Patagonia - Torres del Paine

Hari and I flew from BA down to El Calafate, a small town on the Argentine side of Patagonia. This town is a common starting point for trekkers who are interested in heading to the Parque Nacional Los Glaciares and the famous ¨W¨trek that leads to Torres del Paine in Chilean Patagonia. We spent a few days in El Calafate to see the Perito Moreno glacier and to prepare for our trek. Hari had been wanting to trek in Patagonia for years, he was especially interested in the "W" trail in Chile that leads to Torres del Paine. The trail itself takes 5 days to complete and is in the shape of a ¨W¨. It is lined by glacier capped mountains, crystal-clear blue lakes, and lush forests. This trail is very popular for trekkers, as it leads to the famous Torres del Paine sandstone mountains that hover 3000 meters above a lake. Unlike many other mountains in the area, they do not gradually ascend in a classic upside-down ¨V¨mountain shape - instead they shoot up out of the ground in 3 abrupt, spectacular points. The photos I had seen plastered throughout El Calafate blew me away, I could not wait to see them in person.

Before heading towards the trail, we stayed in El Calafate for a day to see the Perito Moreno glacier which we heard was a must. It did not disappoint...it is one of the most amazing things I have ever seen in my life. The glacier itself covers 250 sq km, reaching nearly 60 meters high. As one of the fastest moving glaciers in the world, Perito Moreno moves a drastic 2 meters per day and these movements can easily be seen by eye. We arrived at the glacier and I was blown away at its size - of course I knew that 60 meters high is insane, but actually standing in front of it made it seem so much larger. The boats on the water near the glacier looked like ants. Within a few minutes of being at one of the lookout points along the water we witnessed our first calving, the breaking off of massive chunks of ice caused by the movement of the glacier. We always had warning that a calving was about to occur, as we could hear a crack in the ice as loud as thunder followed by pieces of the glacier as big as buildings crumbling into the water. These calvings happen about every 20-30 minutes. Some occur deep in the heart of the glacier and can only be heard, but when they happen along the shore the crowds at the lookout points go wild and try to quickly snap photos of the ice crashing into the water below. As the ice chunks hit the water they cause massive waves to dissipate to the shore line, it is really quite a show. We stayed at the glacier just watching and anxiously waiting for calvings for 4 hours, and neither of us were ever bored. We saw several calvings, one in particular was massive and Hari very excitedly caught the end of it on video. Like I said, it was one of the most beautiful and coolest things I have ever seen, so much more than I anticipated. It was an amazing afternoon, and the cherry on top - as we were heading back to El Calafate on our bus a rainbow formed over the glacier. Simply amazing.Now onto the trek. I guess you could say that we were a little bit unprepared for the weather. Having spent all of my trip in summer weather, I had only 2 long pants, shirts, and a fleece jacket. To this point, I had hardly used them but since we were now in the southern Andes, it was freezing. El Calafate is a tourist town, and since it is not exactly in a heavily trafficked area it is quite expensive. I picked up some gloves and a hat but skipped out on buying any other warm clothing - I figured that layering everything else remotely warm that I had with me would suffice. The 5-day "W" trek that leads to Torres del Paine does have some refugios along the way where you can sleep, but we wanted a true trekking experience so we decided to tough it out and camp. This meant that for the duration of our trek we would have to carry everything we needed on our backs - tent, sleeping bags/mats, clothes, and food. We rented the camping equipment and stocked up at the local supermarket on good trekking food: granola, energy bars, peanuts, instant soup packets, oatmeal, bread, cheese, apples, etc. We managed to fit all of our equipment into my large pack and Hari´s small backpack and were ready to go.

We took a bus to the Chilean border where we would go through customs and get to the starting point of the trek. I guess it slipped our minds that we were crossing a border and that you are often not allowed to bring fresh food from one country to another while Hari and I were stocking up at the supermarket. There were signs everywhere at the border stating that it was forbidden to bring any produce, or animal products/bi-products from Argentina into Chile. Oops, we had a bag of 14 apples, cheese, and salami in our big pack. At first we contemplated not declaring them but in the end our consciences told us to be honest on our customs forms. The result: all of our apples and salami were confiscated, but somehow the customs officer let the cheese go through. We were out about $10, no big deal, but this of course would mean that we would have to rush to another supermarket to replace the food we´d lost before we started our trek. Good thing we were honest, though...Sarah told us that when she flew into Chile from New Zealand that a guy on her flight had 2 apples in his backpack that he had forgotten about. He did not declare them, and was busted by customs officials and charged $100 per apple! Had Hari and I been busted, I would have had to cut my trip short, as the fine could have been thousands of dollars!

After the border incident, we made it to Chile and were ready to start our trek. We took a small boat across Lago Pehoe to the starting point of the trail and were already amazed at the scenery - we were surrounded by huge glacier capped mountains in every direction. We arrived at the camp late in the afternoon and would start trekking the next morning, so we pitched the tent and relaxed in the nice, warm refugio. The trail has refugios along the way, so even though we were camping we would luckily be able to defrost in the common areas of the refugios in the evening. We got to bed early, anticipating an early start for our first day of trekking. We woke up to the dreaded sound of rain on our tent. This was not a good sign. We put on all of our trekking gear and went outside to assess the situation - the rain was not that heavy, but if it held up all day we would inevitably be soaked. Being on a time schedule, we had no choice but to head out in the rain. Instead of packing up camp and taking all of our gear with us to the next campsite, we decided we would do the first part of the ¨W¨ as a day hike. We walked for 3.5 hours in the rain, so we were cold, wet, and pretty annoyed; however, when we reached Grey Glacier on Lago Grey we cheered up a bit - it´s pretty hard to be in a bad mood when you are standing in front of a brilliant, blue glacier. We snapped tons of photos, had our lunch, and headed back 3.5 hours to our camp. By the time we got there our socks and shoes were soaked through. We bolted to the refugio to warm up but knew in the back of our heads that there was no way our shoes would dry out overnight, so we´d have to wake up to wet shoes. Oh well, maybe the rain would stop and they´d dry as we were walking the next day...

The rain didn´t stop. Again we woke up to the sound of rain pouring down on our tent. We were not happy campers, but we tried to remind ourselves that we were in Patagonia and that things could be a lot worse. So we put on our wet shoes and headed out for another day hike, and luckily at this point the rain had slowed to a drizzle. While the surrounding views on the trail were beautiful, the trail itself was a wet, muddy mess. At some parts the mud was shin deep, so we had to try to find less traveled trails. Sometimes we were successful, sometimes we were not but our shoes were already soaking so a little mud wouldn´t hurt. This steep section of the trek went up the Valle Frances along a massive waterfall. Hari and I scrambled up the rocks and made the most of it - since we were already soaking wet from the knees down, we figured that we may as well have fun and slosh through the running glacier water...the water was freezing (obviously, it´s glacier water), but it is sparkling clean so at least our muddy shoes got a cleaning. On the top, we got some great photos of Hari faux hurling himself into the waterfall and on our descent, the clouds cleared and we saw our first hint of sunshine. The rest of the walk back to camp was dry, and the sight of the sun reflecting off the glaciers was incredible. The weather warmed up and our pants started to dry off, so things were looking up. The wind was so strong that I was able to lean my entire body weight into it and still be held up standing perfectly straight. In higher spirits, we got back to camp, hung out in the refugio, and hoped that the weather would hold up the next day.

On day 3 we did not wake up to the sound of rain on the tent, so we were excited to get up and get going. We got an early start to the next camp with the sunshine on our shoulders. This campsite was awesome, we could see the 3 Torres from our tent and the refugio was first-class - it had a really nice sitting area, bar, and wood stoves where we´d be able to set our (still) wet shoes in front of to dry. After our walk, we set up camp and relaxed in front of the nice, warm fire, as Hari wasn´t feeling too well. Being in the cold rain caused Hari to come down with a pretty bad cold, so when we woke up the next morning he didn´t have the energy to do a full day hike. Luckily despite the initial bad weather we kept a good pace and had a bit of extra time so Hari relaxed for most of the day and we just hiked around the area for a few hours. The next day we would complete the ¨W¨ and make it to the Torres, so we wanted to make sure Hari was well-rested and ready to go.

Thankfully we woke up on day 4 to a perfect day. There were no clouds in the sky and it was actually quite warm for Patagonia. We anxiously got ready and started our trek, which was the most physically challenging section of the trail. It was mostly uphill, but having the Torres in view made us keep our pace and we made it to the base of the Torres in great time. From the base you have to walk up a steep, rocky path for 30 minutes to reach the lake where the Torres begin. We raced up the trail and was breathless, the view was picture perfect. The Torres were 100x more beautiful in person than they were in all the photos I had seen. The sky was clear and the sun reflected off the blue-green lake. The lake is at 750 meters, and the Torres shoot up an additional 2000 meters into the sky. Hari and I were both speechless, we must have just stared at the perfect view for 15 minutes before we took one photo. Sitting in front of the Torres on this perfect day made it worth hiking in the rain for 2 days through muddy trails.

We sat for awhile, had lunch, and admired the views before we headed back to camp. As we made our way down the mountain, clouds started to roll in and we were very thankful that we made it to the top while the sun was still shining. We were both pretty quiet for the rest of the evening, as we were both reflecting on our adventure and the perfect views of the Torres. The next day we headed back to El Calafate where we indulged in a nice Italian dinner and a nice, hot shower at our Hospedaje. Patagonia was definitely a highlight of the trip for me, the air is clean and the whole area just feels so untouched. We flew back to Buenos Aires where we´d stay for one more day, then off to Mendoza.