse. Luca was beaten and said the it was pointless. I urged them on. I had been dealing with the wind al morning. I was not gonna let it ruin my entire day and part of my experience here. We went on and got up and away from the lake. It got much better and the weather even cleared up in the valley. By the time we were at the valley it was quite clear and the massive white and blue glacier and snow streaks could be seen at a distance, that inspired all of us to push on. The weather was more or less poor all day, although it cleared up a lot in some places and provided some great views. By the time we got back to camp we were all dead but satisfied... I think. On the walk throuh the valley I ran into Mark completely randomly. I knew he was in the park but I didnt know where. We were both happy to see each other. When we got back to camp we family relaxed around our miniature stove, ate some rice and Oli taught me some guitar tricks. I said farewell to Mark for the last time. He was going home in a few days.
The next day we walked across to the other campsite in stinking hot sunlight, there was practically no wind and no clouds. The weather kept pulling tricks on us. The other campsite was free one, it ended up being muuuch better than the priced one believe it or not. I ran into all sorts of canadians strangely. We went to bed early so that we could wake up for sunrise and climb to the look-out of the Torres del Paine. the main attraction, the big event. The rock formations of towers of granite, 4 of them in a row, that soar into the sky a thousand meters up. Beautiful on a perfect day. We woke at 5 suprisingly and started walk shortly after. Even from below in the half-light, the fog could be seen above. We climbed up for 45 minutes. Lines of head lamps could be seen all the way up, of dozens of people all waking early to wind their way up the precarious, rocky mountain side. When we arrived at the top it was slightly raining, windy and cold. The headlamps were not needed anymore. There were about 30 people up at the top, all waiting like buzzing flys for something they would not get. As soon as I got up there I knew. The towers could hardly be seen through the fog. They say on a clear morning, the sun comes over te rise and makes the entire rock faces and towers shine a bright orange. How pretty it would be, how perfect, too bad it was foggy. There was a brief period of orange then the sun went behind endles expanse of cloud that dominated the entire sky (at that point during the day). Slowly people filed back down the path they had come feeling cheated.
We got back to camp, took everything down, walked the 3 hours that it took us to get down the entire mountain and begin the wait for the bus back to Puerto Natales. When we got the bottom and looked back up from where we had come from it was beautiful. Warm weather, no wind, blue skys, white-capped mountains. If only we had been up there then. Torres del Paine was over and I was glad. I was exhausted and done with walking. I abandoned the idea of going to El Chalten after El Calafate and doing more walking, I was not interested. I felt like the world was messing around with me with all this unlucky weather throughout my entire southern experience. I look forward to coming back to Torres del Paine and seeing more of it, maybe with some better luck. The next plan was to go to El Calafate with Oli and Luca as well and see some serious glaciers, some of the best in the world as is said. Although my luck with weather did not look to pick up any time soon.
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