November 4th
Torres del Paine
We once again woke up early and set out for our drive to Torres del paine national park.
As we left Porto Natales, we drove alongside the beautiful shore it sits on.
We encountered more unique animal, warning, signs along the roadway. They are building a new concrete roadway, but we are on an unpaved road parallel to it.
We arrived two hours later at the Park entrance. We stopped to buy our entrance ticket but neither of our credit cards would work on their machine. The ranger told us we would have a free pass because the problem was on their end. Yeah! Five more minutes down the road we arrived at the welcome center where we start our hike to Torres del Paine viewpoint.
We passed by a Chilean fire bush with bright red trumpet shaped flowers with a river flowing on the opposite side.
After crossing the river we continued along a wide path. We passed a “Prickly Heath” with bright pink berries.
The trail began a steady uphill grade providing amazing views of the valley we are climbing out of.
The trail is well traveled and fairly wide at most parts so far. As it rises we come alongside the valley with the river we crossed on the bridge below.
The trail offers gorgeous views of the snow capped mountains, trail side streams cascading down the hillside, and deep glacier carved valley rock faces with an occasional waterfall.
We dropped back down to the river and crossed another bridge to find a Refugio. The national park does not allow dispersed camping. You can only camp in commercial sites like this one. The tent sites are elevated platforms on the hillside. There is also a restaurant and bathrooms with showers.
Continuing down the trail, we passed another small stream and waterfall before crossing back to the other side of the river on another bridge.
We continued through wooded mountain trails crossing a couple more smaller streams reaching the official boundary of the Torres del Paine national park.
The trail continues to rise with amazing views every time we have a break in the trees.
After climbing steeply up a river bed we break through the tree line and are on a barren mountain side with more incredible views in all directions.
At last we reached a point near the top where the towers are visible. They are an awesome backdrop, but we still have a little farther to go.
We crest the saddle and get our first look at an amazing light blue lake with giant stone towers rising high above. The towers alone are incredible, the lake adds another level of wow!
We drop down to the lake shore and begin taking many pictures of God’s breathtaking creation.
After almost two hours in this amazing spot we begin our journey back to the starting point. We now have constant views that were behind us on the way up. More beautiful views of the valley, river and carved valleys.
We reached the welcome center having hiked 14.27 miles with 3351 feet of elevation climbed. The road to our campsite for tonight is all unpaved and took us an hour to go 21 miles. We are renting a tent site, tents, and sleeping bags for two nights. We ate the restaurant on site which served an impressive amount of food. It was an amazing day. It was a long day. We are tired and hungry and didn’t get pictures of our food before going to bed.
