W Trek Day 6: Central to the towers

We weren't as crazy as some others who planned on seeing the sunrise at the base of the towers - a 4 hour hike from our camping. Nonetheless, the plan was to leave early. So the alarms went off at 5:30. After an easy flat first 30 minutes, the climbing started. Just when we warmed up from that and were taking off layers, our map showed a point was approaching called 'Windy pass'. How windy could that get, we thought. Very windy as it turned out, as Machiel almost lost a hiking stick and Daniel's bag almost rolled into a river. But we survived and came out stronger. We soon reached our halfway point: camping Chileno. When we booked our trek in August we wanted to camp here instead of at Central, but they were already sold out. Either way, now it was a nice place for a break and we enjoyed the lack of wind in their refugio while chewing on some nuts and chocolate.

Time for the toughest part of the day: climbing 450m in altitude over the next 4.3km. The first half was still a very enjoyable walk along the river through some nice forest but soon the path turned into a wall of loose stones. The windy and sweaty hike up didn't seem to end, but we stayed motivated by the big tour groups emerging behind us that we didn't want to be eaten by. When we reached the viewpoint we were busier changing into dry clothes while finding a good place to relax without strong winds, than that we were looking at the towers. The view was great, but our tiredness of the whole week, plus the large amount of tourists in that spot, made it harder to enjoy than usual.

After a while we were cold enough and hiked back down to Central. We had dinner in the restaurant of one of the refugios to celebrate our successful W Trek. The oven was broken, but they still served good sandwiches and juice. After a shuttle bus and regional bus, we were back in our Corner Hostel in Puerto Natales late in the evening.Read more