South America Day 57 - 61 Torres Del Paine National Park

Day 57: We left El Calafate today and drove south again to Torres del Paine National Park where we are spending the next five days. We had to cross the border again from Argentina back into Chile, a smooth border crossing this time.  We stopped in Puerto Natales, the closest town to the national park for lunch and shopped for some camp food supplies and personal snacks.  We picked up two local guides, Justin and David, who are remaining with us for the five days and continued driving another hour and a half to Torres del Paine National Park.  We arrived at our campsite, Pehoe campsite, for the first night around 6pm.  The campsite is on lake Pehoe and we had fantastic views of the Torres del Paine (blue towers) mountains across the lake. 

Day 58:  We had a nice late start today leaving at 10am to do a short drive to catch the noon catamaran across Lake Pehoe from Pudeto to refuge/campsite Paine Grande.  We stopped on the way to view Salto Grande, the parks biggest waterfall.  The catamaran crossing took just over half an hour.  Our group is now split into two, seven of us opting to walk the entire parks famous 'W' Walk for an additional fee and the remainder doing just parts of it. Us 'W' walkers had our tents set up for us at the campsite outside the refuge, the other group had to bring their Dragoman tents with them on the catamaran and set them up.  1:30pm after everyone was settled in both groups walked together the first section/left hand arm of the 'W' walk from Paine Grande refuge to Glacier Grey viewpoint, 7.5km there and 7.5km back.  It was a beautiful sunny day, but cool and very windy, Patagonia is well known for its strong winds.  We had some great views of Lake Grey, Mount Paine Grande and Glacier Grey.  We were back for 5pm and relaxed inside the refuge building out of the cold for a couple of hours until dinner at 7pm, provided by the refuge.

Day 59:  we had another cold, very windy but sunny day. We walked about 17km today from Paine Grande campsite to Italiano campsite then up the Valle De Frances (French Valley) the middle arm of the 'W' walk, to a great viewpoint of Mount Castillo, other surrounding mountains and Lake Nordenskjold in the distance.  We retraced our steps back down the French Valley, the none 'W' walk group returned back to Paine Grande campsite and our ('W' walk) group  continued hiking on to Los Cuernos refuge which is in an area of private land, not national park land, where we camped for the night.  We were served a great three course dinner then the chef entertained us with his guitar and pan pipes playing and singing.

Day 60:  we continued walking northeastwards parallel with Lake Nordenskjold and Almirante Nieto Mountain to the foot of the Ascencio Valley.  We split into two group's today, Nigel, I, Katie and Eoin opting just to take our time and enjoy the leisurely 11km to the campsite.  The other three plus our guide opted to do an additional 2 hour side trail up to a view point. The strong winds had eased and we had a pleasantly warm day but slightly overcast. We spent the night camping at Las Torres refuge campsite and were served another good three course dinner inside the refuge.

Day 61:  This morning we met up again with the whole group at Las Torres campsite and hiked the 9.5km up to the right hand arm of the 'W' walk to the Base de Las Torres to see the famous Torres (Towers) the National park is named after.  It was a bit chiller and overcast to start but by the time we reached the towers viewpoint the sun had come out.  We took our time again ascending, stopping on the way at Chileno refuge and also Torres campsite for lunch.  It was much windier again the higher we got.  The view at the top was spectacular.  We sat there for about half an hour admiring the views and then retraced our steps and descended back down the 9.5km to the start and our truck Amber.  Once everyone had returned we drove back to Pehoe campsite for our last night camping in the park and back to group cooking again.

We had a great five days in Torres Del Paine National Park and the luckily the weather was extremely kind to us with dry sunny days.  It was a bit windy, we expected that, but we were also all expecting it to be much colder and possibly wet. Lots of photos!