this is the second entry i´ve written today, if you want to read the other one click on argentina then ushuaia.

so after another tedious bus ride, with only one border crossing but changing buses in rio grande and punta arenas, ferry crossing and another jamon y queso sandwich we arrived in puerto natales, which is a fairly nondescript little town that is the gateway to TORRES DEL PAINE, one of the best trekking destinations in the world. apparently. we decided to back ourselves and go for a five day trek in the wilderness, so set about making some attempt at preparation. luckily one of the hostels here gives a daily talk about the park and how to prepare for it so we thought we should probably go along. its given by this cool hippie american guy who got out a big wall map of the park and his pointing stick and told us all about the people who die each year getting blown off the mountain and someone who got his brains blown out by a falling rock. feeling confident and reassured with our newfound knowledge, we bought lots of instant noodles and sensibly got an early night. well......... we were planning to, until rafa, one of the guys who runs our hostel, told us to go and buy loads of wine and beer because we´re having a bbq. doh. best bbq ever, cooked massive slabs of lamb and chorizo over coals from the fire and drank loads of really good chilean wine, didnt really know what was going on because everyone was speaking spanish but had a generally awesome time, packed my stuff up in hundreds of waterproof plastic bags then got up really early after about 4 hours sleep. ideal trek preparation.

the two main treks people do in the park are the 5-6 day W or the 7-10 day el circuito, we went for the W due to time constraints/fear, so if you can find a map of the park we started by getting a catamaran across lago pehoe then headed up towards glaciar grey. torres del paine is famous for its obscene weather conditions, it changes from pouring rain to burning sun to ridiculous wind every few minutes, so the hippie guy recommended you just wear one set of trekking clothes and save your dry set for the evenings, and just back youself when it gets wet and cold, so i spent the whole 5 days wearing a t shirt and flowery swimming shorts, which undoubtedly impressed all the gore-tex clad tourists and day trippers with how hardcore i was. the glaciar was awesome, absolutely massive and loads of icebergs and stuff, although the 100mph gusts of wind coming off it caused a bit of mayhem when trying to walk along high cliffs with a big unwieldy backpack. somehow no one died though, so we camped overlooking the glaciar then backtracked down to campamento italiano, up the valle frances, back down and up to chileno, up to las torres, then finally down to hosteria torres to form a vague W shape. absolutley stunning scenery the whole way, and weather was fairly good considering how extreme it can get sometimes. on the 3rd day we trekked almost 10 hours across some ridiculous terrain, started off climbing a mountain in a snowstorm, then almost got blown away in gale force winds, then had a 4 hour climb up a grueling hillside in scorching sunshine, was quite knackered after that! especially since we were subsisting mainly on dehydrated noodles and bread. also got a bit of a cold for a while, probably due to the t shirt and swimming shorts combo not being very warm when its snowing. i went to see the rock pillars that give the park its name twice, once in daylight which was awesome, then again the next morning to try and see them lit up by the sunrise. unsurprisingly it was a bit too cloudy, although had a pretty entertaining time clambering over rocks in the dark and getting lost up the mountain on my own for a bit, where my expert skills at sliding down mountains learned in raratonga came in handy. all in all very tough hike, really enjoyed it though and got some awesome photos. and my hiking boots survived somehow and didnt leak once, despite the soles only being held on with a bit of electrical tape! quite lucky no one had any accidents, jasons knee is in quite a bad way but nothing too serious, although we heard stories of a french guy breaking his leg and being trapped up the mountain for 5 days before the french government threatened to bomb chile unless they got him down! may or may not be true, either way the rescue services are pretty limited at best. all good fun though.

so now back in puerto natales recovering, rafa wants to have another bbq tonight and spends most of the time rampaging around the hostel ranting in spanish and playing motley crue videos really loudly, best man ever. its so good having proper food and beer again, had an awesome meal of roast chicken with loads of chili sauce and castillero del diablo wine to celebrate last night, mmmm. leaving tomorrow night on the navimag ferry, which weaves in and out of the fiords and icebergs and stuff up the coast of chile for 4 days to puerto montt, should be pretty cool. then gonna quickly head up to valparaiso and/or santiago then head back into argentina, its much more expensive here and theres not much else i want to see in chile. hope everyone´s well, will try and update again when i get back to civilisation. apparently they even have paved roads up there as well, cant wait.

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