We’re going to be doing a lot of ‘heading north’ in 2016, so from Punta Arenas we’re starting the New Year as we mean to go on… heading north! The (extremely) vague plan for the next few weeks is to zig-zag randomly between Chile and Argentina, up western Patagonia and the southern Andes. This will be our introduction to South America’s proper mountains. It’s a well-trodden route, up the Carretera Austral in Chile and Ruta 40 in Argentina. There’s a lot of driving and a lot to see.
First destination in 2016 is Puerto Natales – a pleasant little town. It has a rural, low-key feel with colourful, tin-shack houses, but amongst the unassuming looking streets is a generous sprinkling of high-end tourist shops, boutiques of top-notch out-door gear and several gastronomic opportunities. All of the foregoing result from the town’s convenient location as launch-point for one of South America’s top tourist destinations: Torres del Paine National Park.
Before the Park, just outside of Puerto Natales is an archeological site and the town’s other ‘claim to fame’: The Mylodon’s Cave. “Who on earth is The Mylodon when he’s at home?” you may well ask. The Mylodon is, or was, a giant ground sloth living some 10,000 years ago in the area. Unsurprisingly, it’s extinct now but the cave in which some remains were found has been turned into a rather cheesy tourist attraction. The site does attempt to educate regarding the geological and paleolithic aspects of the area, but the ‘lifesize’ plastic Mylodon standing in the mouth of the cave is a bit bizarre. Anyway, we paid our 4,000 Pesos (£4) entrance fee, so the cheesy photo just had to be taken 🙂
Torres del Paine
Moving swiftly on, next is the much awaited Torres del Paine National Park – Cuthbert’s introduction to The Andes. In the park are some of the most iconic mountains in South America and it is one of the great jewels in the continent’s ‘crown’ of tourist attractions. Stunning mountain scenery, waterfalls, lakes filled with turquoise blue glacier-melt water and islands of naturally sculptured glacier ice which have broken free to drift and melt randomly around the lakes.
There are miles and miles of hiking opportunities and visitors come from all over the world for a 7 or 10 day trek around the many peaks. These particular visitors – camping in small, unappealing tents on cold, wind-swept mountainsides – are younger and certainly much fitter than we are. Twenty years ago we would have been there keenly with them. These days we’re not quite in our Zimmer-frames, but we prefer the easy-option of the day-hike, returning each night to a hot shower, a glass of Marlbec and a comfy bed in Cuthbert 🙂
We enjoyed several of the Park’s short day-hikes, but one of the longer day-hikes that we were not prepared to miss, is up to the base of ‘The Torres’ – the three granite peaks after which the Park is named. It’s a three and a half hour 7km continuous steady climb up 500m to the base of the moraine, then a final one-hour, steep clamber up 300m along the edge of the moraine to reach the crater pool over which the granite Towers stand guard. The Towers, rather rudely, stayed hidden behind the cloud for our time there. It’s no way to treat someone who has generously hiked so far to see you, but there was very little hint of them coming out to introduce themselves properly. To rub salt into our wound, when we descended the moraine and glanced back up to the peaks, they were in clear blue open sky with hardly a cloud to be seen!!! Bugger! We still had a long (knee-killing) descent ahead of us to get back to Cuthbert, so we were not even going to consider re-climbing the moraine to see The Towers properly in the sunshine! ‘Sod’s Law’ says that if we had waited up there to see if the clouds would shift, the sky would almost certainly have remained grey for the next 5 hours 🙁 !!! Nevertheless, we had a great day and they were still a beautiful sight.
We were thoroughly impressed with our ‘Introduction to The Andes’ in the stunning Torres del Paine National Park. But we’ve much, much more to come from this mountain range which will dominate our travels for some months to come. Next we’re heading back into Argentina: El Calafate and the Perito Moreno Glacier… more mountainy and icy encounters to come.
Link to next blog: Ice, Mud and Mountains Link to full South America Blog
