Arrival in Torres del Paine National Park
On day 8 of the trip we got on a bus to Puerto Natales, about 3 hours away (from Punta Arenas). There we ate our last planned proper meal for the next couple days, rented a tent, a small portable stove, bought some gas for it, and got on a bus to Torres del Paine National Park.
Torres del Paine National Park is a national park in southern Chilean Patagonia. It lies in a transition area between the Magellanic subpolar forests and the Patagonian Steppes. The park is one of the 11 protected areas of the Magallanes Region and Chilean Antarctica (together with four national parks, three national reserves, and three national monuments). Together the protected forested areas comprise about 51% of the land of the region (6,728,744 hectares).
A rough plan called to hike the trail known as the w-circuit from east to west - To first see the Torres del Paine granite peaks (B) .. and to arrive at the
Grey Glacier (E) at the end of the hike.
We weren't sure about some of the details, but this is what ended up happening:
Day 1: Arrived at park, hiked to the first campsite (A)
Day 2: Hiked to Torres del Paine lookout point (B) and back (A)
Day 3: Hiked to the Refugio Los Cuernos campsite (C)
Day 4: Hiked to the Refugio Pehoé campsite (D)
Day 5: Hiked to Glaciar Grey (E)
That first day of hiking was relatively uneventful. We had the option of taking a shuttlebus directly to the campsite, but we opted to walk the 7.5km to get there instead in a bid to "get the hike started right".
It was a very cloudy day, so while you could see a very interesting landscape around you, you couldn't really see very far.
First picture taken from the bus:
There in the middle of the picture, those white dots.. our first campsite.
The sun doesn't go down until 9:30pm this far south (in late November), so we had a lot of time to set up camp.
So far so good!.. but the real hiking would begin the next morning.