For those of you to whom we said we’re off for 18 months of summer, you can begin laughing now… for those of you who claimed we’re flashpacking, read on and weep…
Short Version
We hiked 71.6km over 4.5 days, sleeping in a tent for 5 nights, carrying all our sleeping gear, clothes and food, getting our water from mountain streams. We went up mountains and down them. We got rained on, snowed on, sunburnt, windswept and very very cold. We saw amazing scenery that can only be reached by foot. We had a great time with no permanent damage and NO BLISTERS!!!
Long version
Sit back, get a glass of wine or cup of tea (how we missed tea!) and enjoy…
The Belgians
So, we’d read in guide books how the best way to explore the Torres Del Paine Nacional Park was to do a 3-4 day hike, called the W, due to the shape the route makes across the park.
We’d always planned to do at least a day or two’s trekking in the park, possibly staying in the refugios (think basic hostels) along the way. Then we met the Belgians….
We were sharing a dorm with them in El Calafate and they had just finished doing the W route. They said that the refugios were expensive and the cheap way to do it was to camp and take your own food and cook yourself. They also mentioned there were free campsites so we could keep the cost down even more. We asked them how hard the route was and they said as long as you were reasonably fit, it was fine, anyone could do it. We thought, they’re Belgians, they live in a flat country, we live next to Constitution Hill, this’ll be fine…
We then assessed our past experience in these things.
- Camping – well we’ve been to Glastonbury and that nice middle class campsite in Dartmoor where you could pre-order your breakfast croissants and cafetiere of coffee must count.
- Hiking – done a lot of this. Okay, often going to a warm bed and a bathroom at the end of the day.
- Carrying all our gear – we’ve been walking from bus stations to our hostels with all our gear. Surely that was good practice for walking up to 7 hours a day with all our stuff…
We headed to Puerto Natales, Chile, the nearest town to the Park.
4Elementos
Ros put us in touch with a Chilean scientist, who put us in touch with his good friend, Trauko. We kind of got the gist that Trauko had created an environmentally hostel, but we didn’t realise the extent of it til we arrived.
Basically, there is no recycling in Chile. It all goes to landfill (boo!!) – apart from this small hostel… Trauko built the interior of the hostel from materials he found or made himself from other materials. Awesome. But the hostel is just a concern to fund his real passion – recycling.
The Torres Del Paine has thousands of visitors a year. All the rubbish in the park is then carried out on mules and taken by boat to landfil. Trauko wants to change this. However, he has to show people what recycling is…so in his back yard he has a sorting and sifting plant. We kid you not.
He sorts all the hostel's rubbish, then, having got the machines from Sweden, he crushes the glass and plastic and paper, ready to sell to a recycling company... he's trying ot introduce it to the Park, but currently they are having none of it as it costs them money.... he needs support and funding to build a proper sorting and sifting site...if you are interested in supporting all this, let us know and we'll put you in touch...
Anyway, the long and short is we agreed to carry all our rubbish out of the park so he could recycle it. This was largely in order for us to be able ot come back and have more homemade bread and oj for breakfast...
As well as being mad to save the planet, by happy coincidence one of Trauko's former jobs was in the South Pole. He has loads of gear from this and his Swedish trips which he loans out to guests. We were sorted with awesome sleeping bags, therma rests (roll mats) and the most amazing tent, tried and tested by him in Antartica, for our trip. This thing was 100% water and snow proof and weighed less than Martin's pants bag (unsoiled)...
So, off we set.
The trek
First, it was hard work carrying all our stuff. We reckon we carried 35kg between us. This got lighter as we ate as we went along. Turns out those nice rucksacks for backpacking aren't so great to carry weight around for up to 7 hours a day. Especially not if one of them is a knock off one from Bangkok...
Second, it was cold. Turns out spring in Patagonia means "a bit less windy" so only gusts of up to 50kmph instead of 80kmph and snow every other day. As a general rule, if you can see a glacier or hear avalanches from where you are pitching your tent, it's going to be a cold night.
You know you're cold when:
- you risk burning your hands when putting the camping stove away because it's better than cold
- you sleep inside the sleepingbag. As in, inside, completely sealed in from all sides, wearing all your clothes. And cuddling. And still feel cold.
- A cuppa soup with pasta in it is a breakfast fit for a king
- you can't tell the difference between hot water and cold water as it all just hurts
- you hope that the next bit of walking will be uphill so you might warm up a bit
- note to mothers - we had good quality gear and were only at mild risk of hypothermia.
So, camping outside for 5 nights. The sound of the gale whipping through the trees punctuated by the occasional avalance in the distance wasn't exactly soothing. It was quite exciting when on our 4th night we woke up to see the sun.
Cooking over a stove - but tricky but surprisingly satisfying, as long as you like pasta. Most commonly used phrase "This is gorgeous, mind you, anything hot would taste good right now". Competitive cookery note - we were the only campers not living off instant noodles. Fresh veg and homemade sauces (well, garlic and stock cubes) everynight. Oh, chocolate. A large bar. Every day. Essential.
But the scenery... once again, our photos are just too inadequate. The park is awesome and every section of the route had different scenes. The Cuernos (seires of 3 moutains) were stunning, the Torres, breathtaking, the lakes glistening and unbelievably turquoise. We've seen a lot of lakes in the last few months. Still not bored of them.
Condors - surprisingly common for an endangered species. Really beautiful and graceful. Absolutely massive. Little bit disconcerting when you realise what they are circling above is you!
Overall, we had a fantastic time, although there were sections that felt more like an endurance trial than a fun holiday activity. Would we do it again? Absolutely, but with better backpacks, and possibly in summer.
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