Hiking by letters

We’ve been back in Chile recently, exploring the Torres del Paine National Park, probably the most famous in the Patagonia region. 

The park has a bit of an annoying layout. Most of the campsites are on one side of a lake and the hiking trails the other, so you have to get on expensive ferries to get to the other side. 

The hiking trails here are designated by letters, you have the most popular ‘W’ trek, which is roughly in the shape of a lowercase ‘W’. There’s also a longer circuit loop, called the ‘O’ trek. Most people would hike these as multi day hikes, but they are incredibly expensive to do so. Our plan was to do a section of the ‘W’ trek, going in from one side and up the centre of the ‘W’ and back again. Given everything is described with a letter here, I called this the ‘J’ trek, which caught on a bit. 

The trek started with a ferry ride across the lower lake from the campsite to the bottom of the left hand of the ‘W’. 

Once we reached the start of the trek, we then headed along the lower portion of our ‘J’ to the bottom of the valley we would be climbing. 

After a little break, we then climbed into the valley as you pass a glacier and head up to a viewpoint into the centre of the peaks, where you get 360 degree views. 

After reaching the viewpoint, it was time to head back down the same way to get the ferry back to the campsite. 

The weather hadn’t been as bad as predicted, but we stayed local to the campsite on our second day in the park, taking a small hike up the adjacent hill to check out views across the lake. 

While Torres del Paine is beautiful, I suspect more so when it’s sunny, I think it’s sadly fallen victim of being a tourist area. You would pay a lot of money to hike one of its treks over multiple days, which I don’t think are worth it. I’m glad we were able to experience part of it via a couple of day hikes, but there’s a clear difference between this and Argentina’s most popular national park in Patagonia, which I found a lot better. 

With that ends our main time in Chile, the most varied and most beautiful country I’ve ever been to. 

We now head back into Argentina as we head to Ushuaia, the most southerly city in the world.