Day 5-9: Patagonia - Torres del Paine, Chile

Patagonia is best described with some adjectives and a lot of pictures. Adjectives: harsh, desolate, windy, rocky, icy, stunning, unique, brutal, glacial, beautiful, lonely, awesome. We did four great hikes in Torres del Paine, an incredibly beautiful park on the Chilean side. Though we experienced some ridiculously high winds and some clouds and rain, the weather was amazing and we got to see clearly all the sights on our itinerary.


Our first hike took us to an overlook of Glacier Grey, a huge and long glacier flowing from the Patagonian ice field into Lago Grey, a large mountain lake where you can find stunningly blue icebergs. The wind literally nearly knocked us over, but it was a great view to start the hiking trip.


Hike 2 was a strenuous and long one, the goal an overlook at the base of Los Cuernos (The Horns), craggy rock formations intruded by a bubble of magma long ago and later carved by glaciers to reveal the different strata. The weather began poorly, with hardly any view at all, but we arrived perfectly at the top as the clouds parted and revealed an amazing display of mountains and glaciers.


The third day was a shorter, four hour hike that was basically a transfer to our final campground but had some great views of glacial lakes and Los Cuernos from a different angle.


The last hike was another long day with a couple steep climbs, including a last push up a rocky old glocier moraine to the base of the spires that the region is named after, the Torres del Paine. When we reached the lake underneath the glacier, we had what was probably our most stunning view directly underneath the Torres.





And now, more pictures: