Justine and Dylan’s Travel Blog

And to finish off our tour of Patagonia we did a final three days around Torres del Paine National Park, billed as the W (three day walks which on a map look like a W).

We had already done the Las Torres Lookout in almost perfect conditions, so did a walk around Lago Sarmiento and Laguna Verde instead (30kms all up), which was quite nice (although the highlight was probably the lookout over Lago Sarmiento and Rio Paine at the start of the walk…).

Had also done the Valle des Frances (French Valley, 27kms) on day 2, but were happy to do it again in perfect (although somewhat windy) conditions (remember me babbling on about the weather in the previous post?… yup, it was still good at this stage). It really is one of the best and most varied walks I´ve ever done with spectacular views at the end at the Mirador Condor.

Finally, day three was a walk to Lago and Glaciar Grey. This last day was a bit of a circus as most people in our tour group by this stage had grown tired of walking and wanted to catch the early catamaran back at 12noon. Not impressed as we were expecting one last full day (the short version, walk- and day-wise was NOT what had been sold to us), we ended up meeting the tour guides halfway and forced one of them to get up at 5am to accompany us to the Refugio Grey and back by 12noon. Well, we made it (23kms), but I´ve had more relaxing walks… Disappointing also as the weather was probably the best we´ve had during our entire stay in Patagonia (sunny, cloudless AND completely windstill) and apart from a more casual pace, we also missed out on going all the way to the third lookout (next to Glaciar Grey, instead of in front), which is apparently worth the extra few kms. Oh well, can´t win ´em all I guess, and leaves something for us to come back to… although might be a while :)

Overall still a great few days (80kms!) and am now totally content with leaving Patagonia. Couldn´t have had better weather, better views or nicer people to walk with. Other than a few days of flash-packing (meaning “backpacking” in a nice hotel) left in Buenos Aires, all set for the next part of our adventures in Vancouver, New York, London and Holland. Which will probably mainly consist of undoing all the good work (fitness-wise) from the last two months. Oh well…

Btw – haven´t been able to get the computer I´m currently sitting at to co-operate photo-wise, so will try to post some preview piccies again over the next few days…

So we started our final tour of Patagonia by visiting the Glaciares National Park for a second time. We´d done a little bit of it previously, but this time we did a full loop around the best parts of the park, with a bit of glacier walking thrown in at the end.

Well, I´m glad we went back. The weather was better, the parts we hadn´t seen previously were just as good as the ones we had and the glaciar walking (on Glaciar Grande at the base of Cerro Torre) was awesome.

The best part though was once again the weather. The first time I did the Laguna de los Tres walk there were low-hanging clouds and hail coming in horizontally on the way up. Needless to say we didn´t get the best views. It cleared up somewhat later in the day but by that stage we´d come back down and missed the views that Cerro Fitz Roy is famous for.

This time however, we were just plain lucky to be there during what the mountaineers in the area (and probably everywhere I guess) call a “window”. This is a (sometimes small) period of time during which the weather is good enough (mainly no wind) to go climbing up a sheer wall of granite (and you thought I was crazy). January had not had a window until the 15th of Jan… which happened to be the day after we arrived. It lasted the whole time we were there and then some (by the end of Torres del Paine a week later the weather was still glorious, absolutely amazing). As soon as I get technology at this end working I´ll show off some more with some photos

Anyway, apart from the usual sights (our walk was a loop from El Chalten to Laguna Capri, Laguna de los Tres, Lagunas Madre y Hija, Lago Torre, Cerro Torre and back out to El Chalten) we also did some glaciar walking, which was pretty cool. All that´s needed are some gloves and crampons on your shoes and you can walk straight onto it. Having guides and great weather (windstill!) probably made things easier, but still. The glacier we did was Glaciar Grande at the foot of Cerro Torre. This had the nice side effect of actually being able to walk several kms (not all on the glaciar) closer to the base of Cerro Torre for even better views of what would have to be one of the coolest peaks I know. Some ice climbing (only a few meters) after lunch as part of the glacier walking topped off a great day, which in turn topped off an amazing couple of days around Los Glaciares.