Patagonia Part 3: Torres Del Paine and 'el W' trek

Torres del Paine and the W trek (21 April 2016 - 25 April 2016)

Arriving at Torres del Paine National Park, we were struck by the vastness of the surrounding mountains as we got off the bus, and by the cold, hace mucho frio! We had to go through the park administration office to sign some forms - without paying the 18000 (R400) pesos Park entrance fee, which we thought was strange but we checked with the others on the bus and they also didn't have to pay, muy suerte!

The bus dropped us off at a massive lake where we had to wait a couple of hours for the catamaran that would take us to our starting point. It was a nice sunny day, so Kristi and I dropped our backpacks at a bench to have lunch. We got advised to buy those plain tortilla wraps for our trek as they pack easily, so Kristi made us some ham, cheese and mayo wraps, which went down really well! At 12:30 we boarded the catamaran along with the rest of the hikers and set off for a nippy ride across the lake to Refugio Paine Grande which was our starting point for the W trek...

FYI refugios are lodging sites, operated by private companies, in the park where you can either stay inside in cozy dorm rooms or camp outside in the artic. You have to pay to stay here, lodging or camping...+/- 6000 pesos (R120) to camp vs R800 for a bed inside...These sites include mess halls, bathrooms with warm showers, indoor kitchens, chill areas and cafeterias. The thing is that to eat at the restaurant and to stay in the dorms is really pricey, but campers have access to the mess halls, warm showers, have their own kitchen, can chill inside by the fire and even get some agua caliente if you want go make tea or coffee. So the Refugio sites are still very luxurious even if you're camping, because you get none of the above amenities at the free park camp sites!

Our first day's hike was from refugio Paine Grande to Refugio Grey...it's about a 3 hour hike, so about 12 km and not too steep which was great because our bags were so full they looked like they were about to explode...Novices! The highlight of our first day's hike was definitely the scenery but especially seeing glacier Grey for the first time...It's ginormous! And it was the first glacier we've ever seen so it was quite something for the two traveling South Africans!

Don't know what's bigger the glacier or the backpack!

We arrived at Refugio Grey late afternoon, with tired legs and sore hips but very excited to set up our first camp! We signed in and immediately set out to pick a spot for our tent - as we were sure that finding a good spot was pertinent to us surviving our first night! #Artic winds! After much to'ing and fro'ing (vergeet die berg view my lief dai wind gaan ons tentjie weg waai!) we decided on a spot beneath the trees...

We asked the guy who we rented the tent from to show us how to assemble it which was good intuition on my wife's part because the thing is not shaped like a conventional dome-like tent, it's one of those downward sloping ones (to protect against the wind I presume), and thus more tricky to set up...but we eventually got it up, changed out of our hiking gear and into our dry clothes (you only have two sets of clothes for the trek)...

Welcome to our humble abode!

We were greeted by a very friendly New Zealander, Michael, and he said we should come chill by the fire inside the Refugio, which we did, and enjoyed it muchos because it was already freezing outside! After chilling up by the fire, we went to the campers kitchen to prepare dinner, which is also quite something to experience...

Best way to describe it is that scene from Titanic where Jack & Rose sneak away from the posh dining hall to the "commoners quarters", where it's jam packed and very festive, with commotion everywhere and music playing - that's exactly what the campers kitchens are like at the refugio stations! 

Pass the salt por favor!

It's awesome, you find a spot, get your gas stove going, grap your pot and get ready for the carb fest because when you're hiking in southern Patagonia, carbs are your amigos! We fried up some salami, cooked half a packet of pasta, added a sachet of creamy tomato soup powder and topped it off with some parmesan for a muy delicioso dinner!

After dinner we went back to the chill area to drink a cup of coffee with a very friendly group of Romanians whom we sat next to at dinner...Aura, Doro and Dorin! We had a very lekker chat with them, all three of them are very well traveled and Doro and Dorin are professional landscape photographers so they've been to some awesome places (Iceland is a must see apparently, wouldn't have guessed, kind of thought the name said it all!). They also came from the place we are going to next, El Chalten, Argentina, and said it was very cool so that was good to hear! After a couple of African camping stories we decided to call it a night and headed back to our tents...

Now remember that I mentioned our tent is oddly shaped, downward sloping...

"Itty-bitty living space"

Well out of experience we both agreed that one does not sleep with your head near the opening, 'n hyena kan jou mos by die kop beet kry, and thus we could only assume that you have to sleep with your head at the shallow end of the tent which must be to keep you warm or something...most of your body heat is (mos) lost through the cranium, the doc concurred, so it kind of made sense, didn't look right but made sense...ja we were wrong...we spent the night sleeping like that which was also a near perfect reenactment of my nightmare of being buried alive in a coffin! The tent canvas was a centimeter from my nose the whole night, so add some condensation en jy't 'n lekker nat snoet innie oggend! I asked a guy the next morning who had the same tent as us how he slept, literally, and he couldn't stop laughing when he heard we slept wrong way around, I added that it did feel like an awful lot of room for my feet! Anyway, we survived and that story became a trek classic!

Next morning we packed up our oddly shaped tent, made a quick breakfast and some coffee, packed our backpacks and set them aside near the Refugio...there is a view point (Mirador) looking out at glacier grey just a short distance from camp so we set out to go check it out before heading off for the next leg of our trek...

Day 2's hike was from Grey back down to Paine Grande (first arm of the 'W') and then from there it was another 2 hours (7,6km) to our next camp site, Italiano (so +/- 20km in total)...It was a beautifully sunny day for being out hiking and I can tell you with that kind of scenery it felt like we were walking in a post card all day! 

For most of the hike back to Paine Grande we walked with the kiwi couple, Michael and Shahn, turns out they've been traveling for 3 months already, and have done a very similar trip to what we're planning to do except they started up north and worked their way down. So they had a tonne of useful tips and stories to share, plus they both quit their jobs to go traveling for 6 months before returning to Michael's family dairy farm in new Zealand - haha, snap! Great couple and also some of the most generous and friendly people you could hope to meet...

Italiano is a free camp site  (so no refugio amenities) situated in a dense forest next to a big river...when looking for a spot to put our tent I immediately observed that the ground looked very cold and damp...so I bear grills'ed it and made a ground cover for our tent with dried leaves and branches...which proved very helpful later that night! We did have a small mishap at dinner...but Kristi will explain what happened...:)
....

Okay so what happened...while we were shopping for our trek food in Puerto Natales we had bought the dried soup sachets to add to our pasta for dinners. They were cheap and light to pack - bonus! While walking the isle of the local store, we came across this "name-less" packet. All it said was 'anti-pasta' and looked exactly like ready made tomato pasta sauce. We decided to buy it even though it is a bit heavier and pricier and eat it on a night when we needed some extra fuel...like after hiking 20km's across mountains in Southern Patagonia...

So there we were in the freezing cold Italiano camp, after a long day's hike- and we decided tonight is the night to spoil ourselves. So we scrambled around in the dark, found a log, cooked our pasta and added our 'tomato ' mix. 

As with most things in life, when you are doing something as a novice your learning curve is STEEP! Lesson learnt; ALWAYS first taste a mix before you add it all to your food. And always bring along extra food. We had worked it out to the last bar on the last morning, with none to spare! 

Our innocent tomato mix turned out to be the most potent chili ever made in the history of Chile aka 'atcha holbrand'! We could not get one 'penne' done our throats without adding a handful of parmesan, and tomato sauce to it. For those few brief minutes, our world was on fire. 

The disappointment set in as we realized there would be no dinner. A cup of hot chocolate and a shared protein bar and off we went to brave our tent, feet first... 

At camp Italiano you constantly hear cracking glaciers and avalanches from the mountains, quite something to experience. However that night I wasn't sure if it was the mountain or Albertus' stomach. 

Day 3: 

Early morning rise as we couldn't wait to eat our Oats'so Easy and off we went up the French Valley. We could leave our packs behind, which was heavenly, as the hike up the valley came back down the same route to Italiano before heading to our next stop. 

While on our trek up the French Valley it started to snow, which deterred most of our group from hiking to the top as you couldn't really see the mountains, but for the two traveling South Africans it was awesome just to be hiking in the snow! 

After the valley we made a quick lunch, tuna wraps, got our packs and hiked on. The weather got better and we had the most scenic views of the beautiful snow-capped mountains with scattered bottle blue lakes. You cannot not be moved when you see nature so pristine.  As we were hiking in the last few days of the season and the park closes for winter, there were very few hikers, which meant we would often walk for hours and not see anyone. 

We arrived at refugio Cuernos, which is situated next to the lake. Set up camp and headed inside, we could feel the temperature was rapidly decreasing.  

In the kitchen-area we met 3 Americans and an Irish couple. All of us, together with our kiwi mates made dinner, had some "gato-bokswyn' , chatted and played cards till the time came to leave the warmth and brave the cold. 

That night the temperature dropped till -9 degrees. Resulting in a frozen tent, literally and even the water within our water bottle that was in our tent had frozen. It was crazy. 

Day 4 from refugio Cuernos to the Torres camp is by far the longest and toughest hike...a 20km walk with the latter part nearly all incline! Even with our lighter packs it was still a strenuous outing, plus the outer rain cover of our tent was still completely frozen when we packed up, so it wouldn't fit back into its sleeve, which meant I had to strap it to the back of my backpack to thaw out while walking! 

It was another stunning day and the sunshine was very welcome after the cold night! 

While it's a steep and long (20km) hike to the Torres camp, getting up there is definitely worth it, it's a beautiful valley with great views of the surrounding mountains and the famous three towers...

This was another free camp site so we had to rough it out for the last night which was okay because the next day we'd be heading back to civilization...for our final meal we went back to the tried and trusted tomato & salami pasta which tasted even better than the first night (probably due to the long hike), and for desert we shared a hot chocolate which is one of the best medicines for a cold night! (Our Irish friends had hot water and whiskey, go figure.)

The big thing to do when you camp out at Torres is to get up early morning before dawn, climb up to the Mirador with your headlights and watch the towers light up when the first rays of sunlight hit them...

It reminded me a lot of climbing up lion's head in Cape Town, also takes about an hour to get to the top, and it's a steep, workout of a climb...it's very cold at the top so we carried our sleeping bags with us to keep warm while we waited for the show to start! 

Any minute now...

After about an hour up there, it was already light but the towers still looked their plain old grey self...and we kind of thought that maybe this is it...which would've been disappointing but then just as some of us started to get restless the tips of the towers lit up, almost as if they kept the audience waiting on purpose! Then gradually, the towers came alive, changing colour and lighting up like three beacons in the morning sky...

It was really magical and there wasn't a cloud in the sky which meant the visibility was immaculate...we were very lucky because the previous two days you couldn't see the towers at all! It was a great way to close off our W trek...

Afterwards we raced down, made a quick breakfast, packed up our things and scurried down the mountain...we had to be at the Torres hotel by 14:00 to catch a ride back to Puerto Natales so there was very little sight seeing on our last leg of the hike!

W trek done and dusted!

Our group (myself and Kristi, the Kiwis, the Irish, an englishman, two American youngsters and a Latino girl) made plans to go out and celebrate our successful endeavor by consuming as much pizza and beer as we could afford! The food and company was great! 

There are few things that can bring people as together as a shared accomplishment...we had good fun and ended the night drinking beer and vodka shots in a bar that was more like some Chilean family's living room!

We crashed the night at the erratic rock hostel and had to get up early the next morning for our bus back to Argentina, where we will head to El Chalten for the second week of our Patagonian adventure!