After our brief stop in Puerto Natales we crossed the border into Argentina and drove north to El Calafate. El Calafate is the most touristic town we’ve visited so far.  It has good infrastructure and facilities for tourists and many fine places to eat and drink.  However it is a busy place to visit after being in the sleepy towns of Patagonia.  It seems to exist primarily because of the Perito Moreno glacier, a stunning glacier in the southern sector of Los Glaciares National Park.  Perito Moreno glacier is unusual because instead of receding it advances at a rate of 2m per day.  It is 30km long, 5km wide and 60m high.  Massive!  Giant icebergs the size of buildings carve off the face of the glacier and collapse into the channel below.  It sounds like a gun going off and is an amazing thing to watch.  To visit it, you walk along a series of boardwalks across from the glacier which allows you to see it from different angles.  This makes it one of the most accessible attractions to visit in Patagonia, probably why El Calafate is so busy! From the town it is really easy to arrange a tour to see the glacier.  We didn’t do this, instead first visiting the glacier on our way to a campsite on Lake Roca, also in the National Park.  We spent a couple of days camping at the lake, before heading back to El Calafate to meet Erik and Nelleke for dinner.  Erik and Richard went to school together and hadn’t seen each other for at least ten years so a good old fashioned catch up was in order. We had a great night out with them!

 

From El Calafate, we drove back to Puerto Natales to prepare for a few days of hiking in Torres del Paine National Park.  Torres del Paine is Chile’s major tourism attraction, and is considered to be the finest national park in South America.  In southern Patagonia, it is famous for its birdlife, soaring granite pinnacles, amazing glaciers and vividly coloured lakes.

On the day that we planned to start hiking, the temperature plummeted and the rain set in.  We decided to wait out the worst of the weather for a couple of days in Puerto Natales.  When we finally got to the park, the weather had improved but it was still cold, and the weather was changeable.  We had sun, we had light rain, we had a lot of wind, and we also had cloud.  In summary we had the full Torres del Paine experience of four seasons in one day!  The park itself is spectacular. Most people who come to the park either do the ‘W’ hike or the ‘Circuit’ hike.  The ‘W’ takes in the highlights of the park over a few days, while the ‘Circuit’ requires double the time. We planned to see the highlights by basing ourselves at a couple of campsites and doing day hikes.

When we entered the park we came across a beautiful campsite beside Lake Pehoe. We liked the fact that it had lots of space, decent shelters, hot water, fire pits and was close to the catamaran which we needed to take to get to the other side of the park.  It was a great decision, as between the trees and shelter we were protected from the worst of the wind.  It was still very gusty and extremely cold but we got used to it.  I wore many layers of clothing to cope with the cold which I had been nervous about in the days leading up to our visit.  This meant that I was wearing all at once: two pairs of woollen socks, long johns (thermal pants), jeans, merino singlet, merino long sleeve top, polyprop top (thermal top),  my thick fleece, goretex jacket, gloves, woollen hat, neck gaiter.  It was cold, but I was mostly comfortable.  At night when it got too cold we crawled into our tent and into our sleeping bags.

We did a day hike from the base of Las Torres, an up and down day.  Quite hard, with the reward only being at the end of the trail before turning and walking back out.  The Towers of Paine are stunning and it is easy to see why people rave about them.  The trail itself was insanely busy, which we didn’t like.  However we were late starters so on the way back the trail quietened down and we enjoyed the hiking a lot more!

Driving back to our campsite at Lake Pehoe that evening we had the most magnificent views of the mountains and stopped a lot to take in the amazing views.  The next day, the wind picked up.  We caught the catamaran and the journey across the lake was very bumpy, lots of water coming up over the boat.  We were three quarters of the way across the lake when the captain turned the boat around and said they’d try again the next day.  So we went back to the campsite and set up camp again.  Since the weather put our hiking plans on hold we spent the afternoon napping and catching up on reading.  The next day the wind was still blowing fiercely but we successfully caught the catamaran to the other side of the lake, to the base of Paine Grande.  We quickly set up camp in tent city, with Richard doing his magic making it wind and gust proof.  Then we set off on a day hike to see the Grey Glacier, an impressive glacier in the Southern Patagonian Ice Field.  After the up and down hike to Las Torres we found the walk to Grey Glacier quite steady with a few sections where we had to scamper over rocks and boulders.  The only major impediment was the high wind at the start of the trail but this settled down once we were walking in the forest. There have been a number of fires in the park in the last few years due to the unauthorised use of fire in the park. While walking the trails we witnessed the devastation these fires have caused, and it has damaged significant sections of the park.

 

We were quite relieved with only having one night at the base of Paine Grande, especially when we got back and saw many more tents had been set up a foot away from our tent.  A bit too close to feel comfortable!  Since coming back from the park we’ve had a couple of days off as we prepare for the drive up to El Chalten, and some more hiking in the northern sector of Los Glaciares National Park.  We’re staying in a really comfortable hostel which we’ve stayed in before, the Tin House.  It’s a bit like home, small, with only three bedrooms (up to eight people staying at once), and a proper lounge and kitchen.  It’s very easy to get comfortable here!  Richard has been running paperwork errands today, and I am happy to report that we are now fully up to date on all our car paperwork.  Our official ownership papers even arrived in the mail here in Puerto Natales, and that was a surprise! We’re glad we finally saw iconic Torres del Paine, and so comes to the end our time in Chilean Patagonia.

Note – we had so many fantastic photos from our time in Torres del Paine that I’ve uploaded many at the end of this post.  If you click on one photo it will open in a new page and you can click “next” and it will flick through them all.