We’ve finally done it! 9 months in the planning…..
The Inca Trail to Machu Picchu is complete and ticked off our bucket list.
Peru is finally here! I’m so excited- I’ve wanted to come here for so long and we actually made it. Peru has fascinated me for a long time and the Inca trail even more so. We arrived in Cusco from Chile, 2 days before the trip began as it’s necessary to adjust to the high altitude for a few days beforehand. Although we’ve been at altitude in Chile, this was on a different level- as soon as we stepped off the bus it was harder to breathe and even a 10 minute walk into town was hard work.
The Inca trail is a 43km ‘path’ that leads to the spiritual home of the Inca people, Machu Picchu. The trail is the original path that the Incas built so that pilgrims could visit Machu Picchu around 500 years ago. It’s a 4 day/3 night trek that’s only accessible with a guide- new restrictions means that everyone needs to have a permit which is linked to your passport.
We’d planned our SA trip around this as you have to book around 7 months in advance to get onto the trail. The government limit the number of trekkers to 500 per day (including all staff) so that means only about 60 trekkers can start the trail each day. For months we’d been looking forward to it and it did not disappoint.
We decided to go with Peru Treks, which we thoroughly recommend to anyone- they were absolutely brilliant from start to finish. Originally our friend Mab was supposed to come from London and and walk it with us but unforseen circumstances meant he had to pull out last minute- we were all gutted as we were looking forward to catching up, but c’est la vie.
In our group there were 15 trekkers, 2 guides (the very enthusiastic Ernesto and Edy,) a chef and 19 porters. The porters carry pretty much everything except your personal items- they had massive packs full of tents, folding chairs, pots, pans and food. Recently the government has imposed a limit on porter carrying weight so that they now only carry a maximum of 25kg- they used to carry upto 60kg! These men are seriously superhuman and without them we would not have been able to manage. Some people on our trek also chose to pay for an extra porter to carry their sleeping bags, mats and personal items- we didn’t and on reflection we’re glad we didn’t because we felt a huge sense of achievement at the end.
This is one of the lighter loads we saw!
Day 1
We were picked up at 5am and taken by bus with 13 other trekkers for breakfast in the little town of Ollytatambo, around 1.5 hours from Cusco. We stocked up on snacks and coca leaves (great for altitude) and zoomed off to km 82, the official start of the world famous Ina trail.
The other people in our group came from all over- Finland, US, Ireland, NZ, Nederland’s and Belgium.
Our two guides, Ernesto and Edy had given us a briefing the day before so we knew that day 1 would serve as a training day for the next few days- only 12km today and it was fairly flat in places with only a few steep ascents and descents. The scenery was incredible but so far, no Inca ruins in site. Our guides stopped us often to tell us interesting facts about the Incas. After around 4 hours hiking, we stopped for lunch- we expected a sandwich and sitting on the grass, but this what we got instead:
This tent appeared at every meal time, thanks to the porters. We felt so spoilt and ridiculously well looked after. The food itself was incredible. I have no idea how our chef managed to prepare 3 courses for every meal, but he did and it was fab. He put on his chef outfit and went into his little kitchen/tent and managed to cater for so many dietary requirements- I’m really fussy about where meat comes from so opted for vegetarian the whole trip whilst Sam obviously went full on meat mode. There were some gluten free and soya free people on the hike also- none of us ever had cause to complain.
We camped in a really pretty field in super roomy tents. Was lovely. Due to the high altitude (we were camping at around 2700m above sea level,) we were all exhausted and went to bed super early. The higher the altitude, the more oxygen you require so the harder your body has to work. We knew we were going to be climbing upto 4200m the next day and were all slightly wary, despite taking altitude sickness tablets.
Day 2
What was not so lovely was the 5am wake up the next morning- although they did bring us coca tea when they woke us up so it wasn’t all bad. Coca tea is most similar to a bitter green tea and Andean people drink it in copious amounts. At 6.45, we set off for the most difficult section of the trail- a 1500m ascent to Dead Woman’s Pass. This was not easy. We had to keep stopping every couple of minutes to adjust to the altitude, which meant it took a lot longer than we would have liked to make it to our first resting spot. Luckily, the tent was up and brunch was served, yippee! This gave us all the energy to reach the top. In our group there were some people who shot off super fast and others who needed to take it slower, so each break was a chance to regroup and catch up with everyone.
We made it!
From Dead Woman’s Pass, we then descended steeply around 700m to our campsite.This took around 2 hours and surprisingly for us, didn’t affect our legs as much as it did others. Usually I have issues with steep descents but was actually ok for this one. I think it was the knowledge that my sleeping bag was waiting for me!
Down we go!
Day 3
Another 5am wake up! If we’d been able to sleep, this would have been bearable but none of us slept well- there were frogs singing really loudly the whole night, an uncomfortable concrete floor and a slanty camping spot which meant I ended up rolling into Sam a few times. Day 3 was llonnnggggg- only 15km but it took a long time because of the terrain. 2 more steep ascents and the ominously named ‘gringo killer’ steps- over 1000 steep steps down. Painful. This was when it started to really feel like a path the Incas would have taken though, so many beautiful original ruins along the way.
Our guides let us stop at each one to explore and give us information so even though it was a long day, it was brilliant. Our final campsite for the trip finally came into view at around 5pm. This was a really busy site because everyone camps here on the final day as it’s only 2 hours from Machu Picchu itself. Along with this, people who do a 2 day/1night trek also camp here (weaklings.) Chef outdid himself tonight by making us all a huge cake to celebrate the end of the trip (where did he get the oven from? We don’t know.)
The final day
5am? Too late apparently. A 3.30am start followed by 4am breakfast awaited us as we struggled through the torrential rain to get ready for the final hike. The weather so far had been amazing, with fantastic visibility but now it seemed the rainy season had caught up with us. As soon as breakfast was over, the porters dismantled tents and rushed off to catch the 5.30am train back to Cusco, leaving us standing in the dark with our torches, backpacks and very wet feet. Regulations state that no one can walk the trails before 5.30am because it’s too dangerous in the dark so we queued up with what felt like hundreds of other people at the control gates.
When we finally got through, all of us were really excited because it was only a 45 minute hike to the Sun gate, where all of the famous Machu Picchu photos are taken. On a clear day you can see the whole city below you. This is what we saw when we finally got there:
Not exactly postcard material is it?!
You could almost hear a collective sigh of disappointment from everyone. We’d trekked so far to get this view and all that was there was clouds! Never mind, it was still amazing to be there and we hiked down into Machu Picchu itself. It was absolutely staggering to see and as we descended it was hard to take it all in. It was like when we went to Angkor for the first time- so incredible and although you see it on TV and in photos, nothing prepares you for it.
The city was discovered in 1911 by Hiram Bingham and was in disrepair when he got there. I imagine it was like whats some of the Angkor temples are still like- overgrown. However, the government decided to ‘fix’ it, and although what they’ve done is very impressive, the repairs do look like a rush job compared to the skill of the Inca people:
Beautiful, precise Inca stonework compared with rush job of modern day Peruvians
Only the most important Inca people lived in the city- the king, priests, royal attendants etc. It’s so impressive how they’ve made this whole city on a side of a mountain. The photos really don’t do it justice.
We dropped our bags into storage and our guides gave us a 2 hour tour of the main sites. Just as we were about to leave and explore on our own, something totally unexpected occurred- one of the guys, Nick, proposed to his lovely girlfriend Danielle right amongst the ruins! It was so great to be a part of- what a fantastic way to get engaged! It was crazy busy as it was the first week of the season and made it quite frustrating at times.
After a couple of hours exploring, we headed to the town of Aguas Caliente to meet up with our group for celebratory drinks and food. Then it was back to Cusco we went, via train and bus, all exhausted, dirty and having had the best experience.
Although Machu Picchu was spectacular, it was the trek that made the trip. This was truly a once in a lifetime opportunity and it’s hard to imagine how we’re going to top it. A definite highlight of the trip so far.
We did it!
The many tours of San Pedro De Atacama
Well we’ve been very busy!
After leaving La Serena and the Elqui Valley, we headed up to San Pedro De Atacama, one of the driest places on earth, so much so that NASA use it for testing the Mars Rovers as it’s the most Mars-like location on earth.
So of course, it’s been raining for us.
It rains about once a year and it appears we’ve got (un)lucky. Nonetheless it hasn’t stopped us from a packed schedule.
San Pedro is one of the main tourist areas in Chile, surrounded by a wide variety of natural wonders which makes it a great base for tourists. As a result it’s very busy, and we ended up having to stay a 15 minute walk out of town to get anything even vaguely affordable. The accommodation was very basic and the bed was terrible (which meant we’re both very tired from lack of sleep) but at least it was cheap. Even a basic private bed in a dorm can cost upto 40 quid here if you stay in town (in truth it’s barely more than a village.)
San Pedro itself is a weird and lovely little place. Most of the action is on the main street, where every shop is either a tour company or a restaurant. I’m not exaggerating; there must have been about 20 tour companies on the main road alone. Everything is pot hole filled dirt roads around here, which made it properly feel like a desert town. We definitely had some of my favourite food here too, with lots of places doing cheap 3 course meals at lunch. It was nice to find food that (a) wasn’t bread and (b) had spiciness!
The first port of call on our adventure was to the meteorite museum; a private collection owned by two brothers, it gives a full explanation of how the universe and planets are formed with examples of all the types of meteorite that have been collected in the desert. The highlight was getting to touch 3 large meteorites, which were all approximately 4500 million years old. It’s safe to say I enjoyed the museum more than Laura but she was a good sport throughout.
On our first night in town the rain had really started to kick in. This is not a place built for rain- nothing is water tight, so everywhere has to switch the electricity off. This lead to us having a lovely romantic dinner in candle light. Unfortunately we’d tried to go for a drink beforehand however there’s a weird rule in town that you cannot buy booze unless you’re buying food too. A stupid rule I’m sure you’ll agree.
All the activities are based out of town in San Pedro which meant having to go on organized tours. We generally hate tours and avoid them but we had to make an exception and fortunately it went really well; we booked 3 tours with one company (Cosmo Andino) which were all really well organised and had a slightly more adult feel to it; we saw a bunch of tour groups full of gap year students which would’ve been our idea of hell!
Our first trip was to Valle De La Luna (Valley of the moon). It’s effectively a giant crater (formed by volcanoes collapsing not a meteorite) in the middle of the desert. The sheer scale of this place is incredible. The photos don’t do it justice but will hopefully give an idea of what’s involved. We also go to see where they used to mine the salt- due to the high altitude the water evaporates quickly leaving everything covered in salt. Very cool!
We were then taken to a mirador (view point) above the entire valley where we could try to grasp how big this place is. It also was a great opportunity to get some photos of us standing close to the edge of the cliffs!
By this point it had started to rain, which meant the final part of the trip, a walk around “Death Valley”, was cut short. The name apparently came from a mispronunciation of “Mars Valley” in French and nothing to do with death at all. We kept expecting to see Matt Damon appearing in his space suit!
It was laundry day, hence the stunning outfit I’m rocking
The first tour was just an afternoon one; our second tour was a full day trip to Salar de Tara- one of the biggest salt flats in Chile. The tour was almost called off due to weather- if it rains or snows in the mountains it’s possible for busses to get trapped there so they’re hyper cautious. Fortunately for us the tour went ahead and the weather ended up being incredible. San Pedro is around 2000m above sea level whereas our tour ended up peaking at 4800m which meant the weather changed dramatically; rain, snow, fog, and clear skies.
The main problem on this tour was that Laura felt really ill- whatever we’d eaten the night before had not agreed with her and had left her with some mild food poisoning. To add to the fun, there were no toilets on the whole trip. It seems we weren’t the only ones who hadn’t realised this, which meant an awful lot of stopping en route for people to scramble behind rocks to do their business. Not fun! Poor Laura struggled through but I did feel very sorry for her.
The salt flat is based in the Andes which meant driving through incredible scenery consisting of volcanoes and mountains, as well as some strangely placed wetlands full of flamingoes! A weird sight at 4000m in the middle of the desert. I was also surprised with how much wildlife there was for a desert. Vicunas (a relation of llamas) and alpacas were a common occurrence.
Snow on the way to the desert
The landscapes never failed to impress. The tour took us around some brilliant viewpoints, such as the “rock cathedral” and the “photo everyone takes” with the giant rock that looks like it has been sculpted into a person. I was particularly impressed with our minivan that somehow managed to cope with driving around in the middle of the desert without breaking it’s suspension or breaking down.
The culmination of the day was having a late lunch at the salt flat, complete with Chilean wine (which Laura did not have unsurprisingly.) I’d be very interested to come back and see this when it hadn’t just been raining, as I think the landscape was dramatically different for us relative to other tours. It was however still incredibly beautiful, and again difficult to grasp the sheer scale of this great plane that was so flat for so far and wide.
You’ll be pleased to know that Laura was partly recovered by the evening and sent her personal errand boy off to get take out pizza. This in itself was quite an ordeal; there is very little street lighting in San Pedro, which meant walking most of the journey home grasping a pizza with both hands and pointing a torch at my feet to try to not fall over one of the many pot holes. To get to our accommodation also involved crossing an incredibly rickety bridge which made for extra fun! San Pedro is also famous for its observatories and star gazing and we’d been hoping to use this evening to go on an observatory tour, but with Laura feeling unwell and the sky being cloudy we decided to pass and try and get some sleep.
My view as I headed out for pizza
Unfortunately our tour the next day was cancelled due to the weather. It had rained so much it had washed out a key bridge out of town and, although they were trying to rebuild it, it wasn’t going to be done in time. As a result we had a well deserved relaxing day, enjoying a nice walk around the town and getting some much needed work done. We’d organised to go on the star gazing tour at 11PM this night after cancelling the previous day, so we had a bit of a nap so we could stay awake till 2AM. Unfortunately the tour guide turned up to pick us up at 11:20 only to tell us he was sorry that the tour wouldn’t be running due to cloud cover. The weather has not been in our favour! This means we’ve managed to leave Chile without getting to a single observatory due to a combination of the bright moon and cloud cover, which I’m disappointed by but, c’est la vie!
On our final day we were getting a night bus to the border with Peru, which meant waiting around until 8PM. Both me and Laura hate this sort of day, and she suggested hiring bikes as we were able to grab a shower later from our accommodation (who were also kind enough to store our bags for the day.) I hadn’t slept at all the previous night and was quite grumpy but fortunately let Laura take the lead as the bikes ended up being a great idea. We cycled 18km into the desert to find Laguna Cejar, a salt lake which is very similar to the dead sea. The concentration of salt is so high that you naturally float in it. It took us a lot more than 18km to find it as the bike company had given us a terrible map, but it was worth it when we got there.
The sensation of being so buoyant is both weird and brilliant. It’s impossible to do frog legs when swimming as you sit too high in the water for a start. We couldn’t get over how quiet it was there, there were no tour groups and only a few other people. We had a lot of fun, although we both got a little sunburnt as you’re not allowed to use suncream in the lake.
We dried very quickly in the sun which left us both covered in a thick layer of salt. Fortunately there were showers so we could wash off!
The cycle back was incredibly hard. Did you know it gets quite hot in the desert around 2-3PM? The roads were also in terrible condition (no concrete in sight) which meant sore bums and arms. We were both very pleased to get back and get showered and fed after a really nice day out. I don’t think I’ve been that exhausted for some time, which helped with sleeping on the night bus. No Premium (180degree recline) bus was available so we were in cama (150 degree) which weren’t so good for someone who sleeps on their side. I think through sheer exhaustion I managed to get a fair amount of sleep, as did Laura.
This morning we were woken at 5am in Arica, the closest town to the border with Peru. I was literally not functioning, I think I must have just been in a deep sleep and had no idea what was going on. Fortunately for me Laura was a trooper and sorted everything out and shepherded me around. With the help of a nice Taiwanese tourist we’d met we managed to find the international bus terminal across the road to get a collectivo (shared taxi) across the border. We thought we’d have to wait as the border doesn’t open till 8, and Peru is 2 hours behind, but it turns out those rules don’t seem to apply to Collectivos who were fine to take us through despite it being 5am in Peru.
As we’d sat down in the taxi the driver asked us for a ticket. In Arica and all of Peru you have to pay a tax to use the bus station. Laura ran off to find out where to buy it whilst I stayed in the taxi with the bags. The driver started to pull away which panicked me somewhat but my cries of “mi esposa!” were met with an explanation that he was just moving out of the way slightly (good thing my ability to understand Spanish is improving). Fortunately Laura returned and all was well. We were particularly impressed with the service; you give your passport to the taxi driver and he returns with your peruvian entry form, fully filled out for you already. At each border (exit Chile, entry Peru) he guided us exactly where to go and what to hand over, and took us all the way to Arica, the nearest border town on the other side. All this for 4 quid each! Absolute bargain.
Our run of luck continued in Arica where we were able to get on our next bus a mere 10 minutes later. I’m on that bus right now! We’re heading to Arequipa, the midway town to Cusco where we will be starting the Inca Trail. I just hope the hotel is good as I think we both need a long nap. Hopefully the bus will get in in about 2 hours (5 hours total) and then it’s just a taxi to the accommodation. We’re getting very good at this travelling thing!
Welcome to the driest place on Earth
Photo of the Day: Trip to the meteorite museum
“The wisdom of 4,500 million years… touching a meteorite”
Back to the heat!
After a frankly very cold and windy spell in Torres del Paine, and the trauma of losing yet another pair of glasses, we caught the bus back to Punta Arenas. It was even colder here than in the park. And we’d pretty much run out of clothes. And there was no laundry. Excellent.
Interesting note: I’ve never had to wear the same pair of socks for 5 days in a row before. Turns out, I don’t like it.
We were staying around 10km out of town in a log cabin called ‘Le Casa Escondida.’ It was LOVELY! Owned by an incredibly friendly Chilean family, we were treated like family- they cooked us amazing steak and we sat by a roaring fire all night. Exactly what we needed after all the hiking of the past 10 days. As content as we would have been to not leave the fire, we thought we should at least explore Punta Arenas so we got a lift from a friendly Chilean man who was driving in that direction and off we went.
I can’t lie- this wasn’t the most amazing place we’ve been to in Chile, but it did at least have a naval museum, so Sam was in heaven, as is shown by the many many many photos he took. I won’t bore you with them, just this one of my super happy husband:
It was then time for TRAVEL DAY. Not just any travel day either. The monster of all travel days! First it was a 4am start for a 5.30am flight to Puetro Montt- 11 hour layover (but we did get to see stuff like this:)
Lake in Puerto Varas- not bad for a layover
- 14 hour overnight bus to Santiago (think Emirates A380 business class for buses- was so nice)
Might not look like much, but after our nightmare night buses in SE Asia this was a HUGE step up!
All that was missing was the massage function
-2 hour layover in Santiago- 7 hour bus to La Serena. Phew, I’m tired just typing that! Needless to say, we were exhausted by the end of it, and slept so well when we got to the hostel! Finally, the heat was back. Shorts were allowed again! Flipflops came out of hiding! It feels so good to just wear one layer- how did we ever cope living in UK??
La Serena is a nice place- cute handicraft stalls and lovely roadside cafes. It was our 11 year anniversary whilst we were there and we celebrated with some live band watching, pisco drinking and a fairly decent Thai meal (so so sick of bread and anything that doesn’t involve it is a blessing now!)
11 year Anniversary- celebrating with the biggest bottle of beer we could find
On Sunday we left the town to explore the Elqui Valley, a place that had been recommended to us by the lovely owners of Campo Suizo down in the Lakes District. We decided to base ourselves in the small town of Vicuña. Hhhmm, but wait. Google maps is showing us something about 20 mins away from it- a tiny village in the middle of a valley. Excellent- more travelling!
In comparison to a lot of other travellers, we don’t really have much. I reckon I’ve taken more on a 4 day trip to Dubai. I’ve enterprisingly strapped my yoga mat to my big bag so no longer have to carry it and carrying our day packs on our front is super handy, if a little weird looking.
The Elqui Valley is SPECTACULAR. Incredibly beautiful and chilled out. We took walks through villages and hired bikes to get to Pisco distilleries, microbreweries and an amazing solar restaurant, where they actually use the sun to cook everything!
In the valley, there’s an average rainfall of 5-6 times a year so a lot of structures aren’t exactly watertight either.
Today we’re heading back to La Serena, where we’ll wait for a few hours and then take a night bus upto San Pedro de Atacama, our final Chilean destination. We’re going to spend around 5 days there as we want to visit an observatory, see the salt plains and Valle de Luna, as well as some seriously big geysers. Goodbye budget!
Laura loses another pair of sunglasses to nature
More on that shortly!
I’m writing this as we travel on yet another bus. After the luxury of 5 nights in one place in Pucon it’s been hard to be travelling around on buses again. All the seats here have a big recline, and we always end up behind the one person that reclines the seat the whole way back. It’s a pretty cramped writing space but needs must!
After the wonder of Pucon we headed south to Puerta Varas, a lovely little lakeside town in the vicinity of not one but two volcanoes. It was really very pretty, with lots of nice little cafes and food trucks. There was even a local Chilean pan pipe/guitar band playing in the Plaza de Armas which we found surprisingly good. This was just a stopover town to get us to our flight the next day but I’m really glad we went.
The next day was less fun, as it was full of transport: Bus (Puerta Varas to Puerta Montt), bus (Puerta Montt to the airport, after a 2 hour wait in the bus terminal), plane (we met a very nice man from the US with a Chilean wife and had a good natter about all things Chile and US,) taxi (to get into Punta Arenas to get our next stage) and bus (Punta Arenas to Puerto Natales.) It literally took all day but as masters of travel we took it in our stride, and even managed to fit in a delicious pizza and beer before our final bus.
But why did we go through all this? To visit Torres Del Paine in Patagonia, the 5th most beautiful place in the world according to National Geographic. Located about 1.5 hours from Puerto Natales (which is the nearest town) it’s most famous for the W trek, a 4 or 5 day trek that takes in glaciers and mountains and lakes and much more. We’d wanted to do this, but as we had no camping gear and the fact we don’t like camping, we decided to instead come down and do a couple of day hikes and explore the town. We weren’t the best prepared for this part of our journey; information on the net is all regarding multi day hiking so we thought it’d be best to get here and find out once we’re on the ground. Plus, most people book their flights, accommodation and their multi day hikes months in advance- this is an extremely popular place. We booked our flights 3 weeks ago. Enough said.
The most famous part of the W is Las Torres (the towers), a series of three mountainous peaks above a lake about 800m up from sea level. We knew this was available as a day hike and was our itinerary for the first day. This meant, having gotten to our hotel and to bed about midnight we then had to be up at 6:30 to get a 7:45 bus. At the park we then had to queue to buy our passes (36 quid for the two of us!) before getting another bus to the start of the hike; this meant we didn’t get to start walking until 11. To top it all off the visibility was really poor, due to the terrible weather. Nonetheless we ploughed on with smiles on our faces excited for the walk ahead.
The hike itself is split into 3 sections; a steep uphill section, a mostly flat section, then a really steep bit. I found this to be the most challenging of the hikes we’ve done as my legs were knackered afterwards, but it was really enjoyable. All the scenery around here is so dramatic and beautiful. There was also a camp site at the mid way point which served hot drinks which meant when we were suffering on the way back we could recharge with hot chocolate and coffee.
The hike is 25km and labelled as 8 hours but we managed it in about 6 and a half. It took us about 4 hours up, particularly as we were struggling at the top. The path disintegrated to boulder climbing along with wind and actual snow, and there was a fair amount of traffic- it’s a really popular hike. We made it though to find this lovely glacial lake at the top. It’s just a shame the towers were partly hidden by cloud cover!
- The towers are at the back/right… in the cloud.
We wanted to stay up longer but it was too windy and cold so we clambered down at speed. We got to the start of the trek again about 5:30. Fortunately, there’s a really fancy hotel at the start which meant we could relax with a beer and a cheese board.
The second day of our stay I’d put my foot down to say I wasn’t hiking; the tickets are a 3 day pass but I was quite happy to have a days rest so we could properly enjoy the day after, plus the weather hadn’t perked up. As a result we had a nice stroll around Puerto Natales. Like everywhere in Chile, it’s based on a Lake with stunning mountain scenery in the background. There were lots of nice coffee shops, bakeries and restaurants and we had a very nice and relaxed day. It was also valentines day so as a treat I got us take out pizza to have in the room before going to bed early to go hiking again!
Our second and final day of hiking was a bit of a voyage into the unknown. There was genuinely no information about any other day hikes. If you imagine the W route is in the shape of a W, Las Torres is the right hand part of the W: |||. We decided to do the bottom part of the right hand side for day 2, as we knew how to get there and I’d found a snippet online to say it was meant to be very nice. We were pros now too; we managed to skip the queue for buying tickets and get an earlier connecting bus which meant we were hiking by 10:20.
We realised that, if we went fast enough, we could do the entire bottom of the W and get a catamaran back to the bus connection at 6:30. This was certainly achievable and meant we wouldn’t hike back on ourselves. Unfortunately, the weather had other ideas. Although it was (mostly) sunny, I’ve never experienced winds like it before; they were strong enough to push a person over (and I fell over a couple of times as a result). This made it incredibly hard going and meant by the time we reached the mid point we knew we had to turn back- if we’d missed the catamaran we would have been stranded. To further the fun, Laura twisted her ankle early on which started swelling and causing her a lot of pain. Although the walk was very pretty, particularly on the way back, it wasn’t the greatest day of hiking we’ve had by some way.
- Rainbow from water whipped up from the lake
I really can’t stress how strong the wind was. Waterfalls were genuinely going backwards as the water was being blown back up at the drop off. The top layer of water from the lake was constantly being blown into a cloud causing “rainbow lake” (see photos). And this is how Laura lost her current sunglasses; they were literally blown off her face and down the side of the mountain to never be seen again. She was holding the big water bottle at the time and couldn’t react fast enough to catch them. She was understandably disappointed. Despite this I certainly had a good time, and I think by the end so did Laura. We were both ecstatic to see the hotel at the end, and the beer tasted excellent again.
The shuttle back was almost delayed because one of the busses had been blown over (did I mention it was windy?) The fire brigade (which is entirely volunteer in Chile) had been called, had righted the bus and some people taken to hospital, and they’d sent a replacement shuttle to ferry us back to where the main bus was to collect us. Although it was now chucking it down with rain the wind had calmed so we felt pretty safe on our journey back!
We both agree Torres Del Paine is not the 5th most beautiful place in the world. We think it’s probably not even the 5th most beautiful place we’ve been to. It was however still very very nice and we’re both pleased that we’ve come down here. Patagonia itself is very interesting- it’s so empty! Laura thought it would be barren (wrong) and I thought it would be full of forests (wrong). It’s mostly just shrubbery as far as the eye can see, a few hills here and there, but mostly nothing. It’s just empty. We really are in the middle of nowhere. Did I mention we’re less than 800 miles from Antactica?
We’re now on our way back up to Punta Arenas for 2 nights. We’ve chosen a place that is a bit out in the middle of nowhere and has it’s own sauna and log cabins, so this should be interesting! There’s a naval museum in town which has replicas of the Endurance, the boat Shackleton took to the Antarctic when he and his crew were stranded for over a year, along with the boat that rescued it. And Laura has agreed to come too! I may write the next blogpost too to talk about how brilliant it will be hopefully, although there’s a chance it will all be in Spanish.
- No more walking please.