All ways new.: Torres del Paine National Park

The End of the World

This past week, I had the incredible opportunity to visit Torres del Paine National Park (Paine Towers) in the south of Chile, also known as Patagonia. It's going to take me a while to process my experience and I think this blog will help. I've never seen such concentrated natural beauty. Everywhere I looked, I could've taken a picture. (Because of this "problem," I ended up with over 400 pictures in a 5 day trip!) Words like beautiful, pretty, impressive, breathtaking and gorgeous don't do the park justice. Therefore, I'm going to take you on a virtual trip, starting from the airport in Santiago, in an attempt to share a little slice of the incredible beauty in Patagonia.

First of all, my travel group. The three girls I've mentioned before, Sara, Jen and Amy are all fellow Duoc profs. We had a week free from Duoc duties and decided months ago that Torres was a "must-see." Being the frugal volunteers that we are, we saved our pesos throughout the semester. We bought all our food for the park here in Conce and packed it in our backpacks for the long ride down to Patagonia.

Here's a map to give you an idea of the distances. I live in Concepción, about 7 hours south of Santiago.

Despite living in Chile, Patagonia is still really far away! It took us a good 36 hours to arrive at the park entrance. We left Saturday night for Santiago on an overnight bus, took a plane from Santiago to Punta Arenas, a bus from Punta Arenas to Puerto Natales. There we rented our gear (tents, pots, pans, sleeping bags etc.) Thanks to a very kind student of mine, I had most of the necessary gear! Gracias Andres! We spent the night --cozy down comforters and all-- in Puerto Natales. The next day, we had a hearty breakfast and caught the 7:30am bus with slew of other gringos. Three hours later, we were there! Because we have Chilean ID cards, we got in for only $8usd instead of the steep $30 fee for foreigners. holla!!

We ran into a herd of sheep on the way to the park. Wool is a primary industry in Patagonia.

Our first glimpse of the Torres. We had to get out of the van, cross the bridge on foot, then get back in on the other side. Safety first in Chile too. (sometimes...)

I had to put this in here. We made 4 HUGE bags of GORP. Looking at this now makes me a ill...ugh.

And we're off! First big hike up the "W" loop. The "W" is the most popular hike in the park. You guess it, it's shaped like a "W"! We started on the right side of the "W" and hiked to the top of the 1st finger. I'm guessing my pack weighed between 25-30lbs-- more when I had the tent. The first day was about 14km total. Mostly uphill.

Getting closer the the Torres!

The weather the trip was awesome. (again, we lucked out) Patagonia is known for extreme weather, drastically changing throughout the day. We had clear blue skies the first few days and only a few clouds and drizzle the last day.

My favorite part of the park: filling my water bottle up at ANY stream/river! Glacier water is delicioso :) And free!

After setting up camp, we hiked the last 1.5hrs to the Mirador Las Torres. What a sight. After all the traveling, we were there. We took tons of pictures and later simply sat, quietly contemplating the view. I couldn't believe it. Very surreal.