We departed Patagonia National Park on a small charter flight. As a result, we enjoyed a sneak peek of Torres del Paine from the air as we approached Puerto Natales. We knew we were seeing something special when even the pilot got out his phone to photograph “The Towers,” One of the crew told us it’s visible about once every three months or so, and they make the flight twice/week!

After landing and an hour-long ground transfer, we enjoyed a closer, beautifully framed view of the “Towers of Blue” and the rest of the Massif Paine through the windows of the public rooms and our guest room at Tierra Patagonia, our home for the next five nights.

Torres del Paine National Park

Over the next 5 days we’d come to understand why every blog site we read during our trip planning mentioned the wind in Torres del Paine National Park. We also came to appreciate the beauty and biodiversity of the region. Torres del Paine is one of the largest and most visited national parks in Chile, attracting more than 250,000 visitors each year. That number would no doubt be higher but for the remoteness of this remarkable area and it’s short four-to-five-month tourist season. Visitor numbers pale in comparison to the more than 4.5 million visitors to Banff National Park each year, partly because it’s just an hour from an international airport and there’s something to do every season of the year.

Comparison of Banff and Torres del Paine

Banff NP and Torres del Paine NP both feature beautiful turquoise lakes, mountains carved by glaciers and diverse flora and fauna. UNESCO recognized Torres del Paine National Park as a Biosphere Reserve in 1978. Banff National Park is part of the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks, designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984, almost a hundred years after Banff became Canada’s first National Park.

In addition to vastly different numbers of visitors, a key difference between the two parks is the geology of the mountain ranges. The Canadian Rockies formed through massive tectonic plate collisions more than 80 million years ago, which thrust ancient marine sedimentary rock layers upward. Whereas the Massif Paine includes a massive bubble of magma under sedimentary rock formed from ancient seabed layers. The molten rock cooled very slowly underground, creating a deep layer of extremely-hard, erosion-resistant granite. Then tectonic forces lifted both the granite and the anoxic sedimentary layer like a giant elevator, leaving the layers relatively level. Cuernos (The Horns) most readily show the cap of black anoxic sedimentary rock above the whitish granite.

Another key difference between Banff and Torres del Paine is the species of animals that visitors hope to sight – grizzly bears, moose, bighorn sheep, wolves and majestic bull elk vs pumas, guanacos, huemul deer, Andean condors and the flightless Darwin’s rhea.

Our Lodgings

During the check-in process, we saw that the last people to sign the lodge guestbook are from our hometown of Canmore! It truly is a small world.

We quickly concluded that the architectural beauty and views from the lodge we’d chosen met or exceeded our expectations (except for the sewer smell in the bathroom – don’t get me started). But over the next five days, we came to realize we should have placed a higher priority on location. More specifically, we learned that the property’s location on the shore of Lago Sarmiento put it an hour+ (on mostly gravel roads) from the trails that were high on our list for this part of Patagonia – Base of the Towers and French Valley, two of three main legs of the famed “W” route.

Location, location, location

Our first clue that we’d made a suboptimal choice came during our initial meeting with the lodge’s guiding team, to map out our plan of activities. French Valley was going to be a problem. Tickets for spaces on the catamaran ferry were hard to come by. In fact, the lodge only had catamaran tickets available for one day of our stay. And that date conflicted with a day of puma tracking, pre-booked with a 3^rd-party operator.

In hindsight, we should have ensured that our reservation included a note about our strong desire to hike Valle del Frances on one of three specific dates. Instead, we slotted the Base of the Towers hike into our schedule for the following day. Then we pleaded with the head guide to try to get catamaran ferry tickets for three or five days hence.

There Goes French Valley

Later, we learned that because of our lodge’s distance from the ferry dock, if we went to French Valley we’d only be able to catch the second morning ferry, putting Mirador Valle del Frances out of reach to catch the last evening ferry back across Lago Pehoe. In fact, we’d likely be required to turn around at the Italian Camp. With the first uninterrupted views of the French Glacier another 0.5 km up the trail from the Italian Camp, this seemed somewhat pointless. It would be like hiking past Sherbrooke Lake up to Niles Meadow and then not continuing to Niles Col!

Not hiking Valle del Frances turned out to be one of two big disappointments during our month in Chile and Argentina. And it was an entirely avoidable disappointment, had we chosen a different lodge or hotel – one closer to Lago Pehoe.

However, the certainty of that disappointment was yet to come, so we enjoyed the afternoon. We settled into our room where we opened the window to let in some cooler air. We also requested another side table, so we’d have somewhere to set-up our laptop, as the room lacked a desk.

Lago Sarmiento

After lunch we walked through the public spaces of the lodge. Then we headed down towards the lake shore for some landscape photography. We took a more indirect route back to the lodge, which provided an impromptu bird-watching opportunity.

Lago Sarmiento Thrombolites

Walking the beach, I wondered about the white rock formations. They reminded me somewhat of the fossilized corals we see in the Canadian Rockies. After returning home, I learned these “rocks” are thrombolites – masses of calcium carbonate covered by a thin surface layer of living cyanobacteria. These cyanobacteria use the high saline content of Lago Sarmiento (which is hypersaline) during their photosynthesis, and produce a precipitate of calcium-carbonate that has a coral-like hard “skeleton” structure – microbialites. Over time, as the microbialites multiply, the minerals accumulate into macro-structures that look like rounded rocks covered in snow.

Lago Sarmiento also has a pH of about 9 – as alkaline as baking soda and phosphate detergents. The most common cyanobacterium at Lago Sarmiento is Rivularia, which proliferates because the alkaline and hypersaline waters are inhospitable to snails and other creatures that would otherwise keep them in check. Tierra Patagonia offered a half-day outing aimed at teaching guests about the thrombolites, but it’s not one that the guiding team talked up when we met with them. By the time we discovered this was an option, we’d already filled out our calendar.

Base of the Towers Hike

A beautiful sunrise tinted Torres del Paine and Los Cuernos purply-pink. We slipped out of the dining room to take a few photos before breakfast.

But then we got down to eating, to be ready for our 07:00 departure from the lodge. We were paired with a couple from Switzerland, driver Gloria and guide Alfonso.

Gloria gave us less than 5 minutes for photography at the Laguna Amarga viewpoint. Here we saw our first flamingos of the trip. We also had a chance to compare the view of the Towers with the image on the 1,000 peso Chilean bank note. She also pointed out a black-chested buzzard-eagle perched on a boulder across the road from the parking area.

Then we were back on the road and at the trailhead by 08:00. Here, one of the Swiss pair made the difficult decision to opt out of the hike due to stomach upset. We later learned that, perhaps as a consolation prize awarded by Mother Nature, he and Gloria had spotted a puma on the drive back to the lodge.

Ascent

That left three guests to make the hike to Mirador Las Torres Base (Base of the Towers Viewpoint). We had to work to keep up with our guide, Alfonso.

Lunch Break

As a result, we made it to our lunch spot by 11:30. We consider 3.5 hours to cover 10 km and 970 meters elevation gain a challenging pace and welcomed the announcement that we’d have an hour at the lake shore for a lunch break.

After some food and some photography, Alfonso gave us (and another group from Tierra Patagonia who reached the lake shortly after we did) a geology lesson, explaining how the Massif Paine formed. He used a lunch bag to demonstrate the stages of formation: ocean bottom sedimentation, magma intrusion, tectonic uplift and glacial erosion. We learned about a process that took roughly 90 million years in about 5 minutes!

Descent

Then it was time to start back down. This time in the company of the other group of Tierra Patagonia guests and their guide, Happy. We soon split up, since the rule is that those going down must give way to those coming up. And by 12:30, the swell of hikers was reaching its peak.

It was impossible to wait for an opening large enough for all of us. Up to a thousand people hike to Mirador Las Torres Base each day during peak season. While some trail sections have been engineered, others are very rough, including an extended steep stretch that is basically a stream bed.

I sometimes had to let 20 or 30 people pass before there’d be even a short break in the flow of humans. Then I’d move as quickly as possible to cover at least a meter or two before having to give way again. Overall, it was unpleasant and a little risky, as the need to cover as much distance as possible during the short breaks between up hikers was paramount.

The Swiss hiker and I ended up ahead of the rest of our group. We agreed to keep going until we reached the rest area just below the “don’t proceed if you reach this point after 1500” sign. It was a good 20 minutes before everyone in our expanded group caught up.

From there, the trail was a bit wider, so two-way flow of people was easier. Also, because it was already after 14:30, with the 15:00 closing time looming, not too many people were hiking upwards.

Final Stretch

We stopped for another rest break, snacks and to use the bathrooms at Refugio El Chileno. This is one of the campsites used by backpackers tackling the entire “W” or “O” routes, and perhaps by those wishing to reach the Mirador for sunrise.

Our pace on the way down from the Refugio was slower than our pace on the way up. One member of our group was wearing brand new footwear and his toes kept jamming into the tips of his boots. I know from personal experience how painful that can be and completely understood why he was proceeding so gingerly.

We reached the parking lot 4 hours and 15 minutes after we departed the lake shore – a slower pace than our hike up! Everyone was delighted to see the table of snacks and cooler of drinks set out by Gloria and the other driver. Options included vegetable chips, brownies, tea, cheese and fruit. Mr GeoK found a Pepsi Max in the cooler.

Evening

We were back at the lodge well before 18:00, which gave us plenty of time to shower and do laundry in the bathtub before supper. Our clothes were filthy because there was so much dust on the trail, kicked up by so many pairs of feet!

Our guides were happy to be back before 18:00. Sometimes it’s past 21:00 before they get back!! It all depends on trail conditions and the conditioning/experience of the hiking guests.

Mr GeoK used the door at the end of the dining room to slip out to photograph the sunset during dinner. While out there, another photographer recognized him! It turned out that another couple from Calgary was staying at the lodge for the next few days. We enjoyed dinner together twice and did the same half-day hike later in the week. And we’ve already had dinner with them once back home in Canmore. Funny coincidence and another confirmation that it is truly a small world.

Puma Tracking

Pumas

Pumas are one of the most widespread of terrestrial land mammals in the Western hemisphere, native from Alaska in the north to Patagonia in the south. Depending on where you are in that range, they may be called cougars (here in the Canadian Rocky Mountains) or mountain lions or panthers or any one of more than 40 names in English alone. In fact, the puma holds the Guinness World Record for the most names of any animal!

Pumas are ambush predators. In Patagonia, their primary prey is guanacos, although they also hunt hares and Darwin’s rheas. From what we’d read, Torres del Paine is definitely the best place in Patagonia to spot pumas, as they live in open areas with plenty of food and a protected habitat, particularly around Laguna Amarga and Laguna Azul. 

Pick-up and Start

Our 06:00 pickup time precluded breakfast at the lodge. Instead, we had a packed breakfast and a packed lunch when we met our driver/guide Christobal from Magellania, a local operator specializing in puma tracking and other wildlife experiences. Magellania collaborates with the owners of Estancia Laguna Amarga to promote safe and respectful puma tracking eco-tourism experiences.

The sun was just rising as we made our first stop, one of more than a dozen vehicles leapfrogging along the road as a puma moved roughly parallel to the ribbon of pavement. This was not the experience we’d envisioned!

Christobal soon explained that this was the experience “enjoyed” by most visitors to the region, who booked puma tracking excursions through their lodges/hotels. Instead, he’d be taking us onto Estancia Leona Amarga.

We scouted the south zone of the estancia for a few hours, spotting a wide variety of birds, some horses, an Andean fox and plenty of guanacos. But no pumas! ☹

Spotting!

Fortunately, Christobal was just one member of a larger team that included experienced trackers who’d been out on the estancia for hours. They know the habits and preferred hunting areas for each member of the local puma population.

Around mid-morning, Christobal received a call that the head tracker had spotted Petaka – one of the most observed pumas on the estancia and one habituated to and relaxed around respectful humans.

We joined four other photographers to form a small group of six eco-tourists at a considerable distance from the napping puma. One couple departed after about 45 minutes of not much activity, which left just four of us (and our guides) observing Petaka as she roused herself from a morning rest.

A short while later, a guanaco spotted or scented her and started its alarm cry. Petaka was on the move. She traversed grassy fields, stalked up ridge lines, circled back to a carcass that still had meat on its bones and eventually traversed a ridge with the famous Torres del Paine in the background.

We spent a remarkable two hours or so following quietly and at a respectful distance, all under the close supervision of our guides. I was thankful I packed along my teleconverter, which doubles the reach of my longest telephoto lens. But I also pulled out my phone from time-to-time, shooting video clips and framing compositions that place Petaka in the grander scale of the landscape that’s her home.

Christobal had us back at the lodge around 15:15. We’d covered 61.2 km total, by vehicle and on foot.

Hotel Pool

Our mid-afternoon return meant we had time to try the hotel’s pool. We also checked in with the guiding team; they still didn’t have tickets for the catamaran ferry to get us to French Valley, so we opted for a lesser-known full-day hike the following day.

Early evening, we headed to the dining room to meet up with Steve and Deb from Calgary, where we enjoyed wide-ranging conversation, comparing notes on our respective Patagonia and other travel experiences, mutual friends/business associates in Calgary and more.

D’Agostini Pass Day Hike

Our third full day in Torres del Paine we hiked D’Agostini Pass (aka Lago Verde). Father Alberto Maria de Agostini was an Italian Salesian priest, explorer and photographer. He dedicated nearly 50 years to exploring and documenting the southern regions of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego.

He was the first to map, photograph and climb many of its remote glaciers, fjords and peaks. Many features have been named in his honor, including Alberto de Agostini National Park, Agostini Glacier and Mount De Agostini.

On this hike, we were joined by four other guests. With our driver and guide, we departed the lodge at about 08:30 for the 40 minute / 34 km (21 mi) drive to the trailhead. This being a point-to-point hike, our driver dropped us off on Estancia Lazo, at the Laguna Verde end of the trail. This east-to-west direction made for a slow, easy climb and then a hard descent at the Weber Bridge end of the trail. As a result, I’d rate the overall hike as moderate, mainly due to distance (14.9 km / 9.3 mi) and final challenging descent.

And We’re Off

Before we left the lodge, our guide, Philippe, confirmed that each of us had packed rain jackets. It’s a good thing – we needed them not only for some periods of light rain, but also to help us keep warm in the strong wind.

It was cloudy all day, and not particularly warm, so I wore a brimmed wool hat held onto my head with a Buff! You can tell how windy it was by looking at how puffed out our pant legs are.

Everyone kept a good pace until lunch, which we enjoyed in a relatively sheltered forest grove with some fallen trees serving as benches.

The Back Half

After lunch, one of the other four guests kind of crapped out. I hung back with him, chatting and gently encouraging him without being too obvious about it. Somewhere along the way, I spotted an orchid still in bloom even though it was so late in the summer. This was a highlight of the hike for me.

Everyone opted to do the short climb to the viewpoint overlooking Lago Toro. On a sunny day, the views would have been absolutely stunning. Views of the Paine Massif, particularly Los Cuernos, were great even on a cloudy and rainy day. It was chilly at the viewpoint, with wind gusts over 50 kph (30 mph) according to our guide.

The final stretch, with some switchbacks and steep, gravel-covered sections, proved very challenging for some members of the group. Honestly, I think this trail was at the very outer limits of their capabilities.

We ended up quite spread out and had I not hung back to coach the weakest member of the group, Philippe may have had to double-back. It felt good to share some of the wisdom gained from 35 years of hiking in the Canadian Rockies with fellow Nature lovers. 😊

In the end, we were outside the limit of the long-end of the usual time to hike this trail, with a point-to-point time of 5 hours 15 minutes (typically 4-5 hours).

Our return to the lodge took an hour to cover 51 km (32 mi), getting us back at 16:30, plenty early to shower, do laundry and relax before supper.

Plans A and B

We also did a check in with the guiding desk. They managed to secure tickets on the late morning catamaran ferry to the French Valley trailhead! Then they confirmed that we definitely wouldn’t have time to make it past the Italian Camp. After talking it over, we thanked them for their hard effort to make a partial French Valley hike possible, but we declined to go. They had no trouble finding two other guests who were content to do a very abbreviated French Valley hike.

We also asked the head guide to weigh in with his thoughts on our 3^rd-party kayaking excursion on Lago Grey booked for the following day. White caps rolled across Lago Sarmiento, visible from the lodge windows. At home, we’d never go kayaking in such windy conditions. And the forecast was calling for strong winds the next day, as well.

He advised that we keep our booking, but pack for a hike to the first suspension bridge on the Bridges leg of the “W” – a reasonable fallback plan if it was too windy to kayak. We really appreciated his local experience with weather patterns and activity options (and tipped him accordingly at the end of our stay).

Kayaking Lago Grey and Glacier Tour on the Grey III

First thing after waking up, we checked Lago Sarmiento. Yep, still whitecaps. Hmmm…

Paulo (driver) and Belén (guide) met us at the front door of the lodge at 07:30, for the long drive to the large parking lot for the Lago Grey glacier tour. We took an hour and 45 minutes to cover about 70 km (43 mi), with just a couple of one or two minute stops for photography.

We also stopped at the entrance to Torres del Paine National Park, and again at Lago Grey Hotel to check in for the Grey III catamaran. Once we parked, we left Paulo to get some work done via Starlink. The rest of us headed along the short path and across the Pingo River bridge to the shore of Lago Grey. There, we battled the strong wind and uneven surface of rounded large stones to make the 2.5 km (1.5 mi) walk to the embarkation point for the Grey III glacier tour.

Grey III

Once aboard the Grey III, along with a full roster of passengers who were mostly doing the full glacier tour, we learned that if the wind picked up even more in the afternoon, we’d be looking at an 11 km hike to the Lake Pehoe catamaran crossing to get back. Yikes! And fingers crossed. 😊

The custom-built naval steel catamaran was constructed in Buenos Aires in 2005. It’s operated by Hotel Lago Grey and provides daily tours across Lago Grey to view the receding turquoise blue terminus faces of Grey Glacier. The ~ 3-hour navigation weaves through any icebergs to traverse counterclockwise the three glacier faces. If famously serves Pisco Sours, made using glacial ice plucked directly from the lake.

The Grey III staff kept up a pretty good patter, and we learned some interesting facts about the Patagonian Southern Ice Field:

• Located in the Andes Mountain Range, it’s the 3^rd largest freshwater reserve in the world
• Stretching more than 350 km (220 mi), it’s comprised of 49 glaciers, left from the last major ice age
• The glaciers are populated with Patagonian Ice Dragons – insects that are just 15 mm (0.6 inches) long, members of the stonefly family and that can live up to 100 years thanks to glycerol, a natural sort of antifreeze in its blood; it thrives on the glaciers, eating bacteria that live in the ice, carried to the ice field by wind

Kayaking with Big Foot

We disembarked after about an hour on board, at Grey Refuge – a possible start/end point for the “O” and “W” treks. From there it was a few minutes walk to Bigfoot base camp where we met our kayaking guides, Juan and Elliott and said hello to two other paddlers.

We were so fortunate. The wind had abated a fair bit by the time we arrived. Our guides’ assessment was that it was okay to gear up and get out on the water. So we did!

They provided Long John / Long Jane style wetsuits, booties and a dry suit top. The changing rooms were clean and spacious. After we changed, we were issued PDFs and helmets. Then it was time to fit the pegs in our sea kayaks before launching.

Our kayaking experience lasted about 2 hours. We covered 6.7 km (4.1 mi) on the water, paddling past a waterfall, the first suspension bridge on the Bridges leg of the W and parallel to one of three tongues of Glaciar Grey. In 1970, the glacier extended much further into the lake and presented one extended terminus. Today, it’s retreated such that there are three distinct tongues to the mass of ice.

Greenlandic Paddle

For me, the highlight of being on the water was the opportunity to try a Greenlandic-style paddle. I absolutely loved it! So I passed it forward to Mr GeoK to try and he liked it too. In fact we both thought so much of this alternative to the European-style kayaking paddle we’ve always used that after we returned home we bought some. We’ve already tried them on Vermillion Lakes here at home. We really like them and can’t wait to try them on Kananaskis Lakes, where we paddle longer distances. The only downside is that they get a LOT of water in our open kayak!! Which has prompted Mr GeoK to ask whether it’s time for a new kayak?

Grey III Reprise

We enjoyed the rest of the Grey III circumnavigation of Lago Grey on the return trip.

Joining us in boarding at Grey Refuge was a group of 14 hikers who’d just completed the “W” trek. Their guide was heading home for one night and then right back out with another group the next day. Many of the hikers removed their boots before embarking. They had very long faces when we reached our disembarkation point and they faced the hard reality of needing to put their boots back onto their very sore feet to cross the gravel bar to reach the parking lot. ☹

Our return drive took another hour and 45 minutes, reaching the lodge before 17:30. After showering, we joined our new friends from Calgary for supper and a beautiful sunset. We learned over the dinner conversation that the 4 of us would be doing the same half-day hike the following morning.

Cuernos Half Day Hike

Another morning with white caps rolling across Lago Sarmiento and a beautiful sunrise lighting up the Massif Paine.

After an early breakfast, we joined at least another dozen or more guests for our 07:30 departure to the Cuernos trailhead. The forty km (25 mi) drive to the trailhead parking area took an hour and 10 minutes, including a short stop at the entrance to the national park.

Outbound

We could tell from the parking lot it was going to be our windiest hike yet. One elderly couple turned back less than a hundred meters along the trail.

Our first stop was at the Salto Grande viewpoint – the great waterfall on the Paine River, with an impressive flow of approximately 100 cubic meters/second, the equivalent of about 1,000 x 10 minute showers our 100,000 x 1 liter/quart bottles of water! This was the same waterfall we’d stopped to photograph from a completely different angle on our drive to Lago Grey the previous day. I tried my best to get the rainbow in one of my images while still protecting my lens from the blowing spray – a challenge! In the end, it was so windy that a long exposure with a rainbow turned out blurry. Shooting video was the better way to go here.

The trail provided beautiful views of The Horns (Cuernos) and the highest peak in the Massif Paine, Cerro Paine Grande.

At one point, we all stopped to point at – and ooh and aah over – an icefall / avalanche coming off a glacier. Again, video was the better option for capturing this event.

We were pelted with sand and small pebbles and sprayed with water at various points along the trail.

Mr GeoK and I spotted a natural formation that reminded us of the famine wall we saw atop Suilven in Scotland.

Viewpoint and Rest Stop

At the end of the trail, there’s a magnificent view of Los Cuernos across the green water of Nordenskjöld Lake. Its turquoise waters flow south towards the Salto Grande waterfall and empty in Lake Pehoe. It’s named for Otto Nordenskjöld, a Swedish naturalist who explored the area in 1898.

The viewpoint is fenced off with interwoven dead branches left behind after a 2011 fire started by tourist who burnt his toilet paper in the woods. More than 17,000 hectares were affected and this was just 6 years after a slightly smaller fire was caused by another tourist accidentally overturning a gas stove.

We had about a half hour rest here, where our guide, Tanya, provided a repeat lesson on the geology of the Massif Paine. We enjoyed snacks, chatting and photography before it was time to head back.

It was just as windy on the way back. We stopped again at the big waterfall, with no better success.

This out-and-back hike was 6.6 km (4.1 miles) with minimal elevation gain. We reached the parking lot about 3 hours after setting out. Every parking spot was full, quite a contrast to no other vehicles in the parking lot when we arrived.

As we settled in for the 1 hour 10 minute drive back to the lodge for lunch, I noticed how dirty my sunglasses were – not only dust, but any spit or nose drips blew right up onto the lenses!

Baguales

We did not know when we arrived in Patagonia that it’s a globally renowned Cretaceous-era fossil destination. Sierra Baguales, located just north of Torres del Paine, is a where we headed for the afternoon, in the company of another half dozen guests and our guide Alina. Gloria, our Base of the Towers driver, was at the wheel.

We stopped a few times along the ~ 50 km (30 mile) drive to photograph guanacos and Darwin’s rheas.

Eventually, we stopped at a pullout along the road, with the Baguales River at the valley bottom on one side and steep hillsides on the other.

We fossicked along the hillside, uncovering lots of tree and shell fossils.

Alina explained the geology, which included lava flows forming partial dykes, ash layers and more. The steep cliffs on the other side of the Baguales River are a well-known nesting area for Andean condors. Mr GeoK spotted one Andean condor in flight.

Short Walk

Gloria dropped us off so we could walk for about 45 minutes, past a pond and through some of the grazing lands of Estancia R3. There was a good variety of birds on the large pond, including coot chicks still in their nest with some slightly older fluff balls paddling behind their parents.

We walked along a fence line, noticing different eras of fence posts, bathtubs in use as watering spots and seeing lots of horses.

Gloria had laid out a picnic with snacks much the same as awaited us after our Base of the Towers hike a few days earlier. We were invited to watch one of the gauchos re-shoeing a horse. Unfortunately, I only shot video at that point, so am sharing a photo of horses waiting their turns.

Then it was time to load up for the drive back to the lodge. This excursion lasted about 4.5 hours, getting us back to the lodge in time for a slightly later supper.

After supper, back in our room, we faced the daunting task of packing up. Not only did we have everything we’d arrived with, but our puma tracking guides gifted us a large, hard-covered puma photo book. And the lodge included several things in our welcome package. Our expandable suitcases reached the limit of their expandability at this stop!

Departure

We enjoyed a subdued sunrise and a light breakfast before making a final sweep of our room to confirm we’d left nothing behind.

Then we headed to the lodge entrance to wait for our driver. He was late. As a result, we enjoyed a final chat with head guide, Ben, and the privilege of watching a pair of South American grey foxes carry breakfast back to their den.

Final Thoughts

Torres del Paine is as windy as every guidebook and blog reports! In the end, it didn’t affect any of our planned activities. What did make a difference? Lodge location. In hindsight, we should have booked into Explora’s Torres del Paine lodge or Hotel Lago Grey. Yes, we appreciated the unique architecture of Tierra Patagonia, but that didn’t make up for the fact we missed out on the chance to hike the French Valley leg of the “W” and “O” routes.

We are no strangers to making friends while traveling. What’s special about the new friends we met at Tierra Patagonia is that they’re local to us at home. 🙂