Chile - Part 3

We were to spend a total of 3 nights at Hosteria Las Torres, which is right at the base of the centre peaks of the park, Las Torres Del Paines, and was very popular and incredibly busy.  It also has a campsite as part of its facilities, but despite this, it didn't feel claustrophobic, especially when this is the view from your room!

There was also a family of Patagonian Foxes who kept us entertained with their antics.  Harry thought it highly amusing that one was trying to get a piggyback from the other......

The hotel staff were incredibly friendly and helpful, and the trips out were fantastic.  They couldn't offer the full range of trips, as several went into the closed area of the park, so they just put on extra trips to the other locations.  We ended up dealing with the same guide organiser, Marcella, for the three days we there and she bent over backwards to help us.  On the first night, she came to us in the bar at just gone 10pm to let us know that she had been able to organise some horseriding for us.  Harry had wanted to go horseriding at Rio Serrano, but the trips weren't running, so he couldn't go.  We had explained this to Marcella, and she must have pulled out every stop going!  We had an hour on the most gentle horses going, with the three of us, the Baqueano and a guide.  A guide and a Baqueano go on each tour, as the Baqueanos are there to look after the horses, and speak very little English.  The Baqueanos dress in traditional clothes, as do the restaurant staff!

The restaurant food was excellent, and took the form of a buffet, with a huge choice.

We managed to get Harry walking some decent distances too.  On the first morning Harry walked about 5 miles, stopping after 2.5 miles and a 400 metre climb to play on his DSi because "his legs were tired."  He wasn't fazed by the bridges either, unlike Dawn.....

Day 2 was where we split off to do our own things.  I wanted to walk to Las Torres, which is advertised as a challenging walk, climbing around 1000m in 9km, but taking around 4 hours to reach Las Torres, and then 3.5 hours to return.  I booked a tour guide, which turned out to be Marcella, and at 9:30am, I set off, with just one other person to walk to Las Torres.  A packed lunch was provided, and Marcella was fairly clear that it would be us that set the pace for the day.  The other walker, Kate, was young american tourist on holiday with her grandparents.  The weather was very hot and sunny, topping out at 28C, so it was no surprise that by the time we reached Chileno, the halfway point that Ihad drunk 1.5 litres of water!  Chileno is around 400m high, but to reach it you first climb to just over 600m, before dropping down 200m to Chileno.  Kate and I were interviewed by Chilean TV at Chileno about our views on the park and how our holidays had been affected by the fires before the reporter tagged onto the group for the final stage.

We finally reached the top at 12:30.  Allowing for rest breaks we had completed a 4 hour walk in just under 3 hours!  Marcella thought that this may be one of the fastest guided times of the season, and we had been talking all the way and finding out lots of information.  I guess that just being a small group helped considerably!  The final stage of the walk is a climb of about 1.5km over the morraine left from the original corrie glacier, and is about a 1:2 gradient.  All of us by now had emptied our original water and were drinking from the hillside stream, which were crisp, cool and refreshing.

The view at the top was amazing, and the photos below do not show how blue the ice of the corrie glacier really was, and certainly don't allow you to hear the cracks, crunches and groans coming from the ice.  On account of our good time, we stayed here for around an hour, having lunch, taking photos, refilling water and generally exploring.

We left the top at 1:30, and on our way back met people we had passed on the way up, who were surprised how quickly we had made it.

We stopped just once on the way back down, at Chileno, and arrived back the hotel at 3:45, which Marcella then confirmed was the fastest guided time of the season!  Back in the room, I took off my  Gore-tex boots which are supposed to let sweat out but not let water in, to find that in the conditions that day Gore-tex boots simply do not work; I could wring my socks out, and my feet had pruned with the sweat.  The socks had to be washed through because they were that wet!  That said though, there was not a blister in sight!

Dawn and Harry meanwhile had stayed around the hotel for some spa, massage and jacuzzi treatment, before heading off a trip to Laguna Azul.  They visited similar places to the trip at the start of the holiday, but it was much more relaxed, more friendly, and Dawn said the tour was a lot better, wishing that we had skipped the tour on the first day and gone straight to Rio Serrano from Punta!

They made a final stop at the "Eco Campsite" which makes up part of the complex.  Basically, it's camping in a dome!

Time to head back to Punta Arenas for our flight home on Saturday!