Monday, 28 February 2011

Torres del Paine in the rain

After a week of protests, the government appeased the Chilean protesters by lowering their proposed 17% rise in gas prices to a mere 3% rise.  The ports were re-opened, the roads unblocked, and people were able to move in and our of Chile once again.  Tourists who had been stuck in Puerto Natales moved out and made space for new tourists, like Christian and I.

From El Calafate we had an uneventful but long bus journey to Puerto Natales.  As soon as you cross the border between Argentina and Chile you notice the difference.  The people are considerably shorter than their Argentine counterparts, they look more native, and seem to be friendlier.  For Christian and I, much of Chile felt like the poorer neighbour to Argentina.  If South America was a street, Argentina is the white-washed house with perfectly preened roses whilst Chile is the scruffy student-house next door where they party all hours (in actual fact, depending on how you cut the figures, Chile is now richer than Argentina).  Of course, this is all relative, and the UK would live in a different area altogether!

Puerto Natales is a scruffy town next to a beautiful lake.  If it weren’t so wet when we arrived it would probably have had the feel of a dusty frontier town, but as it was, the roads were mud instead.  We stayed at Lili Patagonica hostel and were really impressed with the helpfulness of staff there. 

The only reason to stay in Puerto Natales is because it is the gateway to the Torres Del Paine national park, 70 km away, and we soon made arrangements to visit.  Our very original plan was to trek the famous “W” trail for three or four days.  However, when the gas price protests thwarted our plan we were only left with a day in the national park.  We booked a guide who would take us up to the most famous view of the Torres (towers in English) and we started off early the next day.  We drove to the National Park entrance, signed in with a man who gave us a ticket and pointed us to a man just next to him, stepped over to the next man and gave him our ticket, paid this man, and were then pointed to the original man again who gave us a leaflet. (Great use of resources once again, why use one man when you can use two).

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Christian filling his water bottle

We met our guide and fellow walkers (an older British couple Graham and Marion) at the base of the park.  We filled up our water bottles at the stream and started upwards.  The walk was varied and interesting in terms of views and surroundings but one thing remained constant… the darkening skies.  Rain jackets were needed pretty early on but by the time we were making the final ascent to the viewpoint the weather had subsided.  This is the only really tough part of the walk with a couple of scrambles over rocks, but generally it was pretty straight-forward.

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The highlight of the Torres del Paine national park are the three Torres themselves, but as we climbed higher and higher we realized that the weather was closing in, and that we weren’t going to get the view that we had climbed for.  In fact when we reached the top we only had a view of about 2/3 of the Torres, with the rest shrouded in cloud.  Very disappointing.

IMG_8038 Christian with the beginnings of the Torres behind him

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Disappointed and cold faces at the top

We cheered up a little on the way down, especially after we had eaten a gourmet lunch (great work from the guide!) and a rainbow had come out.

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Christian!  I said that we cheered up when the rainbow appeared, you still look miserable.

At the base of the climb, Christian and I had the worst hot chocolate of our lives in a fancy hotel, full of noisy Americans.  Our guide told us that Pinochet had granted one of his friends access to development in the National Park, and as a result a hotel had been built, the National Park are not happy about it, but there is nothing they can do.

The bus drive back to Puerto Natales gave us some amazing scenery as the sky brightened up, probably better than we had seen all day, and we also saw some ostriches and guanacos.

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Spot the ostrich

Back in Puerto Natales, we found the bus station and booked our next day’s journey to Ushuaia, and went for a delicious barbeque meal.  After a final night in Chile, we were heading to the ends of the Earth, and crossing over once again to Argentina.  It is worth noting that once upon a time all these border crossings were not necessary.  Patagonia used to belong to Chile, but when Chile was at war with Peru and Bolivia and the northern border of Chile was in jeapardy, they decided it would be pertinent to avoid any upset of their other borders, by ensuring peace with Argentina.  At this point they gave the Argentine’s a large piece of Patagonia, and so only a narrow slither of Patagonia remains as part of Chile.

And now down, down we go.  To the ends of the Earth!

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