One of the biggest attractions in Patagonia is Torres del Paine, where Torres is “Towers” in Spanish and “Paine” means blue in an old local dialect. So “Blue Towers”
The name comes from three prominent “towers”, stone pinnacles, in the middle of the massive mountain. Still, that national park has so much more: lakes, glaciers, lodges, ice, sun, animals, and, in general, a beautiful landscape.
But for me, it didn’t go that well with my Torres experience, but let’s start from the beginning:
You have two options to visit the park: via day trips from Puerto Natales or multi-day hikes around the park with camping or sleeping in lodges.
I decided on the day hike option, which has two drawbacks: you have to commute every day to the park and back (minimum 2 hours per direction, depending on your day hike, up to 4 hours), and you are not able to walk every part of the park as some areas are far away from the entrance.
The commute is very convenient; at 7 am, the first buses leave Puerto Natales, and after 1:40, you will always reach the park entrance to show your ticket. Different options are available from there: walking the first trails, taking small shuttles, or continuing on the bus you just arrived with.
Looking at the park map, I found one hike next to the entrance pretty attractive, but I was not reading it carefully enough: some hikes are only available with a guide 🙁
That specific is only available with a guide as pumas might occur on the track, and they want to avoid any clash with these precious but also dangerous animals
But as it was my first day, it was easy to find a different track
For four hours, I walked on a gorgeous lake before I turned around to get my bus back to Puerto Natales.
On my second day, I took an agency that drove around the whole park to see more and walk less. It was fine as I planned to walk a lot on the third day…
On that day, I could also see the “Torres del Paine”. Unfortunately, only from far away…
Sometimes it’s nice to have a guide, especially if they can teach you about everything necessary for the area you are visiting.
For example, my guide told us about the white Lama, Guanaco.
They are common here; they are the food for the Pumas. They, on the other side, only need water and grass to eat. But as not much is growing here, they adopted the behavior of HOW to eat grass. Usually, like cows and sheep, Lama rips the grass out of the ground, which means new grass has to start growing as they rip out the roots most of the time. This is not a problem in normal environments. In that challenging environment, new gras might never grow for years. So the Guanaco does not rip out the roots; they really bite off the top of the grass so that the grass is still alive and able to grow. Again, a nice adoption to natural boundaries.
On the way back from the park, the guide stopped in a historical cave, “Milodon Cave” (Cueva del Milodon)
It’s a cave 220m deep, 30m high and 80m wide.
Huge, no offense, but it is not worth spending 14 USD on the entrance fee. The only exciting thing in that cave is the story about the animal Mylodon, a giant Sloth. In 1896, Captain Eberhard discovered the remains of this giant ground sloth in the Milodon Cave. A statue in Puerto Natales and the cave remembers that fascinating prehistoric animal.
On my third day, everything possible went wrong, and it’s still pretty annoying even after a couple of weeks.
The plan was to walk a trail to see the famous grey glacier in the west upper part of the park. Doing that, I had to take the bus to the entrance to show the ticket, returning to the same bus to get to a ferry dock 30 min away. After a 30-minute ride across the lake “Pheo” it would be three hours of hiking before reaching the perfect spot to see the glacier. After the important Instagram pictures, everything vice versa to get back. I bought a ticket for the bus at 7:20 pm for the way back.
This would be the point to show you the fantastic glacier picture, but it is impossible. I reached (with some other day hikers) as planned the ferry dock at 10 am, and we got the info: the ferry was broken; it would not go anywhere. That was the mess but not the biggest problem of the day. Because a different issue occurred: how to get back??? As all buses were fully booked for the way back to Puerto Natales, it took five more hours before I got a seat on a bus. Luckily, I didn’t have to wait until half past 7, but it was still annoying and frustrating.
The only positive side: if it had been broken while I was on the other side of the lake, I wouldn’t have had any chance to come home, therefore, lucky Toto, somehow… So the only picture of the day is me waiting….
I was back in Puerto Natales at 5 pm, 10 hours after I left, and I did nothing on the day besides bus riding and waiting…
On my last day, I went on a ship to see the Serano and Balmaceda glaciers. It was nice, but again a lot of time commuting, 5 1/2 hours on the ship. At least that ship started in Puerto Natales; therefore, there were not that much bus-riding on that day 🙂
And some final words about a douchebag and his toilet paper: in 2011, a guy from Isreal burned his toilet paper in the park instead of taking it back. The result? Seventeen acres of burning trees and thousands of dead animals. And as I told you, it’s tough to get something growing here; no new tree has grown since then, and you only see the burned trees as a sign for stupid guys. Please read this report by a fireman who has been at two previous fires at Torres del Paine. It’s heartbreaking but a story that needs to be told.
For me, Torres del Paine is unique, and I will return to do the multi-day trail! For sure!
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