Patagonia, you treated us well..
Hello friends,
We are currently in El Calafate, Argentina after our 4-day trek in Torres del Paine National Park. It was amazing!
We started off in Puerto Natales, Chilé - got on a bus at 7:30AM and made our way to the park entrance (about 2-3 hours away). Once you get to the park, you have to go into the welcome center and purchase your ticket and watch the safety video (pretty much saying DO NOT LIGHT A FIRE!)
Tim did an amazing job and booked our reservations for camping back in October.
Our plan is to hike the "W" circuit. There are other circuits like the "O" or "Q" that you can do, but we only wanted to do a 4-day hike, so the W was the way to go!
We started at Paine Grande - set up camp and then did a day hike to Refugio Grey to see the glacier. However, we got about an hour away from the glacier but decided to turn back to camp since we didn't want to hike back in the dark. (We are slow hikers...) IT WAS BEAUTIFUL...regardless of us not reaching the glaciers.
Once we got back to camp, we made dinner - Paine Grande campground was really nice, with clean bathrooms and a common cooking/dining area - which you can bring your portable stove - to cook up your food.
Our first night of sleeping in the tent was...a little rough. The weather here in Patagonia is just so unpredictable and constantly changing. One minute it could be sunny and hot, and the next it's raining and you feel like you're in a storm.
Note to self for next camping trip: BRING A SLEEPING MAT!
- We didn't bring one thinking it'll be too much stuff to carry, but I feel stupid not knowing that it doesn't even weigh a thing!! Epic fail on our part.
Day 2 - We hiked from our campground to Camp Italiano (about 2 hours). Once we got there, we did another day hike to Mirador Valle de Frances. It was snowing and cold, but hiking up a mountain definitely heated me up.
Camp Italiano was probably the most expected scenario of camping - outhouses, getting water from the river, a small shed as your picnic area...yup, it was exactly what camping is suppose to be like, which was fine for us!
Once again, the night was cold...it rained and snowed but luckily our tent is "waterproof" so at least we didn't get wet.
Day 3 - This day was our biggest hiking day...we got up around 6am to start our 7 to 8-hour hike to the next campground. It was a long day, but definitely rewarding once we reached Las Torres (Central) campground. This was the most expensive campground we stayed at.
But they had hot showers, which felt amazing after a few days of not showering.
We went to bed pretty early, because we wanted to wake up at 2am to start our hike to Las Torres.
Day 4 - We woke up at 3:30am and headed towards Campground Chileno - hoping to make it to sunrise at the towers, we didn't make it but we still had an amazing view...it was probably the toughest hike I've done so far, but was it worth it?! DEFINITELY!
Check out some photos on my Instagram @lynnanguyenphoto.
We are currently in El Calafate, Argentina after our 4-day trek in Torres del Paine National Park. It was amazing!
We started off in Puerto Natales, Chilé - got on a bus at 7:30AM and made our way to the park entrance (about 2-3 hours away). Once you get to the park, you have to go into the welcome center and purchase your ticket and watch the safety video (pretty much saying DO NOT LIGHT A FIRE!)
Tim did an amazing job and booked our reservations for camping back in October.
Our plan is to hike the "W" circuit. There are other circuits like the "O" or "Q" that you can do, but we only wanted to do a 4-day hike, so the W was the way to go!
We started at Paine Grande - set up camp and then did a day hike to Refugio Grey to see the glacier. However, we got about an hour away from the glacier but decided to turn back to camp since we didn't want to hike back in the dark. (We are slow hikers...) IT WAS BEAUTIFUL...regardless of us not reaching the glaciers.
Once we got back to camp, we made dinner - Paine Grande campground was really nice, with clean bathrooms and a common cooking/dining area - which you can bring your portable stove - to cook up your food.
Our first night of sleeping in the tent was...a little rough. The weather here in Patagonia is just so unpredictable and constantly changing. One minute it could be sunny and hot, and the next it's raining and you feel like you're in a storm.
Note to self for next camping trip: BRING A SLEEPING MAT!
- We didn't bring one thinking it'll be too much stuff to carry, but I feel stupid not knowing that it doesn't even weigh a thing!! Epic fail on our part.
Day 2 - We hiked from our campground to Camp Italiano (about 2 hours). Once we got there, we did another day hike to Mirador Valle de Frances. It was snowing and cold, but hiking up a mountain definitely heated me up.
Camp Italiano was probably the most expected scenario of camping - outhouses, getting water from the river, a small shed as your picnic area...yup, it was exactly what camping is suppose to be like, which was fine for us!
Once again, the night was cold...it rained and snowed but luckily our tent is "waterproof" so at least we didn't get wet.
Day 3 - This day was our biggest hiking day...we got up around 6am to start our 7 to 8-hour hike to the next campground. It was a long day, but definitely rewarding once we reached Las Torres (Central) campground. This was the most expensive campground we stayed at.
But they had hot showers, which felt amazing after a few days of not showering.
We went to bed pretty early, because we wanted to wake up at 2am to start our hike to Las Torres.
Day 4 - We woke up at 3:30am and headed towards Campground Chileno - hoping to make it to sunrise at the towers, we didn't make it but we still had an amazing view...it was probably the toughest hike I've done so far, but was it worth it?! DEFINITELY!
Check out some photos on my Instagram @lynnanguyenphoto.
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