hey all,

Momo and I recently finished the Torres del Paine trek in southern patagonia in Chile. There are no words to descirbe the beauty of this place. It is by far the coolest place I have ever been, and probably the most memorable. Of course, not everyone that visits get such great weather. We had no rain, sun pertty much every day, and only one day with really bad winds. It almost blew me off the mountain!

It is possible to hike the "W", 5 days, 4 nights, without tenting by staying in refugios, if you are willing to fork up $50 a person for one night. Food is also outrageously expensive in the park. Breakfast was $11. Not paying that for oatmeal, which would have cost me $1. WAY out of my budget. So needless to say, momo and I camped and brought all our food into torres del paine. The second day was our hardest and longest day. I started out at 4 am, hiking to the top of the mountain to watch the sun rise over three huge cliffs above a glacier lake, freezing in the whipping winds, being impacient, waiting for the sun to come out. There was no way Momo was getting up at that hour, so she saw the towers the day before. The best views were on the third day, up the "french valley", which had a viewing point about 3 hours into the valley from the campsite, with panoramic mountain cliffs, surrounding us on all sides. It was amazing. We spent at least 2 hours, basking in the sun, at the view point (30 minutes of which I napped).

We hiked with a New Zealand guy we met on the 4 day boat through Patagonia, who was traveling alone. Though we speak the same language, its amusing how many times I asked him to repeat what he said. There are small differences in vocab that also threw me off. We had a miscommunication about oatmeal, or porage, as they say. All in all, it ws 5 days of awesome sights. Its a must see for anyone going to chile, and well worth the money to get all the way down here! Next stop: chillin with the penguins in "the end of the world", the most southern city ever.