The famed W Trek in Parque Nacional Torres del Paine. We arrived to the park with mixed feelings, looking forward to some reportedly spectacular scenery and a few days trekking, though feeling a little uncertain about the forecasted weather and whether this was going to be an incredible 5 days, or just plain miserable.

Fortunately we had booked in to stay in refuges along the way. Some may consider this cheating but it meant we didn't have to worry about sourcing and carrying a tent, sleeping bags and food. We also didn't have to brave the potential cold and wind in a tent, but would be nice and warm and well fed.

We took the morning bus to the park. After filling out entry paperwork, paying the fee and listening to a briefing on safety and responsibility in the park, we were transferred to another bus to drop us at our first refugio, Torre Norte. The beautiful snow-capped Monte Almirante Nieto loomed behind the refugio.

We unloaded our stuff into our 6 bed dorm room and met our roommates, an awesome couple Mandi and Tom from the US who we got along with really well. We would all be taking roughly the same route/timing through the W so we ended up spending a lot of time together which was great fun!

After a good chat we decided to go for a short walk to warm up the legs. The day was a little cloudy, quite windy and the intermittent rain stung our faces as it came in sideways. We would have to get used to this as we were anticipating more weather like it, and worse.

We were going to complete the W Trek, from east to west, which as the name suggest follows a path that makes the shape of a W. Another alternative is to do a longer circuit that connects around the other side of the peaks, predictably called the O Trek. We decided to warm our legs up on a section of the O Trek which was a lovely path.

We walked along for about an hour, then found a nice rock to sit on and eat our sandwiches before deciding it wasn't that pleasant in the wind and that once we returned to the refugio we probably would have done enough warm up.

As we made our way back the weather started to clear a little, and all of a sudden we noticed the tops of the Torres del Paine themselves just visible over the hill. This got us very excited for what was to come as the next day we would be walking to the base of the Torres.

We also took a short walk to the Hotel Las Torres, a beautiful big hotel where people with bigger budgets stay. Nearby were some examples of rocks from the area which Fergus the Geo enjoyed checking out for a while, before we returned to the Refugio for some cards and a coffee, followed by our first refugio meal which was reasonably edible.

LAPFWT