Torres Del Paine is a famous national park in Chile, just under 1000 sq.miles of snow-capped mountains, lush valleys, countless lakes, rivers and massive glaciers. The showpiece of the park is the ´Paine Massif´which are three granite towers rising up to 2500 metres and can be seen for many miles around.

This UNESCO world heritage site was on our must do list but was doubtful due to its remote location and the unfortunate event of a silly person who lit a toilet roll here last month and set fire to thousands of acres of beautiful woodland. The park was closed but fortunately for us it reopened just before we turned up.

After the Tikal hammock disaster, Dave and Emily have been reluctant to try lone camping again. However, the only affordable way to do the stunning Mirador Torres del Paine trek up to the towers is to camp, so we rented some equipment from our hostel and off we went.

Luckily you can set up camp at the bottom and then do the 8 hour trek, so we didn´t have to lug our gear up the mountain. Emily and Dave were impressed with there interpretation of the Spanish tent instructions and were making good progress with an unfamiliar tent, when we were rudely told that that particular patch of field was reserved and we would have to move our tent! This was probably a lie as no one actually camped there, we think he just didn´t want 2 gringos blocking his view!

The trek itself is very varied. The valley starts of very low and undulating and then becomes greener as you get higher. The colours of the rock change from light to dark and the walk goes in and out of forests and over streams on perilous bridges. One long rope bridge had a maximum capacity of only 2!

The final hour to get to the top is pretty tricky. The mountainside turns into a massive boulder field, so you are basically clambering over massive rocks in full sun. You can just see the tops of the 3 towering massifs and are praying that it is "vale la pena" (worth the effort). At the last minute you climb over a final boulder and before you is a beautiful bright green glacial lake with the 3 towers above. Amazing. The sun was starting to set and it was all very magical. The only thing needed to complete perfection was a (fairly) cold Cristal beer produced from Dave´s backpack.

Feeling fortified, Dave and Emily confidently started their descent. For two hardened Inca Trailers another 3 hours back to base would be a breeze. However, our feet and knees did not agree and we were forced to admit that 8 hours (18km) hiking up and down a mountain in the hot sun was a bit much for us.

We struggled with the last hour, with knees going and heads dropping. When we finally got back to camp at 21:30 we were so exhausted we couldn´t even drink our camping wine that we brought along. So we just eat our pasta dinner,munched on some chocolates and managed a beer each before falling asleep exhausted.