In the Torres del Paine National Park, everything revolves around a large mountain formation, the towers or Torres del Paine. The striking mountain formation is hidden within the larger Cordillera del Paine – the Torres themselves are not very visible on the approach. Nevertheless, the view is already very impressive on the outward journey: rugged rock towers, deep blue lakes and a large glacier on the left-hand side of the mountain massif on the drive from the southern entrance. Patagonia in one picture, so to speak.

View of the Cuernos

As we approach the Torres del Paine National Park from the south, we are constantly gazing at the Cordillera del Paine with its characteristic rock towers. At first, we confuse Los Cuernos – the horns – of the Cordillera del Paine with the actual Torres del Paine. Across the lake and river landscape, we look far into the distance over typical Patagonian steppe and finally to the mountain massif in the middle of an otherwise relatively flat landscape. As novices to the Torres del Paine National Park, we have no idea that many of the mountain peaks rise upwards like towers. For us, this view is a real postcard motif. Of course, we’ll be happy to take some more of these in the coming days!

Visiting the national park by car

In contrast to many other national parks we have visited, we spend most of our time driving from viewpoint to viewpoint. There is a gravel road through the middle of the national park, which is part of the normal road network. This means that most of the sights can be reached by car with just a few steps. For us, however, a hike in the national park is something of a must; we simply experience nature more closely on foot.

Hike to the foot of the Torres del Paine

As usual, we start the hike to the viewpoint at the base of the Torres del Paine – the world-famous granite towers – early in the morning. It is by far the best known and most popular day hike in the national park (probably even in the whole of Chilean Patagonia) and there are correspondingly many hikers on the trail every day in the high season. There are two longer ascents on average hiking trails. Here too, despite the large crowds from all over the world, the hiking trails cannot keep up with our well-maintained Swiss hiking trails. After a good 3 hours of climbing, we arrive at Lago Torres, the lake at the foot of the three granite towers, shortly after 9am. The three towers – South, Central and North – are perfectly illuminated by the morning sun. We only have to wait for the clouds to pass by extremely quickly due to the strong wind to be able to take a photo with all three peaks in the open sky. Once again, the view is magnificent! Whether we had to walk the 20 km and, on the way back, with a lot of oncoming hiking traffic: we are a little reluctant. Basically, everything was fine and dandy in Torres del Paine National Park, but somehow, we had higher expectations because of the international appeal. But maybe that’s exactly the reason: too high expectations can simply result in disappointment.

There are two major multi-day hikes in the park, but both require advance booking (the treks are fully booked months in advance due to the limited accommodation available) and are quite expensive. The hikes in and of themselves cost nothing apart from the national park entrance fee, but you have to spend the night at the designated campsites, where you can easily pay up to 70$ per person per night in the high season!

Torres del Paine is also famous for its pumas and is said to have one of the highest densities of wild cats! But pumas are also among the shyest wild cats and despite the high density, you need a lot of luck to see one. Unfortunately, we have no luck, although we spend almost 6 days in and around the national park. Probably not meant to be for us.

Waiting time in Punta Arenas

The next few days are spent in Punta Arenas with barely no tourist attractions and programs. This is the largest city in the very south of Chile and will probably be the southernmost city on the South American mainland. Here we want to have the airbag recall carried out by our dear road traffic office at home in Switzerland, which has been forced in the meantime. However, we are still waiting for the right spare part – even though we ordered it more than four weeks ago. We’ll see – if something doesn’t work out, we’ll just sit in Punta Arenas for longer. The following blog posts will keep you readers up to date!