Torres del Paine: Base de Torres

Barely awake we packed our day pack and went to the breakfast area where a little selection of items waited for us. We ate quickly, stored our luggage and walked to the bus terminal to catch our bus at 06:30. On the bus we tried to sleep a bit and partly succeeded 😴 On the way we saw several beautiful rainbows over the barren landscape of Patagonia's plains. We got dropped off at the entrance station where our tickets were scanned and then we continued with another shuttle bus for about 20 minutes.
Shortly before 09:30 we started our hike which is about 22km and is estimated to take 7-8 hours. There are several bus companies dropping off hikers from Puerto Natales, so the first 1.5 hours it was super crowded on the trail. The weather was fine even though a little windy and cold but the first ascend warmed us up sufficiently. Afterwards it started to rain slightly and the trail led down a slope to a mountain hut. It got pretty cold 🥶 but most of the people stayed there so we saw our chance to get out of the crowd. For the next few kilometers we walked along the river with lots of shorts ups and downs. Pretty wet we started the last ascend up to Base de Torres.

There were signs all along the trail noting the time when the next section is closed for the day. So for the last 1.5 km the estimated time was a minimum of 1 hours and around 450 meters of ascend. It was a bit of rock scrambling but not too tough and within less than an hour we were at the top and the laguna. There were some views with occasional sunrays breaking through the clouds in the beginning but then it got quickly worse: From rain to hail to a little snowstorm 🌨️🙈 All while enjoying the leftover pizza 🍕 from yesterday. It got very cold while sitting there and we decided to move back down... After 10 minutes the rain stopped and almost immediately the clouds moved, the sun came out and offered views to the magnificent Torres del Paine. Even though we didn't see them from the laguna, we were still super happy. We were lucky to get at least a glimpse because afterwards the weather got significantly worse.
On the way down there were still a lot of hikers coming up and it was tough to climb down with the crowds of people on the trail. For the amount of people that walk the trail it's in surprisingly perfect shape! It was pretty much raining all the way back and we got pretty soaked. After 7 hours we arrived back at the base station where we got a hot tea and a Torres del Paine Beer 🍻
Then we took the shuttle to the entrance of the park but we had 4 hours left until our bus would bring us back to Puerto Natales. After seeing another hiker at the side of the road we also decided to try to hitchhike. There weren't a lot of private cars around but after half an hour a van stopped and took us ☺️ They were two Chilean friends around our age from Santiago and on vacation with their families. But the children are too young for the hike so they did it without them. They were super nice and fun and the two hour drive went by pretty quick. The highlight of the trip was definitely the cute little armadillo crossing the street 🤩
They dropped us off at our hostel and we grabbed our luggage to walk to the other hostel because they were fully booked for the night. Besides that our day tour to see the highlights of the National Park Torres del Paine was confirmed for tomorrow.

For the evening we visited a restaurant with local food options. We were pretty exhausted from the long day, so we just made a quick stop at the supermarket for shopping some lunch and then fell asleep 😴Læs mere