Alilles

We purposely safed the said-to-be biggest highlight for our last day in the park (which was at the same time Gilles birthday - not just by coincidence 😉): The Mirador Torres del Paine. Even though the staff at the campside advised everyone not to go up before 9am because there was supposed to be no view earlier we did not listen - if you have the chance to see the three famous peaks with the sunrise you better do it! So we left the camp at 3:45 in darkness and made our 4.3km way up to the viewpoint. It was certainly another experience to walk through snow-frosted forests only by headlights (thinking of pumas 🙈)! As we did not have breakfast before the way was tougher than expected, but - ambitious as we are 🙃 - we still made sure to overtake the two couples which were on the go even earlier 😈 And because we did not listen to the campsite staff in the first place anyways, we also ignored the rope at the bottom of the Mirador announcing it as closed 😇
The last bit up to the viewpoint was the most difficult because it was not only the steepest, but also full of stones of all sizes hidden beneath fresh snow and covered in ice - good for us having our the birthday boy ahead, speeding up and scouting and ‘paving’ the way for us slower hikers in the process ❤️💪🏼, with the very-well earned reward of being the very first one seeing the famous three Towers in the rising sun on his birthday 🥹❤️❤️❤️
We spent roughly 45 minutes in the freezing cold, enjoying the great (and quite clear! take that, campsite staff!) views and having our breakfast including hot coffee and it was awesome. We even got to see the famous sight of the rising sun illuminating the towers! Together with the sight of the sunrise on our way up (and, to be completely honest, also seeing the disappointed look of all the people coming up to see the towers at 9am and hearing that the views at sunrise were great 🫢 😇), it was definitely more than worth it getting up so early 🥰
We made our return to the camp before checkout time, wrapped our tent up one last time and had another proper breakfast before tackling the remaining 5.7 km downhill to the Torres del Paine welcome center for our shuttle bus. Going down we were doubly happy to have had the chance to see the towers by sunrise: We passed SO many dayhikers on their way up!! And, as we learned later on, many hiking the quite long and throughoutly ascenting trail couldn’t even go all the way up to the Mirador, as they closed it at around 10am due to incoming bad weather (which may or may not have been becoming bad, based on our experience with their weither prediction skills…) OR - and this was funny because we shook our head at this more than once on our way down - they tried to climb the viewepoint with normal sneakers?! 🙈😂
We anyways arrived at the welcome center with 3.5 hours to spare 🤦🏻‍♀️, had a couple of coffees, a couple of chats with our fellow sufferers dripping in with time and just resting our feet after 5 days of walking. Interestingly, many of the people coming in after us had actually seen (and photographed) one or more pumas around the Hotel Central near the Welcome Center?! We were astonished - and rather devastated we did not get to see them, of course. Still, no pumas in full 5 days of walking inside the park and they are found near the hotel at the very entrance?! Nature is strange sometimes 🤷🏻‍♀️
After that, we got our shuttle bus to laguna Amarga (the actual park entrance), changed for our bus back to Puerto Natales and were heavily excited for Gilles’ well-deserves birthday meal (and the birthday beers) 🍻 and an early night in a well-heated room and a comfortable big bed 😴Read more