Torres del Paine, Chile - Polarsteps

We are still dreaming of pinguïns, still processing the trip to the frozen continent, yet Torres del Paine is waiting for us. This popular national park is on the must visit list in Patagonia. Which also means that you need to plan this months in advance (or be lucky last minute). Booked in October, we knew that the 6th of March was our starting date (first available option that met our wishes). This was our only planned excursion. All the previous days of our trip were organized around this date. Because of the desire to see the whole area and for the bragging rights we choose to do the O-track, instead of the shorter W-track. This means we spend 8 days hiking (instead of 5) and some 136 km to cross. 🚶 And now we arrived.... It's cold, rainy, the terrain is muddy and the Torres aren't visible. We question ourselves: why do we do this? But we keep on moving! We find our rhythm and the weather -aswell as the views- gets better! Luuk & Anne, our travel companions from the Antarctica-trip, are also on the move and after day 2 we decided it's more fun to hike together:D We are enjoying the "back-side" of the mountains, the area which is only for The O-track People. After the hardest day of crossing John Gardner pass, we got some stunning views over the glacier and the great southern icefield, the same one as we saw on the Huemul-track back in El Chaltén! These were also the last quiet moments before joining the W-parcours. Although all camp areas are better than we expected (or hoped for), from here on it's not survival at all. All campspots come with hot showers, restaurants, paid wifi and lots of people. We feel overwhelmed and not prepared to be back in this kind of society. However, let's make the best of it. We get why this area attracts so many others, it's beautiful! And the variety is incredible: glaciers, blue lakes, mountains of all kind of shapes and nature in itself. Oh and seasons, the saying goes that you can experience all seasons in one day. And oh we did, rain, snow, wind and even sunshine, we got it all! However, we praised ourselves to be lucky, the weather gods were mostly in favour. As for this, our best -no clouds allowed in the sky- day was the hike to viewpoint Brittanico. On this day we saw even glaciers calving in the warmth and our hearts were warmed up by seeing Claudia🇨🇭 on the trail 🙂. The good weather lasted until the final day. Only the Torres were waiting for us... In the clouds. With hope and some naivety we hiked the last steps of the hike, up to the views point, however the Torres stayed hidden and forced Liselot to show some fotoshop skills :D

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Chile