If you think about Patagonia you probably will think about dark skies, snow, ice, glaciers, waterfalls and after all you will probably think about a rough and unpolished nature.
Torres del Paine is one of those National Parks which has it all. Through this park a hiking trail leads along many wonders of nature. Although it is no Disneyland, around a half million people a year drag themselves over those rough trails, so did we. Enjoy...
DAY 1

Wooden floors against the water and trees against the wind. The place is not to bad at all for a campground.

The view from the campground into the mountains. In the far distance a bit of the Torres del Paine can be seen already.

It's still early in the morning so we leave our stuff at the campground and start a dayhike to the Torres del Paine (the granite towers)

Back at the campground Arjan makes dinner in the white tent. This is the only place where it is allowed to cook. In the past they had huge bushfires in the area because of people not using their camp stove correctly.
DAY 2

We did bring a bunch of empanadas. (filled meat pie's) Yummie although we like them more when they are still warm.
DAY 3

Breakfast the next morning. The plan for today is to hike up and down to the Frances glacier and to lookout point Britanico. We leave our tent and most of our stuff at the campground and hike lightweight today.

Glacier Frances. Ice and snow is falling all the time. Even at the campground we could hear it falling at night. If we didn't know better we would have thought the sound was a thunderstorm instead of falling ice and snow.

At the lookout we meet Frank and Jacinta again. The Dutch / Belgian long distance cyclists we met on the ferry as well. (see previous blog 😉 )

Together we hike back down. At Campground Italiano we will have a coffee break together. Frank and Jacinta will go to Campground Frances after that.(They are walking the hike in the opposite direction from us.)
DAY 4

Welcome in Patagonia. The weather changes so fast, sometimes it can be a bright sunny day with blue sky and in 5 minutes it can be like this; grey dark sky and raining or snowing.

After we warmed up and had our beer we hike to the lookout point just 10min from the campground to watch the fallen glacier ice from close by.

Some info about this glacier. Too bad we still have the global warming getting worse and worse. Maybe in a 100 years or so no glacier at all anymore? 🙁
DAY 5

We start the day with first going further up the mountain to hanging bridges number 1 and 2 to see more of the glacier before we go down again to the end of the trail at Paine Grande,

We picked up our backpacks at Camping Grey again and continue to Grand Paine from where we will take the ferry and bus back to town.
Back in Puerto Natales we stay an extra day at our hostel with campground. From here we will continue cycling to Ushuaia, our final destination of our 1,5 year cycling trip. It's around 780km to Ushuaia, not far anymore but we will go via an isolated bikepacking route over artic tundra and along a colony with 1,2m high King Penguins.
When we arrive in Ushuaia we will try to put the last blog online before we hop in the airplane back to Holland at the 22nd.
Will be continued...
Thanks for reading, Kim & Arjan
Jacinta
Whaauw what a great blog!!! Super photo’s. So different perspective with the go-pro.
2WF
Hi friends, tnx!!! See you soon… somewhere 😉
Sacha
Mooi foto’s weer en geniet nog maximaal van de laatste etappe jullie!
2WF
Dankje, komt goed! Nog maar 250km van waar we nu zitten 🙁