After 4 nights in Argentinian Patagonia, we crossed the border into Chile to spend a few days in Chilean Patagonia. The Chilean side is known for Torres Del Paine, a National Park that is ~2,000 square KMs, and is home to some of the most famous treks in Patagonia. We drove about 6 hours from El Chaltén to Torres del Paine and spent 3 nights here.
This park has suffered multiple fires over the last few decades, including many that destroyed hundreds of square kilometers of the park after tourists set fires in areas where fire was forbidden. We saw evidence of the fires in areas that have never recovered. Despite this, the park is home to beautiful lush plant life and some incredible animals including: guanacos (camel family and Matt’s favourite), Chilean flamingos, black neck swans (threatened species), Andean condors (largest flying bird in the world with a maximum wingspan of 3.3 meters), rheas (looks like a small ostrich), and the Magellanic woodpecker (36-45 cm in length!). Most of these animals are only found in Patagonia, so it was really cool to see all of them (except the flamingos!) during our trip.
The guanacos were a pretty common sight on this trip – found anywhere from crossing the road to sitting on top of a hill looking down on hikers.
The most common treks in Torres del Paine include the “W” and “O” treks, which are multi-day (3-9 day) treks. We opted to stay at one of the few hostels in the park, and do day hikes with this as our home base.
This was the view from our hostel – doesn’t get much better than that!
This is a typical view seen almost anywhere in the park. The accessibility of the beauty is much higher here than in El Chaltén, where you have to work (AKA hike) a bit to see views like this. For this reason we probably preferred Torres del Paine, but there was something very rewarding about only having access to incredible vistas after a difficult hike.
On our first full day we did a couple easy hikes that were just a few hours each.
This was probably the easiest hike in the park, with one of the biggest rewards. 1 hour each way, flat, and even terrain. And this is the view almost the entire way. Incredible.
As we said about El Chaltén and Patagonia in general, the vastness of the beauty is hard to perceive in pictures; it is absolutely breathtaking to witness nature as pure as what we saw in both Chilean and Argentinian Patagonia.
Here you can see some of the devastation that lingers from the fires.
Panoramic photos give a bit more of a sense of the real thing, but still impossible to capture it all in a picture!
Mirador Las Torres Hike
The last full day we had we did the famous Torres del Paine hike called Mirador Las Torres. This hike (and the park) are named after the 3 famous Torres (or peaks) that occupy most of the pictures in a google search for “Patagonia hiking”. The peaks were created thousands of years ago after a volcano erupted but didn’t reach the surface of the earth. It pushed the rock upwards, creating these three massive peaks.
This is the perfect example of the types of climbs we were doing frequently during this hike; it was NOT an easy stroll!
You can get a sense from some of these pictures what the terrain was like; mostly rock, and mostly uphill!
You can see Alicia’s varied attire throughout the day; this is a result of changing winds, temperature, cloud cover, and precipitation. She went from a t-shirt to a long sleeve with a down layer, a wind breaker, toque, and gloves, all in one hike. The whether is truly wild down in Patagonia. We even saw a few falling snow flakes at the top of the climb!
We saw these horses on the trails a few times during this hike. They were delivering kegs of beer and food to remote hostels! A pretty interesting method of transportation considering the steep ascents during the hike.
We made it! The reward was a beautiful glacial lake at the bottom of this incredible and iconic mountain. We also got a pretty clear day so we got almost a perfect shot of the 3 peaks.
This was certainly the most difficult hike we did on this trip; the endurance requirement was extremely high due to the many prolonged ascents. Worth it though!
Setting sun at our hostel on the last day. Goodnight Torres del Paine.
M&A
