Torres del Paine

I've never done a multi-day hike before, so I didn't really know what to expect, nor did I have much time to expect anything. This national park is a hiker's dream, with trails passing between towering peaks and bright turquoise lakes, leading to glaciers and through wind-swept plains.

I've never seen so many different landscapes so close together, and this hike was really, I dunno... unreal.

We did the ´W´ hike, which is the one that everyone else does, with the first day hiking up to the Torres, these 4 needle point peaks and the trademark of the park, and camping in a little dirt site below. We were prepared, with our little gas cooker and nothing but pasta and soup meals for 4 days straight. Yum.

The next day we walked down along a blue lake and to the French valley, sitting between two mountains of jagged peaks, where we camped again near a river. We set off again after our morning oatmeal to the Gray lake and glacier, which, tho not as impressive as the Moreno one was still very cool. We ended up sleeping on a beach next to huge floating icebergs that night and the next morning was a race against the clock (and the rain) to catch our bus out of there at 6pm.

Well, we made it with plenty of time to spare, with lots of help from the wind that was pushing our backs the whole time. We even invented a new sport called savannah-trashbag-fly-kiting... we just have to work on the name some.

We returned to Puerto Natales, exhausted but happy, taking the next mornings bus (and a shower!) to Punta Arenas.