Parque Nacional Torres del Paine: Day 2

Hiking in Southern Patagonia during summer allows for long, leisurely days, with little stress concerning daylight. (Weather is a different story) An average day, around 15 hours of light, allows one to hike whatever time of day seems fit. Several walks during our 6 day trek were long, but none over 8 hours. We often chose to sleep in, especially as the week went on, dragging our sore bodies out of the tent well after nine.
To begin the second day of our trek we hiked from Los Torres campsite to Los Cuernos Refugio/ campsite.

It's about a 5 hour hike, with ups and downs, nothing too backbreaking. You can find delicious cold water along the entire trail, (like most of the W) so we never had to worry about carrying water.

The trail mostly followed a large glacier lake to our left, with occasional streams coming from the mountains to our right. We were lucky and had great weather, but it was a typical windy Patagonian day.
As we wound over a rocky ridge into the Cuernos private site / property, we could hear waterfalls, horses, strong winds over Nordenskjöld lake, hikers eating and taking hot showers.

Approaching Cuernos; Tiny Private Cabanas Line the Valley

Cuernos has the most diverse lodging we saw on the trail, private bungaloos with hot tubs, dorms with bunks, some sort of weird domes, platform camping, and rocky hill- dirt camping. (We took the latter) The site is still on private land, so it's not free to camp. We actaually made a reservation in advance for a site, but they had given it away by the time we got there. Reservations don't really make sense, since people back out, or timetables change. Anyway, we were a result of this loose reservation system, but they found us a spot. We saw people circling the site for hours looking for a place to pitch a tent. Also to mention: this was Christmas eve. After setting up camp, and throwing on sandals, we bought two Torres del Paine beers, which we were already familiar with, from visiting the brewery a few days earlier, HERE.

The camp was by far a favorite of the trip, people singing, drinking box after box of wine, everyone genuinely enjoying themselves. The crowd was also one that wasn't on a day trek, but multiple day journeys. This usually made a difference. We were all tired and sore, and excited to get our heavy packs off our backs. You make quick friends when you all smell the same.

We paid the extra (too many) pesos to have Christmas eve dinner at the restaurant, complete with a 5 peso (0.60 USD) box of wine.

This was probably the best meal we had in our entire lives. We slept real well that night.

Parque Nacional Torres del Paine: Day 1

The central piece to our Patagonia trip was to complete the famed W hike through Torres del Paine. It's probably the most well-known hike you can do in Patagonia, and for good reason. The W is about 54 miles, can can take anywhere from 3-5 days. My personal advice would be to really take your time, since why on earth would you come to a place this beautiful and then just blast through it as fast as possible. We elected to spend 5 days hiking, and stay in the park for a total of 6 nights (our first night just camping, and our last night after we completed the trail).

There are a lot of different ways you can enjoy the park, ranging from pure luxury to completely roughing it. There's a hotel that offers rooms in the region of $1,000 USD per night, there are refugios that offer dorm-like rooms filled with bunks if you'd prefer to sleep on a bed (cheaper than the hotel, but definitely not the cheapest option), but the vast majority of people on the trail elected to camp. We'll go into more detail about the specifics of how we planned this hike later, since there are actually surprisingly few resources online about how it all works. For now, we'll go through all of the awesome stuff we saw on our specific hike.

Night 1 consisted of us getting a bus from Puerto Natales to the park, followed by another bus from the park entrance to Las Torres, a refugio with a campsite. There are two times that buses leave from Puerto Natales during high season, 7am and 2:30pm. Since we were just planning on setting up camp on night 1, we went for the afternoon bus. The drive was actually very beautiful, we drove through several herds (not sure if that's the right word) of guanaco.

I should have gotten a video, they have the goofiest walk.

We had a pretty good feeling about it when we realized that our campsite already had a great view of the famed Torres.

The white tents to the left are the beginning of the campsite. There are companies that will set up tents for you in a big tour, in case bringing and setting up tents isn't your thing.

Once we set up our tents, we headed straight for the refugio to grab a beer, because I mean, beer in a beautiful place just tastes better.

We were lucky to have a pretty clear night that night, so after the sun finally went down (it took until about midnight for it to be dark enough for this picture), I took a long exposure picture of the stars. I'm definitely no expert on the constellations, but it was definitely weird not being able to recognize most of the stars. We could spot good old Orion (not in this picture), but it was upside down, which took us a second to work out in our heads.

The next morning we set off to hike from camp to the mirador at the base of the torres and back, leaving our big bags at camp, and only bringing cameras, lunch, water, and rain clothes in our day bags. The whole hike there and back takes about 8-9 hours, depending on how often you stop for pictures. It didn't take long at all for the views to get incredible, this is probably only 45 minutes into the hike:

The slogan for this trip was "nope, that's not real"

We had to stop every now and then due to the huge wind gusts, which were beyond impressive. We heard stats that they were up to 90km/hr that day. The craziest thing about it is that you could hear the gusts of wind coming from miles away, maybe 30 seconds before they hit. We would hear the sound or rustling trees careening across mountains until it finally hit us like a ton of bricks. The gusts let up long enough at a local peak for me to grab a picture of the river in the valley below.

Going down, but not for long. This is maybe 1 hour or so into the hike.

At this point, we aren't far from the next camp/refugio, Chileno. Since we left all of our stuff at the campground at refugio Torres, we wouldn't be stopping at Chileno.

Nikki looking like a badass, Chileno in the distance.

I started taking pictures of the trail signs around here, they compress the trail in a way that makes you look awesome as hell, so I think I'm going to include them. The only one I missed was between Torres and Chileno.

At this point, seeing this sign was pretty crushing. We started at an elevation of 150m, were currently standing at 480m, which, after some very challenging math, meant that we had done just about half of our climbing for the day, and we were both beat at this point. We stopped here to get some lunch, which definitely boosted morale. We also needed to refill our water bottles, which was actually one of the best possible tasks. All of the water you need comes in the form of amazingly delicious glacier water trickling down the mountain.

The last part of the climb up was very rocky, but of course beautiful.

We finally made it! It honestly wasn't as bad as I was expecting, we made it up with zero issues.

This is the point where the story starts to get really interesting. After taking in the view for a while, I realized that there was no better possible time to ask a question that I was planning on asking for quite some time:

Both of us legitimately to not remember this moment.

She said yes! If she didn't, it could have been a very uncomfortable 5 nights in that tent...

So, some background here: I bought this ring back in NYC, in late October. On the advice of my good friend, I hid it in a pick case until the right moment presented itself. I had a ukulele with me on the trip, but I actually left it back in Buenos Aires since if I had to shove everything in a backpack, I needed to be as light as possible. There was only one close call where Nikki discovered it (while buying a bus ticket, not super romantic), but thankfully I dodged the bullet and kept it secret. This first day of hiking was definitely a challenge, there was even a point where I silently contemplated the idea that we might not make it and have enough time to get back to camp before dark. But we kept going, and the reward of that sight at the top just completely melted any doubt I had in my mind that this was anything less than the perfect moment to pop the question. There is this kind of reverence that people have there, people have some kind of awe-induced reaction, and then usually just stand and soak in the sight/sound/smell in complete silence. After doing this for a bit, I found a fellow hiker, Tae, who seemed to have a good photographic eye, and asked him if he wouldn't mind taking a picture of us. I didn't tell him anything beyond that. Then I pretended like I needed to fix my boot, as I frantically tried to fish the ring out of the pick case (it was IN there). After essentially breaking it open, I completely blacked out for about 5 seconds and have only flashes of memory of what I said. Luckily, Tae was able to capture this exact moment. Nikki also doesn't remember putting her hands on her head, so kudos to Tae on that awesome timing! I couldn't have planned it better if I tried.

I knew people would wonder about who took the pictures, so I made sure to grab a picture with Tae.

Afterwards, we just explored the area around the lake, because we were in absolutely no hurry to leave.

We stayed up there for probably an hour or or so, and would have definitely stayed there longer if we didn't have half of our hike ahead of us still. Going down was definitely faster, and it also felt like a completely new trail.

The trees just decided to stop growing right on that line.

We rented poles for this trip, and I'm glad we did, because my knees were already starting to feel it on day 1, but they really did help. The way back was amazing, since the low sun on the horizon really made for some stunning views.

It felt like we had the trail to ourselves.

Looking back up towards the end of the hike.

This got a bit long, but, well, it was a pretty huge day. Not a bad start, I'd say!

Reserva Nacional Magallanes, Punta Arenas

First off, we're a bit behind, so we're going to do a couple blog posts of catch up. Stay tuned for Torres del Paine pics!

We needed to keep our hiking game up, since we still had our 5-day hike through Torres del Paine ahead of us, so we found a pretty nice park to hike through about a 20 minute cab ride from our B&B, Reserva Nacional Magallanes. We arranged a cab through our B&B, and arranged for the cab back from the ranger's office when we were ready to leave.

The park itself was HUGE. One of the rangers asked how long we wanted to hike, since apparently you can easily spend days going through it all, so she was able to give us a good suggestion for a 4-hour hike.

The tree canopy that shielded us from the wind and rain.

View from the top. Punta Arenas in the background to the right. Straight of Magellan on the horizon.

Puma tracks. I learned that pumas, mountain lions, and cougars are all the same animal. Who knew!

It was a lovely hike for sure, if you find yourself in Punta Arenas with a day to spare, it's definitely worth heading up to the Reserva.

Cervecería Austral tour, Punta Arenas

I had certain expectations of the things that we'd be seeing on our adventure through Patagonia, beautiful landscapes, leaping guanaco, lots of trail mix, but a brewery tour was not among them. With a bit of luck, we were able to snag a tour of the Austral brewery in Punta Arenas, Chile.

This was taken 3 minutes before it began to rain, then hail, then return to sunshine. Pretty normal around these parts.

We hadn't done too much planning on what we'd be doing once we got to Punta Arenas, really all we knew was that the city is physically on the way between Ushuaia and Puerto Natales (the closest city to Torres del Paine). We did notice that all the restaurants served Austral beer, and the bottles actually invited us to come visit. The Internet was surprisingly unhelpful in providing any useful information on how to actually book a tour, all of the blogs we found merely confirmed its existence, and that it was located in Punta Arenas. We even found a couple phone numbers, both of which didn't work.

With some help from the woman at the front desk, we tracked down an account of someone successfully booking a tour... in Spanish. I knew enough to be able to tell that it said we couldn't just stroll in. For anyone that might stumble upon this in hopes of finding a way into the brewery, you came to the right place. Here's what we did:

Go to the Servicio Nacional de Turismo office.
Ignore what Google says, it's located on Pedro Montt and Lautaro Navarro streets.
Have some flexibility for dates, unless you are in a group of 6, or are just really lucky. There are two potential times for tours on weekdays, 10am and 3pm.
They will call a lovely gentleman named James, who will later be your tour guide.
If there are enough people for a tour, then they'll let you know that you're all set!
Show up to the brewery 15 minutes early (it's about a 15-20 minute walk), and bring 4,000 Chilean pesos per person.
Have an awesome tour and drink beer!

We managed to just get incredibly lucky, as we showed up at 2pm and there was enough room for us to join in on a tour group that was starting at 3. We walked up to the brewery, and after waiting for just a few minutes, were met by our incredibly friendly and awesome tour guide, James. I was expecting the tour to be in Spanish, but he also spoke great English, and the other people that were on the tour happened to be English speakers, so another point for good luck.

If you've been on a brewery tour before, you probably know the drill. We walked by the warehouse...

You might have caught some non-Austral beer in this picture, they also distribute a bunch of imports, as well as some chocolate.

... a barley silo ...

... their canning machinery...

Empty cans in the back, full cans in the front.

.. we tested out the old capping machine...

... saw an old, out of use kettle...

This was originally from Germany, and was last used as recently as 2010.

... and of course, we got a quick lesson of the basics of how beer is made.

The last two jars are both hops, the first is concentrate, and the second is full of hops pellets. They don't grow hops down here, so this is the only way they can get it.

But what tour would be complete without actually getting to sample the wonderful products being made?

Lager, Imperial (also a lager, but different branding), Pale Ale, Dark Ale, Calafate (local fruit) Ale. Our tour guide, James, is on the left.

We got to try 6 different beers, all of the 5 pictured above, as well as their Torres del Paine brew, which was probably my favorite of the bunch. They tasted notably better at the brewery than they did in town, which I might attribute to the restaurants either serving us old beer, or not doing a good job at storing them properly, because the beer we had here was straight from the same bottles they'd be getting. Either way, definitely worth the trip just to try their complete selection in one sitting.

We were told that this was the southernmost brewery in the world, but I do remember getting some beer that was brewed in Ushuaia, so I'm not totally sure how accurate that information is. Regardless, this is the southernmost brewery that you can actually visit, and I highly recommend doing so!

Tierra del Fuego: DOS

We spent two weeks in Ushuaia, taking day hikes whenever good weather was promised. We quickly learned a good forecast meant nothing, (cut to the only hour it 'WINTER MIXED' one day, while we were on the ridge of a glacier, only to come down and it's sunny and 50F for the next 18 hours) and a bad forecast meant less. A day with less than favorable forecasts, we decide to go for another hike in the National Park.
Side note: it's not cheap to go to Tierra del Fuego from Ushuaia. 100% worth every second, but if you are going, and it's raining the whole time, you will see very little. The park entrance fee is 140 ARS per person, and 200 ARS round trip bus, (haha, tiny VAN) pp.. The entire transaction is easy to maneuver, which is nice. You can roll into the tiny Bus Station / parking lot, and catch a van headed toward the Park, every half hour.
On our first venture to the park, we were hustled into the front seat of a van, and left within seconds of arriving.

This time around, we chose to do the Hito XXII trail, an 8K hike around Lake Roca. It's an easy hike, which weaves through the forests and water several times.

The end of the trail is the Chilean border. A great ending, just sign stating the border, and a metal triangle post. No one stamped our passports.

Don't tell anyone we walked into Chile for a minute with nuts and fruit. That is serious! We crossed Chile/ Argentine borders via bus last week, and the fruit / processed meats situation was not a joke. Fruit/meat sniffing dogs everywhere. Walking out, we saw one guy pounding a three inch slab of salamis at the border.

The hike took around 3 hours round trip, and ended by the cafe where the bus picks you up. We took a Patagonia Tours bus, which we liked, they come more often than Sol, the other bus company. Patagonia even offered to drop us off at our Hostel.

Like most hikes in the National Park, Hito XXII is an easy, low impact walk, with stunning views.