Torres del Paine

Yeah, the content of this blog is not exactly chronological. I visited this park about a week ago. I had been waiting to write this entry when I could upload the photos with it, but that may not be for awhile so we will write now and add photos later!

Torres del Paine - known as Chile´s most impressive national park. Well, let me qualify that...the Towers that I went to see were impressive...the rest of the park I hiked through did not hold a candle to the nature you see at Yellowstone, Yosemite, or Glacier NPs. The Towers look like something out of a sci-fi movie. If you saw a painting of them you would say to yourself...´the world does not really look like that!´. Ah, but it does...sometimes.

I only spent a day there, whereas most people do 3 to 5 day trips. In and out in 8 hours. Hiked about 20km. 'Valió la pena' as they say down here (worth the trouble). Between the $24 bus ride to the park, $30 entry fee (of course only $8 for Chilenos, the dual price structure for nationals and foreigners is quite common down here) it was a pretty expensive hike.

Saw some pretty serious mountaineers during the hike...all loaded up with their gear and walking poles. Dudes are lean...so lean you wonder how they carry their gear as they have no muscle mass many of them, but then I suppose that all that muscle is only more weight to carry. Actually they probably have as much muscle as the next guy...only no fat covering it. Saw a couple people on the hike that I had seen a week earlier in Ushuaia a few hundred kilometers to the south. Not the first time that's happened down here.