Scott has dreamed of traveling to Torres del Paine, a spectacular national park, in the southern reaches of Chilean Patagonia for a long, long time. When planning this trip, it seemed a daunting journey and we nearly excluded it from our itinerary. First you have to fly 3.5 hours due south of Santiago to Punta Arenas, then you have to drive 4.5 hours just to get to the entrance of the park, much of that on rough gravel roads. From there it's another 1-2 hours on more gravel roads to get inside the park to see anything, plus a load of hiking if you really want to see it. So it's a lot of effort to get there, and also due to its remoteness it's also fairly expensive. But we decided if we didn't do it on this trip, we might never do it and Scott would leave feeling some regret. So we went for it.
You feel the isolation of the extreme remoteness the minute you get off the plane. There's not much around. The roads are long. The services are sparse. The landscape is unrecognisable. With the fierce Patagonian winds fighting us along the route, we made our way to Torres del Paine. First we had to stop at Puerto Natales, the last stop along the way to Torres with services to buy food and fuel to keep us going throughout our Torres del Paine visit. Leaving that port felt a little unnerving as we headed into the wild. But soon enough the gravel roads lead to the magnificent peaks of the Torres range, and all worldly cares are forgotten.
At long last Scott reaches Torres del Paine!
I loved all the colourful, wild lupines found all over this region
After settling into our base for the next 4 nights we spent our first full day on the west side of the park visiting Lago Grey, named after its colour sake
Playing on the shores of Lago Grey
We took a boat excursion on Lago Grey to visit the many faces of the spectacular Glacier Grey
Glacial ice in our drinks
View of Torres del Paine from our cabin
View over Rio Serrano and Torres del Paine
Our second day we hit the epic and very difficult Las Torres trail which extends 19.5 roundtrip and requires an 800-meter total ascent and an 800-meter descent. It was excruciating in parts for me, and a challenge for Trevon, who was easily the youngest summiteer on the trail. It was a day to celebrate rising to challenges that you didn't believe you could do. I was shattered for a couple of days after the hike, but I am so glad we did this as a family. We helped each other along the way and proved we aren't quitters and that we can do hard things, together.
Signs along the trail that gave you both of sense of completion and a sense of overwhelming
At last we reached the prize! The Mirrador del Torres. The towers were mostly covered during our 60-90 minute stop at the top, but we did get a couple of good views. The scene at the top was utterly breath taking, nothing like it.
A dream come true!
After such a heavy day of hiking the day before and because the winds became so fierce (reaching 70 kph) we had to keep things more low key exploring the park on our last day. We drove in and enjoyed some vistas of the cuernos, stopped to grab a quick lunch to get out of the wind and nearly got swept away at the waterfalls.
The winds here are no joke!
Along the road back to the airport to carry on to the next part of our Chilean adventure, the boys had to stop to use the "restroom," best be several paces away from your buddy when using el banos al fresco in the fierce Patagonian winds.
A perfectly surreal sendoff to our perfectly surreal Patagonian adventure, a huge heard of sheep blocking the road to the airport.
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