Torres del Paine – Chile

See all the images here.

The least I can say about this trip is that it was intense!

I have dreamed and planned for this trip for a long time before I believe I was ready to do it. It was 2015, I always wanted to visit Chilean Patagonia and for the first time in a while I was able to save some money for an international travel. I've set aside 10 days for this trip so I was able to complete the big O around Torres del Paine instead of the very popular W trail.

The plan was to complete the O trail on Torres del Paine in 8 days, by myself. I had just been fired a couple months before and I wanted to have some alone time to think about life, perspectives, and plan for my next steps. My original idea was to make this travel in February, but life got complicated and I had to solve a couple things before departing, which made me postpone the trip a couple times till beginning of March, a not very ideal moment as the weather starts to get more unstable.

Arriving in Punta Arenas was already a challenge, after a long flight I was trying to find a way of taking a bus or a van to the city and find a hostel. Luckily I've met 4 Chilean guys that had the same plan and they were planning to complete the O trail, starting the trail on the same day I was planning to. As it's always good to have some locals around us, I've partnered with them in order to pay a van to take us to the city and we got a sweet deal on a hostel. The night before we were getting ready, we walked around the city to buy a couple more things we needed and we set up to go to bed pretty early as we have to be in time for the first bus to the National Park, otherwise we would risk not getting to the first campground in time.

The first day we had to attend a quick lecture before we were allowed inside the park: they had recently wildfires across the park (caused by misinformed tourists) that caused a lot of damage, so they are reinforcing the rules for visitors.

On the first campground we met people doing the same trip - same people that I would see along pretty much the 8 days and that would become company for some parts of the trail.

From the second day until the fifth we got rain, after rain, after rain. We got into a point where everything was wet all the time, the only dry clothes I ended up having was my "pajamas" and even my sleeping bag was partially wet, so I could only use half of it. There wasn't enough time to really dry anything, so day after day I had to wear the same wet clothes from the day before. Boots weren't a problem, but after so many days under the rain, the impression was that everything was wet all.the.time. I felt like I was going nuts with the sound of the rain in my jacket, I was sick of it all.

Some rare moments, the weather would clear for a couple minutes and I could make some pictures. We got a really bad weather most of the days, I couldn't really see much on most lookouts because of the fog and rain.

The last 3 days of the trip the weather finally got better, while at the same time we were moving to the most scenic part of the park. I got some freezing rain at the top of the crossing, but that was followed by sunshine and a beautiful sunset. With the Chilean guys, we had whisky with glacier ice at Lake Grey as we celebrated because most of the trip was done. We arrived at the W trail section, which means we got into the most civilized part of the park: lodges with warm beds, fancy restaurants serving steaks and a glass of a wine - and we all dirty backpackers with our compact stoves, freeze dried food and muddy clothes.

When we got into the Valle Ascencio (route to the towers) we knew we were close to the end: we had to camp as close to the base of Las Torres as possible and go to bed early in order to get there at sunrise.

We had around 1h trail to get to the base of the towers, not that bad, but in order to get there and be all set for the sunrise we had to get up at 3:30am, have a quick breakfast to hit the trail at 4am. The trail was already pretty busy and we had to pass more slower travelers in order to get there on time. When we got there, a big bummer: wind, fog, cloudy skies.

By that time we didn't have any great expectations, we had faced so many bad weather the last days that we weren't expecting anything different.

Other photographers were arriving and were setting by my side, we were minutes from the sunrise and I was actually looking back, right at the mountains behind us, there was an interesting crowd of people standing at the top of the rocks that surround the lake at the base of the towers when I saw a couple of pinky clouds on the top of their heads, and that was really awesome! I made a couple shots and I heard somebody saying "wow, look ahead" and when I turned my head around I saw what looked like a miracle: a sun beam was hitting the towers with that same very bright pinkish light and creating a beautiful rainbow at the top. The towers seemed on fire and all that only lasted a couple minutes, but enough time for me to create one of the pictures that I like the most and that means a lot to me: perseverance, reward, the unpredictable, the unknown.

From that point the trip was over, we had to descent, pack the tents, go down into the main entrance and take the last bus to leave the park.

This is a very remarkable trip for me, not only because it was a long trip that I've done by myself, planning my meals and carrying everything I needed for 8 days, but also because it somehow marked the end of an era and, of course, a new beginning.

Thanks for reading!