Puerto Natales and the O/Q/W Trek - February 17th to 27th

Tuesday, February 17th 2015

We arrived around 6 pm to Puerto Natales. It was a long half hour walk to find our hostel. I brought a duffle bag for carrying and storing excess stuff. When we take buses and move to new locations, we have all of our stuff with us and it can be a pain to carry. We each have our large back packs, then we carry the duffle bag between us, one handle each with our day packs in front. When we go on treks we take as little as possible and leave the excess in my duffle bag.

We had planned to go tomorrow morning to Torres del Paine National Park to begin a 7 to 8 day trek, but we changed our minds and decided to take a day to prepare, get groceries and buy bus tickets.

So instead tonight we went out for a nice dinner at a popular vegetarian restaurant in town call El Living. I got eggplant tapenade and homemade whole grain toast and a delicious pumpkin and kidney bean casserole that came with fresh salad (from the back garden!). Jeff had a veggie burger and pumpkin soup. It was a great meal!

After dinner we went to check out the grocery store. It appeared as if it had been looted! Not much was in stock and everything was out of place! I guess this is how the grocery store looks here at this time on any given day. It gets restocked and cleaned up before reopening the next day. Amazingly, even in its looted state, they had celery, kale, broccoli and cauliflower, things I never saw in Argentina! Another big difference is that they have all sorts of imported items, including nice chocolate bars!! In Argentina, everything in the grocery stores is made in Argentina. It's quite remarkable that they can and do make all that they need within their own borders!! And I think it's funny I get so excited to find nice chocolate. I used to be the weird girl that didn't like chocolate, somehow in the last few years that has changed. 

Our accommodation while in town is unique. We will be sleeping in giant dome tents. The tents are large enough to fit 4 sets of bunk beds each. They have enough structure that while you are in them, you don't really feel like you are in a tent, except for being able to hear wind and rain really well! There are 4 of these domes in the backyard of a really nice German/Chilean man who is super friendly and eager to help and give information. The domes look like large igloos, complete with arctic entries. Recycled wood pallets connect the domes to bathroom and shower rooms. Everything is new and nice, especially the beds and sheets and blankets, being some of the nicest we have found on our trip. Staying in the domes is a few dollars cheaper than the average hostel, which we appreciate. (: We have 2 roommates, Chilean girls that have just completed a 4 day trek in the park. They will be flying back home to Santiago tomorrow and have left us with the food they didn't finish: a Tetra Pak box of peas, a box of porotos granados (a Chilean specialty of stewed white beans, pumpkin, corn and bell pepper), a bag of cous cous, a bag of Raman noodle style soup, a half bag of marshmallows and some instant coffee. Everyone here drinks instant coffee. Brewed coffee is practically unheard of. 

Domos House Hostel

8 beds inside the dorm

Jeff with one of many neat trash cans around town!

<Really nice natural wool yarn in all the gift shops. I had to restrain myself from buying any!>

The water front in Puerto Natales, Seno Ultima Esperanza (Last Hope Sound)

Wednesday, February 18th 2015

Today we learned that the bank that we have been using here has a maximum withdrawal limit of 150,000 pesos, which is somewhere in the range of $240 USD. This really stinks, cause the ATM fees are high. The official exchange rate is 622 Chilean pesos per 1 USD. But with the extreme ATM fees we are being charged we think we are getting around 600 pesos per dollar or possibly less, but we aren't really sure. Our home bank (Wells Fargo) charges $5 for the foreign transaction and the Chilean bank charge 4,000 pesos, which is close to $7! So we get charged close to $12 for every $240 taken out. We would like to figure out a way around this, but for now we deal with it. We vaguely remember this happening during our last trip here, but don't really remember, as we spent so few days overall in Chile and probably only went to the ATM twice.

We bought bus tickets to the park today and were surprised at how expensive they are, 10,000 pesos each for a round trip. And we have also learned that the park entrance fee is 18,000 per person, so this won't be a cheap trip! One thing we have noticed throughout our trip is that tourists always get gouged. We pay more for everything. Airfare, park entrances, bus tickets, accommodation, etc. And it's usually substantially less than the locals pay. Locals are also able to take larger sums of money out of the ATM at one time.

We have been grocery shopping today. We will be utilizing the freeze dried backpacker pantry meals we brought from home. We have 6 of them, which we will combine with produce and the quick cooking beans and rice I have. We will have lots of oats for breakfast and peanut butter and jellies for lunch. We have chocolate, marshmallows, cookies and trail mix for snacks. We also went to a place that sells quite a variety of dried fruits from a room in the ground floor of a family home! We got kiwis, cantaloupe, pomelo, mango, strawberries, cherry tomatoes, hibiscus flowers, coconut bites, apricots and pineapples! They are more like candied fruit than dried fruit!

We also decided to rent a sleeping bag. Anything you need can be rented in town, including clothing, backpacks, tents, trekking poles, stoves and camp cookware. It was really cold in town both yesterday and today and the Chilean girls at our hostel said it was really cold camping in the park and the hostel owner also told us we might freeze in our 35 degree bags. So we gave in and rented a sleeping bag. It will cost about $40 for 8 days and if it makes the trip more comfortable, it will be worth it. We got a synthetic 15 degree marmot sleeping bag. If it gets really cold, I will double up my sleeping bag with Jeff's and Jeff can use the rental combined with my sleeping bag liner.

We went back to the vegetarian restaurant for lunch, where I had beet (borscht) soup and a sweet and sour cabbage, kidney bean and beet salad and Jeff had carrot soup with toast and a veggie sandwich. 

For our dinner we went to La Picada de Don Carlitos, a popular place with locals that we ate at on our last trip. It gives large portions and is cheap. We both got ginormous sandwiches and french fries. The vegetarian sandwich came with grilled onions, lettuce, tomatoes and avocado and was served on a sandwich roll as large as a dinner plate!

Thursday, February 19th 2015 (Day 1) Administration to Paine Grande (16 km, 6 hours)

No more roommates moved into our dome, and we were grateful for that. It was nice not to have to be quiet while we got ready this morning. We got up at 6, ate overnight oats and walked the half hour to the bus terminal with our very heavy backpacks full of food! Usually the deal is that I carry the food and Jeff takes the tent and cookware, but this time there was so much food that I needed a little help from Jeff! We probably could have travelled a lot lighter, but I refuse to skimp and eat crappy food, when we are most in need to lots of calories and nutrients! Most people eat rice and powdered soup mixes on this trek, but not us!

We made it to the terminal right at 7:30, the departure time. Multiple buses leave for the park at same time. We got the last row of seats in what appeared to be the crummiest bus of them all. The seats reclined very far and I slept most of the 2 1/2 hour ride to the park. I awoke for the last 15 minutes or so on dirt road. The driver seemed to be going as fast as he possibly could and taking great joy in tossing the passengers around. The bus filled with clouds of dust and we all got to inhale it into our lungs.

Once at the park entrance everyone had to get off the bus and pay the park entrance fee and watch a video about not starting forest fires and not littering. From there some people got there stuff and began their hikes from the entrance area while others got back on the bus for one of the two remaining stops. We stayed on until the last stop, which involved a lot of waiting around. Finally 4 hours after we boarded the bus, we were at our destination. 

There are a number of different options for trekking in the park. The most popular is called the W. That is the hike we did last time. It is 4 or 5 days long and is called W for the shape is makes on the map. The other popular hikes are the O and the Q, also named for the shape they make on the map. These two are longer hikes, taking 7 or 8 days. All 3 of the hikes are in and around the Torres (or towers) and Cuernos (horns) rock/mountain formations. And all of the hikes are broken into segments between various refuges and campgrounds. Most of the campgrounds and refuges are run by concessioners and are expensive, but a few of them are run by the forest service and are free. There aren't enough of the free campgrounds to do it entirely free though, and camping is not allowed outside of the established sites. The park experiences severe over crowding. Because of the refuges, just about any one can do any one of the treks. You don't need a big backpack, cooking gear, a tent or a sleeping bag. You can sleep in the dorms at the refuges and have all your meals in the refuges too and just hike with a day pack between locations. This is what we did last time, because we didn't have all of the gear, but it was expensive, around $75 (or more) per person per day!

We will be combining the Q and W trek, covering all of the most popular trails in the park. Today we hiked what is known as the tail (the line on the Q). The tail brings you into the main trail where you can begin the O or circuit. We had to hike 18km (11 miles) today. Luckily it was mostly flat, and also mostly sunny and mostly not windy! Our back packs were real heavy! The hike took us 6 hours, over an hour longer than it should have. We stopped half way for lunch at a free camping area. We sat down in the grass and enjoyed peanut butter and apple sandwiches and watched (and smelled!) in horror as a Chilean couple whipped out the biggest bottle of smelly poison shampoo I've ever seen and then proceeded to wash their hair in the hose spigot and rinse it right into the ground. Apparently they couldn't wait any longer to wash their hair, and hair washing is important enough for them to carry a heavy bottle of shampoo around for days and poison the water and land with their chemicals!  These sorts of people shouldn't be out trekking if they can't deal with being a little dirty!

Our first tent site (Refugio Paine Grande) is in an exposed area in a scenic location below the Cuernos and on the shore of a turquoise blue glacially fed lake. We are very glad it isn't too windy because our tent is not cut out for the winds of Patagonia! This is the place we got stuck for a night on our trek two years ago due to high winds and we witnessed a north face tent get shredded in the wind while some people were trying to set it up! So again, real glad it's not like that today!

This Refugio is very crowded as it is a cross roads for people coming in and out of the park and doing day hikes as well, so it has double the traffic that other refugios have. This refugio can be reached by boat or 3 different trails. Because of the boat aspect, lots of people can reach it, even if they aren't able to hike a long way. There must be a few hundred people camped out here and inside the refuge they have beds for 100 hikers!! To cook you must go inside of this small octagon shaped hut, and every square inch of it is filled with people. There is a sink to wash dishes, and it leaks directly onto the floor of the hut.  For our dinner tonight, we ate the free foods from our Chilean roommates, cous cous, peas, beans and an added tomato. It was truly a great meal and left us very satisfied. But then we had to wait in line 15 minutes to wash our pot! And the line for the showers must be over 20 girls long! We won't be having showers! More people that need to learn to function in nature without the benefit of a shower every day!

We have many tents near ours. One of our neighbors is a group of 3 real young looking German girls. While we were setting up our tent, we watched as the wind blew away a plastic bag from their area. They all sat on the ground and watched helplessly as it went, all seemingly unable to do anything about it! I ran after the bag for them because I didn't want it to go into the lake. One of them shouted out, thanks that was mine! I wanted to punch them, but instead just shot them dirty looks. These are exactly the sorts of people that should not be allowed to be in nature and just ruin it for others.

We went to bed around 10, only to be jolted awake an hour later by the sound of some rude Chilean girls pounding in tent stakes with a rock inches from our heads while the men assisting them talked loudly! We saw these girls earlier attempting to build a tent, apparently they were unsuccessful and had to ask some guys for assistance. Somehow they had a different tent too, maybe theirs was no good and they ended up renting one. More people that shouldn't be in nature...

It´s interesting doing this hike as a camper, it´s a completely different experience and perspective than staying in the refuges and eating the meals they prepare.

Paine Grande is the snow covered mountain on the left and the Cuernos is the formation to the right.

View of the mountains with Lago Pehoe in front.

Friday, February 20th 2015 (Day 2) Paine Grande to Camping Italiano + Valle Frances (15.5 km, 7 hours)

Picture I took in the morning of the campsite, after many people had already packed up and left! This is probably 1/4 of the camping area. I´ve never seen so many tents in one place. The building is the tiny cookhouse, the right white part of the building seemed to be an addition, but it was not completed or open yet.

We woke up to another pretty nice day. No rain or wind. We started out around 9:30 and walked 3 hours to Campamento Italiano, a free campground at the base of Valle del Francés (Valley of the French). After an hour break to set up the tent and have lunch we walked up the French Valley. It was a tiny bit drizzly for a short while, but not enough to even need our rain gear, and after awhile it cleared up. The hike up the valley is 5 to 6 hours round trip with views of mountains and glaciers along the way. The trail ends partway up the valley with views all the way around, but it seems like the trail should go further, higher. There were distance markers along the trail and at the end it appeared as though there should be 1 km remaining, but this is contradicted by a sign that says ¨fin del sendero¨ or end of trail, so that was confusing.  We think it used to go another kilometer and something changed, maybe a landslide, or maybe someone got injured and they no longer allow travel further up the valley.

On our way back down we stopped to sit awhile at the view point for the glaciers, where you can see them drop ice down the cliffs and hear them thunder. While we were sitting someone asked me to take a photo for them, which I hate doing, Jeff usually handles these sorts of inquiries, but he was off taking photos himself! So unenthusticatically I agreed! Turns out the guy I was photoing worked front desk at the Copper River Princess Wilderness Lodge in 2012! That´s the year Jeff and I met and also the lodge we were at the first time we met! So we ended up staying there awhile and taking to him. He was wearing a tshirt bearing the name of some small town in upstate New York, which is what started the conversation going between him and Jeff. It´s crazy to think all of the people you can cross paths, and how we would never have realized we had anything in common with this guy sitting right next to us if he hadn´t asked for a photo.

In all we hiked 15.5 km (a little over 9 miles) in about 8 hours.

Unfortunately late yesterday I began to feel sick, so I am now dealing with a cold! Hopefully it goes away soon. Makes me glad I brought healthy food!  Today we had oatmeal with bananas, pears and chia seeds for breakfast. Peanut butter and apple sandwiches for lunch.  And thanks to Kirianne, we had a freeze dried backpacker pantry pad thai meal! When she left she gave us her unused meals. (:  We combined it with sprouted mung beans and red bell pepper, made for an excellent dinner!

Looking up the French Valley from a suspension bridge over the river, near Italiano Campsite. Paine Grande is in the clouds.

Glaciers in the French Valley where you can sit and watch ice falls.

View down the French Valley to Lago Pehoe.

Burls and the fungus that causes them on a lenga tree. The fungus things are called Llao llao!

View of the Cuernos in the French Valley

Views from the end of the trail in the French Valley

Panoramic view of the mountains at the end of the trail in the French Valley

Saturday, February 21st 2015 (Day 3) Campamento Italiano to Chileno (20 km, 8 hours)

View this morning from the same suspension bridge near Camping Italiano, you can now clearly see Paine Grande. We wished we were hiking up the French Valley today!

Today we got a late start by allowing ourselves to sleep in. We awoke to crystal clear sky with no wind! We ate more oats for breakfast, with cinnamon, shredded coconut and pears. Before departing we took one last view up the valley, which was spectacular. We had about 20 km (12 mi) to cover today and with the lack of wind, it was quite hot and exhausting.  Although our backpacks are getting lighter with each meal, they are still not quite comfortable, and they cause us to hike quite slowly, everyone passes us!

A few hours in we stopped at Los Cuernos refuge to have our lunch of peanut butter and avocado sandwiches with trail mix, dried fruit and multi grain cookies. From there we had another 5 hours to go to our end destination of the Chileno refuge, partway up another valley! The last hour or so was uphill and pretty brutal, as we were dead, and wanted nothing more than to stop moving and eat dinner!

We were displeased to find upon arrival, that the concessioner that runs that camping and refuge completely rips you off!  The Chileno refuge is run by a company called Fantastic Sur, and they charge more than double what the other company; Vertice Patagonia charges for their camping!  At Paine Grande we paid, 4,200 pesos per person, here we had to pay 8,500 per person! And of course the rate is highest for foreigners!  Because we arrived so late, we are quite far from the refuge, and have esentially paid US $30 for the priveledge of placing our tent on ¨their¨ground!  Luckily they accept credit cards, or they would have run us out of cash for the rest of the trek! Dinner of Backpacker pantry Katmandu curry (with added brown rice flakes, sprouted mung beans and zucchini) couldn´t come soon enough!! After 7 hours walking with the heavy packs we are thoroughly exhausted.

Dried hibiscus from the dried fruit store in Puerto Natales. Didn´t taste like much other than just sugar!

Hiking along Lago Nordernskjold, looking back at Paine Grande and the French Valley

A Chilco blossom

The last half hour of the hike up the valley to Refugio and Camping Chileno

Sunday, February 22nd 2015 (Day 4) Chileno to Mirador Las Torres to Camping Seron (26 km, 10 hours)

Today is the first time we decided we should set an alarm. We got up at 6 AM, had oats with chia seeds, our last pear, 2 plums and cinnamon and left our tent and all our stuff to do the hike up to the mirador (viewpoint) for the Torres. This is probably the most popular hike in the park and all of the people that come to the park for just a day are most likely to do this hike. Roundtrip its 8km (almost 5 mi) and took us about 4 hours.  It was pretty cold out, but we managed to stay fairly warm on the steep uphill climb. However when we reached the end of the trail, it was not so easy to keep warm, it was 42 degrees! At the end of the trail you arrive at a small glacially fed lake of greenish color, with glaciers and the towers above it. It is quite a magnificent sight and when we got there, there wasn´t a single person obstucting the view! Clouds kept moving over and around the Torres, so they were coming in and out of view. We didn´t stay long, and didn´t mind the clouds, as we had the pleasure of seeing the place with clear sky two years ago.

Jeff had a rest on a log while I was off digging a cat hole. This is a common activity in our days of hiking!

Mirador Las Torres

A nicely decorated upturned tree stump

Once back at our tent we took a long break to pack up and have lunch.  We decided to have our hot meal for lunch, so at the end of the day we could eat something quick and go to bed. We had another katmandu curry (which is lentils, brown rice, peas, potatoes and curry spices) with added zucchini, brown rice flakes and sprouted mung beans.

After lunch we hiked about 2 hours to the bottom of the valley to an area where there is a hotel (Hotel Las Torres) and Refugio and camping Las Torres. It´s near the main entrance of the park, so there are lots of people passing through here on their way in and out of the park. We found a small kiosko and were able to buy two sandwich rolls for 800 pesos each, or about $1.25, which doesn´t seem like much, but when you consider that we could buy 6 rolls for 800 in town, you realize it´s a lot! We were excited to find them though, so we could have sandwiches for one more day!

From there it was another 4 hours to the next camping area, and we were still feeling pretty good and decided to go for it. By that time it was starting to get quite hot, which made the going tiring! The trail from here on will be new for us.  We are going to be going to an area know as ¨the backside,¨ referring to the back side of the mountain range.  It is in more of a rain shadow, so has drier grassland type vegetation.  For the 4 hours that we walked to camping Seron, we walked on an old ranch road, which was sparsely vegetated with huge old growth lenga trees. It was a mostly pleasant and easy hike, but the last hour, even though it was flat, dragged on and we became quite delirious and thought we might just collapse. It had also gotten pretty windy and the wind was blowing and gusting directly at us, so that made the going all the more difficult. It was close to sunset when we finally arrived and managed to contruct our tent and get inside before it started to rain. Since our tent sucks in the wind, we have pitched it behind the large dome structure that is home to the guys that run the campsite.  This is also another Fantastico Sur property and we have paid 17,000 pesos to sleep here! Dinner was a glorious peanut butter and apple sandwich on our new bread. Now we are ready for some much needed rest!

Hiking though old ranch lands on the way to Camping Seron

View of the dry grassland/steppe on the backside on the mountains

Looking down into the valley where Camping Seron, our destination for the night is located

Lots of horses in the fields leading up to the campground. They are not wild. :(

This is what the trail looked like for about the last hour, while we were slowly dying...

Monday, February 23rd 2015, (Day 5) Camping Seron to Refugio Dickson (19 km, 7 hours)

The wind died down overnight and we were able to sleep undisturbed.  I slept better than I did any of the previous nights! My cold is starting to clear and I could actually breath out of my nose all night, that always helps!! (: The rain kept up til 11, so we ate our breakfast in the tent and layed there until the rain stopped. We had oats again, with chia seeds, shredded coconut, cinnamon and canned peaches.  At our hostel in Punta Arenas, they had canned peaches for breakfast, and they turned out to be the best peaches of our lives! I have never enjoyed canned fruit, and the canned peaches in the US are terrible, but these ones are the most beautiful things you have ever seen! We are now hooked and will be eternally greatful to the Entrevientos hostel for introducing us to them!! The brand we have been buying is Dos Caballos, but I suspect that any of the ones produced in Chile would be just as good!

After the rain stopped, we got out of the tent and packed up. The sky cleared pretty well and it ended up being a pretty nice day. Of about 30 tents that had been at the campground last night, we were the last ones to leave! We think we were the smartest though, because we got to spend the day hiking in the sun completely dry! We walked over more grasslands on rolling hills to the next refuge. It was windy at times, but with the exception of one hill top, it was never too bad.  Our backpacks felt much better today and we were able to complete the hike without too much difficulty.

We had peanut butter and apple sandwiches again for lunch. Dinner was another Backpacker Pantry Meal. This one was louisiana red beans and rice, which we added and avocado. We also has some veggie ramen soup that we added wild dandelion greens from the trail to. My goal in packing was to have at least one fresh produce item every day, and so far we have succeded! 

We love the backpacker pantry meals, they are the only ones we have found that are not only vegan, but also free of other poisonous garbage ingredients.  They are especially nice when vegetables or other ingredients are added to supplement them. Before we left I found them for sale on Amazon in large 20 serving cans! I plan to buy one to use on our adventures in Alaska this summer. I especially like the idea of much less packahing with the large can.

We are at a Vertice Patagonia run campsite tonight and were very greatful for the affordable price of 4,300 pesos per person (about $7US). We have our tent set against a patch of lenga trees close to the shore of Lago Dickson, a large glacially fed lake.  From here we have very nice views of the mountains and up into the mountain pass that we will venture over tomorrow. Going over the pass will put us back on the front side of the range and almost to the end of our hike. We hope for clear mountains when we wake up!

Clear skies after the rain. Looking back toward Camping Seron and the Rio Paine

The one incredbily windy area of the trail. We are on a small rise looking down on Lago Paine

The small peninsula in the bottom left is where Refugio and Camping Dickson is located on the shores of glacially fed Lago Dickson. The glacier is hiding, but is located in the very cloudy part of the sky left left of the middle of the photo.

Tuesday, February 24rd 2015, (Day 6) Refugio Dickson to Campamento Paso (23 km, 8.5 hours)

We set an alarm for 7 am, and although neither of us wanted to move when it when off, I unzipped the tent door to look out on clear views of the mountains! and no wind! Wahoo! For breakfast we had overnight oats again with chia seeds and our last can of peaches. By 8 AM we were on our way up the valley.  We were surprised to find that it was a pretty gentle uphill climb.  All of the elevation maps of the trail make the approach to the pass, and the pass itself look horrendous, so this was a very nice surprise. The hike was in the lenga forest, following a river most of the way.  We got occasional views up and down the valley, views of mountains and glaciers and one pretty glacially fed lake along the way.

About halfway up we came to another camping area, Los Perros, run by Vertice Patagionia. This is where most trekkers stop for the day and wait for the next day to complete the pass. We stopped for lunch. We are now on our last supplies of food, so we had sprouted mung beans, brown rice flakes, peanuts, raisins, cinnamon and jam. It was eaten hot, and sounds really weird, but was pretty good, and just what we needed to keep us going! Since the weather was so awesome we decided to keep going! It had been a little cloudy when we had started out, but it was getting clearer and clearer. As we continued on, we kept expecting it to get steep and difficult, but it never did. We saw a few people on their way down, doing the circuit in the opposite direction as us, and they all said it was pretty windy at the top, which is what we had expected.  As we continued along we had more amazing views of glaciers and very impressive high jagged mountains. At this point we were above tree line and hiking mostly of rock rubble left behind by retreating glaciars, and it felt like we were back hiking in Chugach State Park outside of Anchorage! The scenery reminded us very much of the Crow Pass hike we did this past summer. As we climbed higher and higher we kept waiting for the wind, but it never came! It must have been windy in the morning, but died down just in time for our arrival, we were so lucky! When we reached the top of the pass, we had it completely to ourselves few minutes and we were rewarded with incredible views of Glacier Gray and the icefield and mountains from way up high! This was easily the best view of the whole hike and we were so greatful for perfect weather! Sometimes it is so windy up here that hikers have no choice but to just run through, and can sometimes not even stand in place long enough to take a photo! After a few minutes a few other people arrived at the top, day hikers from the other side. It was so nice out that we were able to stop and take a half hour snack stop on the pass!

From the top it was only a few hours down to the next campsite, this time a free one run by the forest service. Wahoo!  This side of the trail was quite steep and involved a lot of stairs! We were very glad we hadn´t chosen to do the hike in the other directions, coming up this way would have been miserable compared to the gentle trail we had. It was pretty late, and the sun was gettting low in the sky by the time we arrived.  The campsite was in the forest alongside the glaciar, you could look through the trees out onto miles of blue ice.  There were lots of other campers already there, but we managed to find a nice stop for our tent away from all the others. Dinner was our favorite of all the backpacker pantry meals, Chana Masala. Today we are out of anything to add to it, but that´s ok, it´s delicious on its own!

Not the best picture, because the sun was very bright, but the glacier and its surrounding mountains were visible in the morning, and we were able to see them as we hiked up and away from the refugio.

Laguna Los Perro and Glacier Los Perros. Not the best picture with an iphone!

Looking up at the pass from Laguna Los Perros.  We were surprised to see that it looks quite gentle!

Hiking up to Paso John Gardner.  Lots of rivers and waterfalls around. Very nice drinking water!

The mountains near the pass kept going in and out of whispy clouds, and there was lots of nice glacially polished rock.

Nice glacier near the top of the pass.

Panorama from the top of the pass, looking back to where we came from.

View of Glacier Grey, the surrounding mountains and glaciers and the Patagionia Ice Field from the top of the pass.

Jeff many steps below me on the hike down from the pass.

Looking through the forest out onto Glacier Grey

View of the glacier at a stream crossing near the campground.

Wednesday February 25th 2015, (Day 7) Campamento Paso to Campamento Las Carretas (30 km, 9.75 hours)

Breakfast was another rice, bean, peanut and raisin concoction, then began a long hike the rest of the way down from the glacier. Today our backpacks are very light and comfortable!!  We stopped for lunch at Refugio Grey.  Savory hot oatmeal with nutritional yeast, salt and pepper, peanuts, chia seeds, Mrs. Dash seasoning, red pepper flakes and paprika.  It was really good! And hot food on the trail is always comforting! From there we continued on another few hours along the huge lake that is formed by Glacier Grey. Eventually we arrived back to Paine Grande, the place we camped on the first day. We had completed the circuit!! The wind had picked up over the last few hours and it was drizzling a little by the time we got to the refuge. We had the option to take the catamaran out here and be done with the hike and catch the bus back to town, but we decided to extend our stay in the park and really get our moneys worth with that 18,000 peso entrance fee! We put on our rain gear and braved the crazy wind and continued on another 3 hours out the way we had come in on the tail, to the free campsite where we ate lunch on the first day.  The wind blew us all over the place and, the last hour we were ready to drop dead, and it was 9pm and darkish by the time we got to the campsite, but we felt a great sense of accomplishment upon arrival! We arrived starved and immediately boiled water for our last freeze dried meal, Katmandu Curry. While the meal steeped in its water, we built our tent. Once inside we ate and then went to bed for much needed rest after the longest distance of the trip! All of the distances are approximations as park sinage and the park map often contradicated each other, but by the end hike will be about 150km or 90 miles!!

View of the glacier from our snack stop today. The clouds are up high, istead of down low like yesterday

The rest of the view from the same snack stop. The terminus of the glacier and the lake from its meltwater.

A crazy suspension bridge we had to cross over. There is a deep canyon below, and the trail until recently descended into the canyon and came back up with the use of ladders, but the ladders must have been damaged in a rock slide.

View of Glacier Grey from afar, the wind was picking up, giving us similar weather to the last time we hiked this section of trail.

Thursday February 26th 2015 (Day 8) Campamento Las Carretas to Administration (6 km, 2 hours)

A fantastic view to wake up to on our last day in the park!

It was a quick hour and 45 minute hike through flat grasslands out to where the bus picks up. We were back to town by about 4:30 pm.  It could have been much sooner, but the bus driver decided to take a 30 minute rest stop on the way back, while all the passengers sat inside waiting for him!! Once back in town we went returned the sleeping bag that we never really needed. It was pretty warm every night, but we are glad we were prepared for whatever the weather brought. Then it was straight to La Picada de Don Carlitos for our victory meal: a veggie sandewich, mixed salad, boiled potatoes and french fries. It was no where near as good as we dreamed of the whole hike. The veggie sandwich was also not as good as the one I´d had the week before! Feeling dissatisfied, we went to our favorite grocery store, Don Bosco, and ordered two slices of delicious cake from the bakery! Problem solved, instant satisfaction! (: We bought some more groceries, follwed by onward bus tickets then called it a night.

View from the bus as we were driving away.

Not the the best quality photo, but gives you an idea of the hike. The circles are the places we camped each night.

Friday, February 27th 2015

Today was my birthday.  We took a relax day.  Paid about $15 to do laundry!! You pay by the kilo here, and we had 4 kilos! Chile is expensive, it would cost about $5 in Argentina! We also ate four more pieces of cake from Don Bosco, two after lunch and then because I wanted to try all of the flavors, we had two more after dinner! (: For dinner we went out to Patagonias only microbrewry, Baguales (according to them it is the only one).  We had dark beers, a giant bowl of homemade potato chips with guacamole and veggies tacos. It wasn´t terribly good, hence the need for more cake and satisfaction! Plus the meal was expensive, we are ready to get out of Chile! Tomorrow we will be taking the bus back to El Calafate, Argentina.

Giant bowl of chips at Baguales. It doesn´t look big in the photo, but it was huge!

Many cakes for me! At 950 pesos each (about $1.50!!), they are irresistable!