Torres del Paine - No Paine No Gain
I am aware this caption has no doubt been used on countless occasions but if it's not broken........
Myself, Niamh, Jerry and Aisling got ourselves together after our epic boat journey for yet another epic adventure, this time it would be a hike.
We disembarked at Puerto Natales, another kippy town full of roaming packs of dogs, although we did find a great restaurant called Baguales. They had the best burgers after Ferg Burger in Queenstown, New Zealand. We stayed at Yagan House, which was a nice little hostel. They had loads of upcycled furniture, great art work and photography and handmade items. Niamh will undoubtably be writing about it in Tales from a Teapot.
We were to do a four night, five day hike in the National Park of Torres del Paine in Patagonia, Chile. The trek is called the W, due to shape of the route. It is well known for its spectacular scenery. There are also other longer routes. Due to a tight timetable and what was to be even tighter hamstrings, the W was all we were going to have time for and certainly all we were physically able to do while still being enjoyable. It's not that it's the toughest climb in the world but it's long and can get pretty steep in parts.
It took us a full day to prepare for the hike. We went to a talk at a company called Fantistico Sur in morning. It was not worth the early start. In the afternoon, we went to another talk organised by a hostel called Erratic Rock. It was excellent. They told us everything we needed to know, including the route, where to stay, what clothes to bring, what food to bring and how not to cause a massive forest fire, which has been an issue over the last few years. The trick is not to light your bog roll on fire in a tin can. True story. We rented our gear at Erratic Rock as we had nothing with us. We ended up getting a tent, sleeping bags and mat, a mess kit, waterproof trousers and walking poles. Then we spent a couple of hours warming up for the hike in search of food and whiskey. Finally, we packed up our stuff, sorted out storage and made it to bed for midnight.
Day 1: 11km over 3.5 hours
The following morning we got picked up nice and early with our heavy bags, which we were to carry literally every step of the way, making the hike all that bit more challenging. We were very excited and couldn't wait to get started. The weather was great and this was to be the case for the whole time we were there, bar a few rain drops and the odd powerful gust of wind to remind us how quickly the elements can change.
We started off getting a boat across one of the lakes from the bus stop to our starting point of Paine Grande. We began with a bite to eat in a little shelter in a campsite before putting one foot in front of the other and beginning the walk.
We were to head on the west section of the W where we would see a glacier and camp for the night at Lago Grey Refugio and Campsite. We had a three and a half hour hike. We started off quite well and started to probably feel it about an hour or so into it. Only five days to go, no bother! We arrived up to a clearing which gave you great views of one of the lakes. That was when we got our first real taste of how powerful the wind can get out on the W. You had to lean into the wind to progress at all. When you turned and the wind hit you from the side you would constantly have to regain your balance. The fact we had big, heavy bags on our backs just made this more of a challenge, particularly at the start when we had all our supplies for the five days on our backs.
We chugged on and after a few hours we we were able to see the glacier in the distance. It is the third largest ice field in the world and was absolutely amazing.
After our first day of walking with sore shoulders and legs, it was great to see the campsite off in the distance. When we arrived, we paid for our tent site and pitched up for the night. We all had a much needed shower and headed over to the crowded kitchen with our little gas hob and made dinner. All part of the outdoors, it was great! We ate mashed potato with chorizo, which was surprisingly good. We tried it again a few days after the hike, but it turns out that you need to do a long hike for it to taste good! What was also great was the big box of red wine we had brought, which went down well. Only a bottle of whiskey (it was Jameson, so the e is permitted here), rum and vodka to go. Good times.
Day 2: 13km 4.5 hours
The following morning we headed off to see the glacier, which was a short hike from the campsite. It was situated on a lake which had icebergs floating in it, some with partial blue ice and one which was completely blue, it looked like a giant slushy. It was really cool looking and we got lots of great photos. It was also nice to do a hike without our backpacks.
We headed back to our tent to pack everything back up and head on our way back to Paine Grande where we had started. The weather had improved a lot and the sun was out and the wind had eased off. Happy out. On the way we spotted a couple of woodpeckers.
That evening after a three and a half hour hike, we all conked, demonstrating our incredible endurance. After our nap, we squeezed into the cooking shelter and had dinner, watched the moonrise and had a quick whiskey before heading to bed again.
Day 3: 16km 6 hours
This, our third day of hiking was to be the most intense, 11 hours in total. We barely managed the three and half hour hikes the two days previous. We hiked to Campomento Italiano at the foot of the French Valley, which we accomplished in really good time. We had lunch there, our usual salami, cheese and cucumber wraps.
The plan was to then hike 5.5 hours without bags up to a look out point and back again. It proved too ambitious for us and we only hiked and hour up the French Valley before turning back, cutting three hours of the walk. Other travellers told us the views were amazing, so looks like we missed out. With hindsight, we should have stayed at Campomento Italiano which is currently closed for hygiene reasons. Im sure the view would be worth a couple of al fresco pees.
We then had another 2.5 hours to with bags to get to our campsite, Los Cuernos. The advantage of being lazy was that we got to the campsite early, got a shower without too long of a wait and were already sipping whiskey when the crowds came searching for scarce camp spots. We had a great evening watching the sunset and lightening the weight of our bags by consuming many liquids.
The campsite was a major disappointment though. It cost 12 euro per person but only had two showers and toilets for everyone, a tiny cooking area and no common area to go to after you cooked. You had to pay for the campsites after paying nearly 30 euro to enter the park. Los Cuernos was the most expensive and worst equipped of all the campsites, but they were all completely over priced for what they were. Money grabbing **bad word**.
Day 4: 15km 7 hours
This was our longest day of hiking, seeing as we wimped out the day before. We had an 8 hour hike to Los Torres campsite, our first free campsite. We set off early after the usual porridge for Emmet, Jerry and Aisling and the equivalent of a nutri grain bar for Niamh.
We had a hard hike mainly uphill in what would normally be extremely pleasant weather, but was very hot for hiking in. The up hill part of this sentence is very important. Ruth at Erratic Rock had informed us that by the forth day you'll be flying and wont be bothered by the bags. This surprisingly turned out to be true.
We stopped for lunch by a river and filled up our water bottles with fresh water. There is a shortcut, which we availed of. We were worried it would mean a steeper ascent, but this turned out not to be the case. We watched the people going the other route in the distance, struggling up a steep consistent up hill ascent. There were amazing views up the valley. We managed to pull our eyes away from our shoes every now again to appreciate it!
We also stopped for a break at a refugio along the way. We dipped our feet in the freezing water and ruled out the possibility of a swim. We then had the steepest climb of the day to look forward too!
The campsite was really nice. It is nestled under a forest. It is less than an hours walk away from the Towers, which we planned to visit for sunrise the following morning. Jerry, being the eager beaver, mustered up the energy to walk up that evening. The rest of us napped.
We cooked dinner that evening and had an early night in preparation for the next day. We fell asleep soothed by the sound of loud spanish speakers doing impressions in the tent next door.
Day 5: 6.5km 3 hours
The last morning of our hike we woke at quarter to five...in the morning. Crazy stuff altogther. But it was worth it. We hiked about 45 minutes up to the Mirador Los Torres to see the sunrise over the towers. When we first set out it was pretty dark and we used our very fashionable head torches to see, but it was bright enough by the time we made it to the lookout 45 minutes later. It was quite a steep climb up, but was made easier without the bags.
We found a rock and tried to keep warm while waiting for the sunrise. Emmet and Jerry's last sunrise escapade together in Laos didn't go according to plan as it was too cloudy to get a decent picture. However, this time we were not dissapointed. The sunrise was amazing. The light hit of the towers, gradually turning them red. In the middle of all this a couple of condors, massive birds of prey, started flying over head. I am not saying I will ever become a morning person, but I may stop pretending that time before 8 in the morning doesn't exist.
The walk down was quite sad, our little adventure was coming to an end. It was really horribly windy on the way down, which reminded us how lucky we had been with the weather. Other than the first day we had little wind and we had no rain to speak of. It would be pretty miserable doing the hike and camping in the rain. We made it down the valley in record time.
After rinsing the dust out of our mouths we cooked up a lunch at a campsite near the bus stop and gave out about some obnoxious French people who were being obnoxious.
Our total distance as calculated by Jerry was 61.5km. Go us! We had an amazing few days. After the hike we got a bus back to Puerto Natales to a real bed. We tried to go back to Baguales for a burger, but they rejected us by being closed on a Sunday. We ended going to an Italian which was okay.
Punta Arenas
Our next stop was Punta Arenas, which probably wins the award for the biggest kip of a town we have visited (having said that we got pretty good coffees). We weren't there for the mismatched tin houses though, we were there to see Penguins, or as the spanish say pinguinos (we have learned the trick to speaking Spanish is to add an o to the end of the word, we genuinely saw a picture of Homer Simpson with el Homero beside it, the single funniest moment of my life).
We stayed in Costanera Hostel, which was basically someones gaff. It was grand, the owner was lovely and spoken a hybrid language which involved a mixture of Spanish and English, but we managed to communicate(o). See, Spanish is easy, or Englisho if you will.
We booked a tour out to Isla Magdalena to see the penguins. We got a 2 hour boat journey (advertised time 1hr 15 mins) out, had an hour (meant to be 1hr and a half) to walk around the island and see the massive penguin colony which was great, I love penguinos (which is obvious from the amount of photos) and then another very boring boat trip back which was also longer than stated. We did see dolphins playing along side the boat on the way home, which was deadly.
We ended up having to stay another night in Puerto Natales as we couldn't get a direct bus from Punta Arenas to our next destination El Calafate. We hit Baguales once again for another great burger.
El Calafate
The main thing to do in El Calafate is visit Glacier Perito Moreno. For months Emmet and Jerry had been growing beards for the glacier. The plan was to have a cigar and whiskey at the glacier and then Emmet would shave his beard off. Great plan, except for the fact that we left our Jameson and cigars on the bus coming from Puerto Natales. We realised less than an hour before we had to get the bus and didn't have time to rectify the situation. Disaster.
We booked a bus to the glacier through the hostel we were staying at, America del Sur. The day we were to go wasn't great weather wise, but what was even more worrying was that our bus dropped us off at 10 at the glacier and didn't return until 4. We had 6 hours to kill, far too much time. And we didn't even have our whiskey to pass the time.
The set up at the glacier is pretty good. They have built a series of walkways and viewing platforms. We met with Mikey (a Paddy) and Andy (an Englisho and half French), two sound lads who were on the boat with us and wandered around taking pictures. From time to time bits of ice would fall from the front of the glacier into the sea, possibly due to Niamh's incredibly high pitched voice and make the most enormous crashing noise. It was phenomenal. We saw a couple of large ones that froze the sea around them.
After a three hours of walking we had enough of the glacier, great as it was. We ate our sandwiches and had a coffee in the canteen. Mikey and Andy left at the reasonable time of 2.15. We tried to play dumb and see if we could get in their bus, but no joy, the conductor was having none of it. We embarrassingly had to march off the bus looking stupid. We killed two hours playing hangman in the canteen, it was actually a lot of fun.
Post glacier visit, Emmet shaved off his beard to reveal rugged handsomeness underneath, as can be seen below.
That evening Niamh, Emmet and Jerry went to Mikey and Andy's hostel for a beer. Aisling was bunged up with a cold and decided to get an early one. After a few drinks with the lads we started walking back to our hostel. On the way we got distracted by loud music and went to investigate. We ended up having a few more drinks and dancing for strangers, including a sean nos number.
Sad face, the next day we parted ways with Jerry and Aisling for a few days. We went to watch the first half of the rugby match between Ireland and Wales, where Ireland were hockeying Wales, before hopping on a bus to Puerto Madryn. Jerry and Aisling are flying Buenos Aires, so we will meet them again for a few days before parting ways again. We have had a great time travelling with them. Can't believe the month is over.
I am aware this caption has no doubt been used on countless occasions but if it's not broken........
Myself, Niamh, Jerry and Aisling got ourselves together after our epic boat journey for yet another epic adventure, this time it would be a hike.
We disembarked at Puerto Natales, another kippy town full of roaming packs of dogs, although we did find a great restaurant called Baguales. They had the best burgers after Ferg Burger in Queenstown, New Zealand. We stayed at Yagan House, which was a nice little hostel. They had loads of upcycled furniture, great art work and photography and handmade items. Niamh will undoubtably be writing about it in Tales from a Teapot.
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| Jerry with the friendly hostel dog in Yagan House |
We were to do a four night, five day hike in the National Park of Torres del Paine in Patagonia, Chile. The trek is called the W, due to shape of the route. It is well known for its spectacular scenery. There are also other longer routes. Due to a tight timetable and what was to be even tighter hamstrings, the W was all we were going to have time for and certainly all we were physically able to do while still being enjoyable. It's not that it's the toughest climb in the world but it's long and can get pretty steep in parts.
It took us a full day to prepare for the hike. We went to a talk at a company called Fantistico Sur in morning. It was not worth the early start. In the afternoon, we went to another talk organised by a hostel called Erratic Rock. It was excellent. They told us everything we needed to know, including the route, where to stay, what clothes to bring, what food to bring and how not to cause a massive forest fire, which has been an issue over the last few years. The trick is not to light your bog roll on fire in a tin can. True story. We rented our gear at Erratic Rock as we had nothing with us. We ended up getting a tent, sleeping bags and mat, a mess kit, waterproof trousers and walking poles. Then we spent a couple of hours warming up for the hike in search of food and whiskey. Finally, we packed up our stuff, sorted out storage and made it to bed for midnight.
Day 1: 11km over 3.5 hours
The following morning we got picked up nice and early with our heavy bags, which we were to carry literally every step of the way, making the hike all that bit more challenging. We were very excited and couldn't wait to get started. The weather was great and this was to be the case for the whole time we were there, bar a few rain drops and the odd powerful gust of wind to remind us how quickly the elements can change.
We started off getting a boat across one of the lakes from the bus stop to our starting point of Paine Grande. We began with a bite to eat in a little shelter in a campsite before putting one foot in front of the other and beginning the walk.
We were to head on the west section of the W where we would see a glacier and camp for the night at Lago Grey Refugio and Campsite. We had a three and a half hour hike. We started off quite well and started to probably feel it about an hour or so into it. Only five days to go, no bother! We arrived up to a clearing which gave you great views of one of the lakes. That was when we got our first real taste of how powerful the wind can get out on the W. You had to lean into the wind to progress at all. When you turned and the wind hit you from the side you would constantly have to regain your balance. The fact we had big, heavy bags on our backs just made this more of a challenge, particularly at the start when we had all our supplies for the five days on our backs.
We chugged on and after a few hours we we were able to see the glacier in the distance. It is the third largest ice field in the world and was absolutely amazing.
After our first day of walking with sore shoulders and legs, it was great to see the campsite off in the distance. When we arrived, we paid for our tent site and pitched up for the night. We all had a much needed shower and headed over to the crowded kitchen with our little gas hob and made dinner. All part of the outdoors, it was great! We ate mashed potato with chorizo, which was surprisingly good. We tried it again a few days after the hike, but it turns out that you need to do a long hike for it to taste good! What was also great was the big box of red wine we had brought, which went down well. Only a bottle of whiskey (it was Jameson, so the e is permitted here), rum and vodka to go. Good times.
Day 2: 13km 4.5 hours
The following morning we headed off to see the glacier, which was a short hike from the campsite. It was situated on a lake which had icebergs floating in it, some with partial blue ice and one which was completely blue, it looked like a giant slushy. It was really cool looking and we got lots of great photos. It was also nice to do a hike without our backpacks.
We headed back to our tent to pack everything back up and head on our way back to Paine Grande where we had started. The weather had improved a lot and the sun was out and the wind had eased off. Happy out. On the way we spotted a couple of woodpeckers.
That evening after a three and a half hour hike, we all conked, demonstrating our incredible endurance. After our nap, we squeezed into the cooking shelter and had dinner, watched the moonrise and had a quick whiskey before heading to bed again.
Day 3: 16km 6 hours
This, our third day of hiking was to be the most intense, 11 hours in total. We barely managed the three and half hour hikes the two days previous. We hiked to Campomento Italiano at the foot of the French Valley, which we accomplished in really good time. We had lunch there, our usual salami, cheese and cucumber wraps.
The plan was to then hike 5.5 hours without bags up to a look out point and back again. It proved too ambitious for us and we only hiked and hour up the French Valley before turning back, cutting three hours of the walk. Other travellers told us the views were amazing, so looks like we missed out. With hindsight, we should have stayed at Campomento Italiano which is currently closed for hygiene reasons. Im sure the view would be worth a couple of al fresco pees.
We then had another 2.5 hours to with bags to get to our campsite, Los Cuernos. The advantage of being lazy was that we got to the campsite early, got a shower without too long of a wait and were already sipping whiskey when the crowds came searching for scarce camp spots. We had a great evening watching the sunset and lightening the weight of our bags by consuming many liquids.
The campsite was a major disappointment though. It cost 12 euro per person but only had two showers and toilets for everyone, a tiny cooking area and no common area to go to after you cooked. You had to pay for the campsites after paying nearly 30 euro to enter the park. Los Cuernos was the most expensive and worst equipped of all the campsites, but they were all completely over priced for what they were. Money grabbing **bad word**.
Day 4: 15km 7 hours
This was our longest day of hiking, seeing as we wimped out the day before. We had an 8 hour hike to Los Torres campsite, our first free campsite. We set off early after the usual porridge for Emmet, Jerry and Aisling and the equivalent of a nutri grain bar for Niamh.
We had a hard hike mainly uphill in what would normally be extremely pleasant weather, but was very hot for hiking in. The up hill part of this sentence is very important. Ruth at Erratic Rock had informed us that by the forth day you'll be flying and wont be bothered by the bags. This surprisingly turned out to be true.
We stopped for lunch by a river and filled up our water bottles with fresh water. There is a shortcut, which we availed of. We were worried it would mean a steeper ascent, but this turned out not to be the case. We watched the people going the other route in the distance, struggling up a steep consistent up hill ascent. There were amazing views up the valley. We managed to pull our eyes away from our shoes every now again to appreciate it!
We also stopped for a break at a refugio along the way. We dipped our feet in the freezing water and ruled out the possibility of a swim. We then had the steepest climb of the day to look forward too!
The campsite was really nice. It is nestled under a forest. It is less than an hours walk away from the Towers, which we planned to visit for sunrise the following morning. Jerry, being the eager beaver, mustered up the energy to walk up that evening. The rest of us napped.
We cooked dinner that evening and had an early night in preparation for the next day. We fell asleep soothed by the sound of loud spanish speakers doing impressions in the tent next door.
Day 5: 6.5km 3 hours
The last morning of our hike we woke at quarter to five...in the morning. Crazy stuff altogther. But it was worth it. We hiked about 45 minutes up to the Mirador Los Torres to see the sunrise over the towers. When we first set out it was pretty dark and we used our very fashionable head torches to see, but it was bright enough by the time we made it to the lookout 45 minutes later. It was quite a steep climb up, but was made easier without the bags.
We found a rock and tried to keep warm while waiting for the sunrise. Emmet and Jerry's last sunrise escapade together in Laos didn't go according to plan as it was too cloudy to get a decent picture. However, this time we were not dissapointed. The sunrise was amazing. The light hit of the towers, gradually turning them red. In the middle of all this a couple of condors, massive birds of prey, started flying over head. I am not saying I will ever become a morning person, but I may stop pretending that time before 8 in the morning doesn't exist.
The walk down was quite sad, our little adventure was coming to an end. It was really horribly windy on the way down, which reminded us how lucky we had been with the weather. Other than the first day we had little wind and we had no rain to speak of. It would be pretty miserable doing the hike and camping in the rain. We made it down the valley in record time.
After rinsing the dust out of our mouths we cooked up a lunch at a campsite near the bus stop and gave out about some obnoxious French people who were being obnoxious.
Our total distance as calculated by Jerry was 61.5km. Go us! We had an amazing few days. After the hike we got a bus back to Puerto Natales to a real bed. We tried to go back to Baguales for a burger, but they rejected us by being closed on a Sunday. We ended going to an Italian which was okay.
Punta Arenas
Our next stop was Punta Arenas, which probably wins the award for the biggest kip of a town we have visited (having said that we got pretty good coffees). We weren't there for the mismatched tin houses though, we were there to see Penguins, or as the spanish say pinguinos (we have learned the trick to speaking Spanish is to add an o to the end of the word, we genuinely saw a picture of Homer Simpson with el Homero beside it, the single funniest moment of my life).
We stayed in Costanera Hostel, which was basically someones gaff. It was grand, the owner was lovely and spoken a hybrid language which involved a mixture of Spanish and English, but we managed to communicate(o). See, Spanish is easy, or Englisho if you will.
We booked a tour out to Isla Magdalena to see the penguins. We got a 2 hour boat journey (advertised time 1hr 15 mins) out, had an hour (meant to be 1hr and a half) to walk around the island and see the massive penguin colony which was great, I love penguinos (which is obvious from the amount of photos) and then another very boring boat trip back which was also longer than stated. We did see dolphins playing along side the boat on the way home, which was deadly.
We ended up having to stay another night in Puerto Natales as we couldn't get a direct bus from Punta Arenas to our next destination El Calafate. We hit Baguales once again for another great burger.
El Calafate
The main thing to do in El Calafate is visit Glacier Perito Moreno. For months Emmet and Jerry had been growing beards for the glacier. The plan was to have a cigar and whiskey at the glacier and then Emmet would shave his beard off. Great plan, except for the fact that we left our Jameson and cigars on the bus coming from Puerto Natales. We realised less than an hour before we had to get the bus and didn't have time to rectify the situation. Disaster.
We booked a bus to the glacier through the hostel we were staying at, America del Sur. The day we were to go wasn't great weather wise, but what was even more worrying was that our bus dropped us off at 10 at the glacier and didn't return until 4. We had 6 hours to kill, far too much time. And we didn't even have our whiskey to pass the time.
The set up at the glacier is pretty good. They have built a series of walkways and viewing platforms. We met with Mikey (a Paddy) and Andy (an Englisho and half French), two sound lads who were on the boat with us and wandered around taking pictures. From time to time bits of ice would fall from the front of the glacier into the sea, possibly due to Niamh's incredibly high pitched voice and make the most enormous crashing noise. It was phenomenal. We saw a couple of large ones that froze the sea around them.
After a three hours of walking we had enough of the glacier, great as it was. We ate our sandwiches and had a coffee in the canteen. Mikey and Andy left at the reasonable time of 2.15. We tried to play dumb and see if we could get in their bus, but no joy, the conductor was having none of it. We embarrassingly had to march off the bus looking stupid. We killed two hours playing hangman in the canteen, it was actually a lot of fun.
Post glacier visit, Emmet shaved off his beard to reveal rugged handsomeness underneath, as can be seen below.
That evening Niamh, Emmet and Jerry went to Mikey and Andy's hostel for a beer. Aisling was bunged up with a cold and decided to get an early one. After a few drinks with the lads we started walking back to our hostel. On the way we got distracted by loud music and went to investigate. We ended up having a few more drinks and dancing for strangers, including a sean nos number.
Sad face, the next day we parted ways with Jerry and Aisling for a few days. We went to watch the first half of the rugby match between Ireland and Wales, where Ireland were hockeying Wales, before hopping on a bus to Puerto Madryn. Jerry and Aisling are flying Buenos Aires, so we will meet them again for a few days before parting ways again. We have had a great time travelling with them. Can't believe the month is over.
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