Torres del Paine Day 1

Start -> Base Torres -> Refugio Central
➡️20,9km ↗️1.113m 🕙7:47h 🌞🌬🌧

At 7 am a bus takes us in two hours to the entrance of the national park. We register and take a shuttle to the welcome center, from where it's just a few steps to Refugio Central. We can leave our backpacks there, as we will come back to spend the night. But since the whether is unpredictable and we have 8 hours of hiking in front of us, we still carry several kilos of clothes, food and water up the mountain.
We are lucky: during the first part of the hike is sunny and even warm, with a pleasant and relatively easy ascent. The closer we get to the peak, the steeper, rockier and windier it gets. For our lunch up at Base Torres, with a view at the name-giving rock towers, we put on all the layers of clothes we brought.
We booked a package deal for our hike, including all the accommodation as well as food (the price is almost the same as booking everything individually and without food, but you avoid hours of clicking through a very confusing website and hoping that you won't get stuck with only have the accommodation spots you need). We expected rather basic dorms and uninspired food, but are pleasantly surprised: the dorms are large and have huge windows with a view at the Torres, the showers run with hot water. For dinner we get soup, black beans and frittata (non-vegetarian main course is salmon) and a dessert. Even the lunch boxes are good, with a grilled-vegetable burger as sandwich.Read more