La patagonia Chilena!

On Monday December 7th, Allison B, Abby, Madeline, and I headed to the airport for a redeye flight to Punta Arenas. We were about to spend 5 days in the chilean Patagonia, but we didn't really know what to expect. We had all just finished finals and so little research was put into details of the actual time spent there. When we arrived at the airport in Punta Arenas, it was only 3:30am so we slept on the floor until the first bus left for Puerto Natales at 8am. Luckily, we were able to leave around 6am because there was a bus of bicyclists that was about to head for Puerto Natales and their driver offered for us to go with them. When we got to Puerto Natales, we rented two two-person tents and four sleeping bags and strapped everything to our backpacks. We had lunch and wandered around the town until the bus left for Torres del Paine National Park. When we finally got to the park, we paid to enter and then took a catamaran across Lago Pehoé to our first campsite.

When we got off the catamaran we were at the first campsite but it was pouring rain, so we went inside to make our peanut butter sandwiches which we planned to eat for the next four days. We then made friends with 3 Barcelonian guys who helped us set up our two tents. We woke up the next morning and began our hiking. We hiked for about 4 hours to get to Glacier Grey, had lunch, and then hiked back down. The glacier was so amazing to see that it seemed unreal. It rained and snowed on us that entire first day. We spent the second night at the same campsite and then packed up our stuff in the morning. The second day we camped at Los Cuernos. We met two girls from Maine and bonded with them over the food we had brought, the ridiculous costs associated with camping at these campsites, and foot pains.

The third day was my favorite because we hiked along Lago Nordenskold (we called it lake Nogin-shnogin) for the entire day. The water was turquoise and the views and reflections were amazing. We stopped at campamento Chileno for some hot chocolate and to buy some bread. Then we continued to campamento Torres so that we would be by the famous torres and go see them the next morning. All the friends that we made along the W-route were staying at the same place. It was fun to spend the evening with them since by the fourth day we felt like we knew them pretty well. The funniest part was that they were from Israel, New Zealand, Germany, France, United States, and England...but no Chileans! They all got a kick out of the fact that we were only eating peanut butter sandwiches so they offered us all of their left over pasta.

The next morning we woke up early, hiked up to the towers, and then hiked all the way down to the hotel to catch the bus back to Puerto Natales. When we got back to the hotel, we once again met up with all the friends we had made. It was so nice to sit on the lawn and rest our legs after the 66 kilometers (about 40 miles) that we had just hiked in 4 days!