Patagonia: Torres del Paine
From El Calafate, we took a bus across the border to Chile. The border town in Chile consisted of just a few buildings in the middle of a vast expanse of Patagonian steppe - windy as hell. As I do, I was wondering whether they have wind turbines for electricity in such remote areas. I was told by our Chilean guide that they tried installing some wind turbines, but they all failed due to too strong winds, either through mechanical failure or battery overcharge.
After an expensive lunch at the border, we drove to the Torres del Paine national park, and to the most scenic campsite I have ever stayed at. Highly recommended, Pehoe Camping sits on the shore of Lake Pehoe, with an imposing view of the Horns (seen below, these are the granite peaks in the park).
We camped at Torres del Paine for three nights and did a number of hikes ranging from an hour to 9 hours. I learned two important things about Patagonia during these hikes:
1) Patagonian weather is absolutely unpredictable and can change from still and sunny to windy sideways sleeting in minutes. You may need to change from a t-shirt to four layers of clothing in the span of five minutes. So, need to carry lots of layers. We’ve had hail and sand storms too. And a few times, the wind gusts were so strong that we all had to kneel for a minute so that we weren’t blown off the trail.
2) For the hike to the base of the three main “towers” in the national park, our Chilean guide said the hike consisted of 2 hours of uphill, 2 hours of flat, and 1 hour of steep uphill (and then back the same way of course). The first section was alright, as described. In the second section, when you find yourself climbing steep uphills for 5 minutes followed by steep downhills for 5 minutes for seemingly forever, and ask the guide about his earlier use of the adjective “flat,” he smiles and says “well, yes, this is Patagonian flat.” So apparently Patagonian flat is a thing. No net gain in elevation you see. Oh, and the last section was indeed a steep uphill, mostly bouldering.
All told though, the park and the hikes were stunningly beautiful and, at times, other worldly. Most of the lakes are fed by glacier melt and have an exceptional minty green color to them. There’s an eight day long loop hike in the park, and I have every intention of coming back to do it. Hopefully with Corey in tow.
After Torres, we spent one night in Puerto Natales, with not too much to offer besides being a tourist base of operations for surrounding trekking. And then, we took a 13-hour bus ride (with a ferry crossing across the Magellan channel!) to Ushuaia, Argentina. Ushuaia is the southernmost city in the world or, as is plastered on every tourist t-shirt here, “fin del mundo.” I’ll report more from the end of the world in a couple of days.
