Brrrrr! Tad Windy
When I was a kid, I vaguely remember reading a book about a viking (I think he was called Erik) who sailed his ship of the end of the Earth and found some great hall in space. When we got to the end of the Earth on this trip, we instead found that there was just a lot of wind, wind and then a bit more wind. OK, I know that the Earth probably isn´t flat and resting on the back of an Elephant supported by Turtles (don´t ask - I think it is Indian Mythology), and therefore being a sphere, we were no more at the end of the Earth here than we would be back home, but this was the furthest south we would get on this trip - only a few hundred miles from Antarctica, so it certainly felt like the end of the Earth, and the thing we encountered most was a lot of very strong, very cold wind!!
Reading through that last paragraph, it probably doesn´t come across as a ringing endorsement for this part of the world, but the Patagonia region of South America (spanning both Argentina and Chile) is the most impressive we have encountered so far on this trip. I´ve already mentioned in my last blog about the Moreno Glacier and Fitz Roy which were both fantastic to see, but then when you cross the border into Chile, you get the Torres Del Paine National Park which is something else altogether. The national park includes a number of lakes and peaks, but the main attractions are the mountains of Los Cuernos (the horns) and La Torres (the towers) after which the park is named, along with the Lago Grey lake and the Glacier Grey which slowly rumbles down from the mountains to feed it.
The well used route which takes you between these three highlights is called the "W" (because the path when looked at on a map is shaped like a letter W as it takes you up the three main valleys), which takes between three to five days to complete and on which you can either camp, or stay at refugeos of varying quality. We chose the middle ground of a 4 day option and the comfort and relative warmth of the refugios - at least we knew there was less chance of those being blown away in the wind (I also read the three little pigs when I was a kid).
During the walk, we experienced gusts of wind that must have reached over 150 miles an hour at points and nearly took us off our feet, we had rain, snow and hail, we had fantastic sunshine and we had a great time! We managed to see all the main sights in varying weather conditions, although never quite got the perfect weather, but when we finally finished the "W" and went to the hosteria on Lago Pehoe for our final night in the park, we got blueish skys for 45 minutes allowing us to be able to view the horns in the best conditions that we had experienced so far, and as the horns were the things we had come to see, we can´t complain too much - we´ve spoken to people who got only 15 minutes of clear sky on their entire 4 day trek.
The horns, as Mandi has mentioned, were the highlight of our Patagonia visit. They were the things we had come all this way to see and they were definitely worth it. They look like a wall of rock that has gradually been eroded by the glaciers and thrashed by the winds to give it a crooked, jagged appearence as it still stands in defiance of the elements at the end of the Earth. It´s a hard scene to describe and our pictures also don´t really do it justice, but it was definitely not a disappointment, and worth every hour and every mile of the bus journey´s that got us there.
The "W" trek and the sights down there are my favourite part of out trip so far (just pushing Iguazu into second place), we saw some amazing scenes, we met some brilliant people (Mandi has already mentioned this in her blog but thanks again Jeremy and Evelyn for 500!), and, in amongst the wind and rain, had a great time. Our trip back up north was on a ferry through the Chilean Fjords, but unfortunately the weather wasn´t on our side this time and so we were unable to see much until we arrived in Puerto Montt where we then had to jump on the next bus to Santiago. We will give an update on Santiago in a later blog, but one thing I will say is that it is nice to be back in the sun. The weather here is over 30 degrees, there isn´t a cloud in the sky, and best of all, there isn´t a breath of wind!
Steve
Reading through that last paragraph, it probably doesn´t come across as a ringing endorsement for this part of the world, but the Patagonia region of South America (spanning both Argentina and Chile) is the most impressive we have encountered so far on this trip. I´ve already mentioned in my last blog about the Moreno Glacier and Fitz Roy which were both fantastic to see, but then when you cross the border into Chile, you get the Torres Del Paine National Park which is something else altogether. The national park includes a number of lakes and peaks, but the main attractions are the mountains of Los Cuernos (the horns) and La Torres (the towers) after which the park is named, along with the Lago Grey lake and the Glacier Grey which slowly rumbles down from the mountains to feed it.
The well used route which takes you between these three highlights is called the "W" (because the path when looked at on a map is shaped like a letter W as it takes you up the three main valleys), which takes between three to five days to complete and on which you can either camp, or stay at refugeos of varying quality. We chose the middle ground of a 4 day option and the comfort and relative warmth of the refugios - at least we knew there was less chance of those being blown away in the wind (I also read the three little pigs when I was a kid).
During the walk, we experienced gusts of wind that must have reached over 150 miles an hour at points and nearly took us off our feet, we had rain, snow and hail, we had fantastic sunshine and we had a great time! We managed to see all the main sights in varying weather conditions, although never quite got the perfect weather, but when we finally finished the "W" and went to the hosteria on Lago Pehoe for our final night in the park, we got blueish skys for 45 minutes allowing us to be able to view the horns in the best conditions that we had experienced so far, and as the horns were the things we had come to see, we can´t complain too much - we´ve spoken to people who got only 15 minutes of clear sky on their entire 4 day trek.
The horns, as Mandi has mentioned, were the highlight of our Patagonia visit. They were the things we had come all this way to see and they were definitely worth it. They look like a wall of rock that has gradually been eroded by the glaciers and thrashed by the winds to give it a crooked, jagged appearence as it still stands in defiance of the elements at the end of the Earth. It´s a hard scene to describe and our pictures also don´t really do it justice, but it was definitely not a disappointment, and worth every hour and every mile of the bus journey´s that got us there.
The "W" trek and the sights down there are my favourite part of out trip so far (just pushing Iguazu into second place), we saw some amazing scenes, we met some brilliant people (Mandi has already mentioned this in her blog but thanks again Jeremy and Evelyn for 500!), and, in amongst the wind and rain, had a great time. Our trip back up north was on a ferry through the Chilean Fjords, but unfortunately the weather wasn´t on our side this time and so we were unable to see much until we arrived in Puerto Montt where we then had to jump on the next bus to Santiago. We will give an update on Santiago in a later blog, but one thing I will say is that it is nice to be back in the sun. The weather here is over 30 degrees, there isn´t a cloud in the sky, and best of all, there isn´t a breath of wind!
Steve
Labels: "around the world", "round the world", chile, Torres del Paine
posted by Steve at
14:16
1 Comments:
wow. Emma and I are so jeolous. Patagonia sounds like a mistical place. It's definitely on our list of places to go... One day. Hope you had a great chrismas. It's really useful to keep up with you both through the blog. Keep it up!
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