Torres del Paine

Well, we´re back, and we´re back early... Only managed five nights camping.



Day 1 - We set off from the bottom of the tail of the ´Q´, the third and final bus stop. Very windy but beautiful sunshine, and the walking is across lovely flat fields of long yellow grass, with the dramatic scenery of the mountains in the background. We were in high spirits, I think we´d worked ourselves up into a bit of a frenzy about camping for 8 nights - a result of staying at the Erratic Rock hostel for a couple of nights, where everyone is setting off on a similar adventure, and is up until one in the morning packing their bags. The owner of the hostel, Rustyn, does a brilliant and very informative talk every afternoon at 3pm, part of which is about the importance of wrapping absolutely everything in your rucksack in plastic bags, preferably of the Ziplock variety. It´s a great plave to be before setting out, as they give you lots of good advice, but at the end of the day there´s a lot of hype surrounding what is, essentially, a walk in the park, along well-marked trails, and a walk you´ll be doing along with hundreds of other people - not quite the wilderness experience I´d been hoping for. The first day we were only meant to be doing 7 or 8km, as our bags were at their heaviest, with tent, sleeping bags, and nine days worth of food. (I got a bit carried away in the dried fruit shop in Puerto Natales and ended up buying about 2 kilos of the stuff!) However, this only took a couple of hours, so we decided to take advantage of the good weather and press on to the next campsite, Paine Grande. this was a huge campsite, and a bit of a shock after having only seen about three people on the tail of the ´Q´. There was a giant refugio, the size of a hotel, and for the campers a little octagonal hut with glass windows where you could cook, and even three gas rings you could use if needs be. However, it was jam-packed with people, a lot of whom I was hoping we´d seen the last of at the hostel! Not because I didn´t want to bump into them again, but more that for me, the whole point of being self-sufficient for 9 days is that you´re leaving the outside world behind for a bit. Anyway, slept reasonably well - I hired a sleeping bag from the hostel, which although it was bulky did the job a lot better than my tiny one, which is about as much use as a crisp packet in the cold.



Day 2 - We woke up to rain and set off for Campamento Italiano, although again we´d decided to try and push on to the next site, Los Cuernos, in order to make day 3 a bit shorter. Sadly, the weather meant that Valle de Frances, which is normally one of the highlights, was in pretty thick cloud, so rather than go all the way to the top, we dumped our bags at the bottom and walked up only an hour or so beore heading back down. It was still pretty impressive - a huge waterfall, glaciers, snow-covered mountains, all looking like a scene from Lord of the Rings. By the time we got to the campsite we were pretty wet, the pitches were wet, and the tent was still wet from the morning. Luckily, there was again a big room with a woodburning stove that the soggy campers could pile into, although you weren´t allowed to cook in this one, so everyone still had to get wet in order to eat. Inside, I kept on all my waterproof stuff in an attempt to dry it out, and tried to anaesthatise myself with some large doses of red wine. The atmosphere was like being in a bar, and was good fun as everyone was so relieved to have somewhere warm and dry to sit, even though it smelled of wet dog. Chucking out time was about 10pm, when someone came in and announced that peoples´ tents were quite literally blowing away. So there was a mass exodus as everyone ran outside, desperately hoping that they weren´t one of the unlucky ones. A few days later we met up with ´Mr Northface´, an American guy we´d met at Fitzroy, whose tent we´d all been admiring for how tiny it packed away - apparently he couldn´t even find his tent that night, had ended up bundling in with Tige, (an Irish guy whose name I can´t remember how to spell), and had found his tent the next morning, hanging in a tree! I woke up in the morning to find that a mouse had eaten its way into my rucksack and made a start on my nougat - a cartoon-like corner had been nibbled away.

Day 3 - Was nothing but misery... It rained all day, and at one point I was having to force myself to keep walking, on the basis that moving people don´t get hypothermia. We walked across one boggy valley and the wind was like ice. We´d been tramping through ankle-deep mud, and both of my boots were full of cold water. I ended up cursing lots, stamping my feet like a five-year old, and stabbing the ground with my walking poles - I was furious with myself and asking what on earth had possessed me to think that setting off for a trek carrying the weight of a four year old on my back would be good fun. We made it to Chileno, and the refugio was shut as it´s the end of the season, so we huddled with some others under the porch, and cooked some cuppa soup. You know things are bad when a chicken cuppa soup turns out to be the best thing about your day. Poor Marie didn´t even have a waterproof jacket, despite the fact that her Mum works at Millets in Manchester! She was following Rustyn´s advice (from Erratic Rock) - no matter what the weather does, just let your ´stink uniform´ (the same clothes you wear for 9 days on the trot) get wet. She´d obviously missed the bit where he said that if it rained for more than ten minutes you were allowed to put your Gortex on over the top. I stood under a tree and let a group of about ten people walking in the opposite direction, ie. homeward bound, pass by, smiling cheerfully and saying ´hola´in my best Spanish as though I was having the best holiday ever, and then dissolved into tears after the last one had gone by. Fortunately myself and Marie seemed to have a similar sense of humour - the worse things got, the more we laughed - there were actually points when I would be lying in my sleeping bag rigid with cold during the early hours of the morning, and would just crack up laughing at the sheer idiocy of what we were doing in the name of fun. However, after our cuppa soup on day 3, we both decided we´d had enough and just wanted to go home. So we set off in the direction of the park entrance and walked for about five minutes before deciding we were being complete wimps, and doing a U-turn and setting off in the opposite direction, which the others who were still sheltering under the porch found intriguing. So that night we camped at Campamento Torres, the site at the base of the legendary Los Torres. It was absolutely sopping wet - you literally had to pick which puddle to pitch the tent in. There was a 3-sided shack with a mud floor to cook in. However, I felt lucky compared to some people, who were completely unprepared for spending the night halfway up a mountain - there was a couple who didn´t have sleeping mats or a cooking stove who must have been freezing during the night. One young guy from County Durham had carried yeast and flour up the mounatin with him so that he could make himself bread! I asked him how he was going to cook it, and he reckoned he could do it the way you do bagels (apparently boiled first then lightly panfried!) Needless to say, this is pretty impossible on a camping stove, which he didn´t have anyway, but he managed to persuade the refugios to let him use their ovens! All I could think about was cooking the instant mashed potato as quickly as possible and getting into my sleeping bag before I got any colder. I did this and must have pretty much passed out, as I only found out in the morning that cheeky Marie had managed to talk her way into the park ranger´s hut where she spent the evening by the stove drinking mulled wine! Grrrr....

Day 4 - Anyway, there was no way we were going to follow Rustyn´s advice about getting up before sunrise and climbing the final hour or so up to the Torres to see the sun light them up all red and pink like it does on the postcards (hey, that´s what Photoshop´s for!) Instead, we stuck our noses out of the tent at about 8am, saw to our horror/delight that it was snowing, and went back to sleep for a bit. When we got up, it really was so cold you just had to move in order to have any chance of getting warm, so we put the tent down, guzzled down some porridge, and set off up to Los Torres. It was great walking without the bags weighing us down, and despite thick cloud and snow we managed to see the infamous pilllars of rock, which felt like an achievement in itself. So we were on good form heading back down to Hosteria Las Torres, I was mainly thinking of the Irish coffee I was going to celebrate with once I arrived. Once we made it there, we´d have the choice of going home on the 7pm bus, or staying on to do a bit more. Of course, we decided to stay on - gluttons for punishment. I never did get my Irish coffee, but had to celebrate with a creamy coffee, and a huge measure of whisky instead, which was one of those ´measures´ where they just pour, and pour, and keep pouring. Marie had gone to sort out her feet, which were starting by now to show signs of the beginnings of trenchfoot! When she came and found me 20 minutes later I was bright red with alcohol and windburn, and giggling like a lunatic. This was the only campsite where you could light a fire, so we made the most of it. There was also the luxury of hot water to wash the pot in, so at the end of the night we filled our metal drinking bottles and used them as hot water bottles - a real treat.

Day 5 - We caught the bus down to the second bus stop in order to get the catamaran over the lake, and hike up to Refugio Grey so that we could see the glacier there. Unfortunately, we were running a bit late and ended up having to run across the field with our bags to get to the bus stop in time, whilst clutching the ´magic porridge pot´ - realising what the time was we´d just stuck the lid on it and done a runner, so ended up eating it on the bus. The walk up to Grey is one of the nicest we did, and we were really lucky to get some sunshine, and clear skies, which meant great views of the glacier and beyond. The campsite at Grey was right by a lake with huge chunks of ice that had broken off the glacier floating in it, and was a lot less busy than most. Again, it had a nice cosy room where you could hang out and have a beer. We met a cheeky English couple who basically asked us to cook porridge for them in the morning - they´d carried oats up the mountain, but had no means of cooking them. It was a really chilly campsite, despite being dry, so I had to put all my normal clothes back on over the top of my thermals, and actually slept really well.

Day 6 - We set off back down the mountain in the morning, to get the 12.30 catamaran back, but ended up kicking ourselves as the day turned out to be stunning - really clear and sunny - and we wished we´d kept going and stayed out another night which would have meant we could have seen the glacier from above, and also seen beyond to the Southern Continental Ice Field. It was a shame, but at the same time, I was ready to call it a day - five nights sleeping on cold hard ground means you wake up aching - and nice to leave feeling that you´d like to come back one day. We got amazing views of the mountains from the boat, and again from the bus back to Puerto Natales. All in all, a memorable trip! When we arrived back in Natales, we got off the bus opposite Erratic Rock, and who should come running out of the talk there but Rebecca from El Chalten! Was great to see her and Paddy, and we went for some food with them - they were heading off to the park the next day, and then to get the Navimag.

So today, have done very little - some laundry, some internet and so on. We´re staying at a really nice chilled out hostel called AG, round the corner from Erratic Rock, who didn´t have room for us as we´d come back early. Has worked out well though, as Erratic Rock was lovely and cosy and had nice cats to cuddle, but very intense and full of exciteable people getting ready to go off on their adventures in the park, whereas here has the Chilean equivalent of Magic FM playing on the radio...