Getting Around Southbound

Every evening you discuss with the guides what you would like to do the next day.......this is it.......leaving for the towers at 7:00am A beautiful clear morning.......taken from our room  The hike to the towers is a 24km route which actually starts outside the National Park but re-enters the park about 7km up the hill.  This is not a walk in the park, but warnings about it being physically demanding and steep are true.......so true.  You start climbing after 2km, and don't stop climbing for at least the next 5km.........followed by.......one of my favourites.......the cross hill trail with a steep drop below you.  That leads down into Chilean Camp, then you are back on the stair stepper all the way to the top..........the last 2km have you climbing over the moraine just below the lake, and it is the hardest/scariest part of the climb.  Good time for a break to have some lunch, then you retrace your steps all the way back to the van.........yes, cold ...

We have been chatting to our guides over the past few days to determine what they think will be the best day to hike to Base Torres........the biggest of the "W" hikes, and by all accounts the most spectacular, so you wouldn't want to do it on a cloudy or rainy day if you can help it.  Today or tomorrow were not going to be that day, so we scheduled a couple of others........this morning, an all day hike, 18km, to a viewpoint known as Alto del Toro overlooking, you guessed it Lago Toro.......weather should be fine as this is in the east side of the park, but guess what.......it could be windy.  This one was recommended by our guide Manny from Tierra Atacama who used to work here at Explora Patagonia.  Tomorrow we will hike directly from the hotel on a short but steep one, 5km, to Condor Ridge overlooking the hotel.........weather should be improving, but guess what......it could be windy. ALTO DEL TORO Our day started with a beautiful rainbow right out of the van...

Another day, another full schedule........we are starting the day with a hike along the eastern border of the national park, with a wildlife viewing guarantee, and plenty of warnings about the puma.  We saw this sign on the way in, and thought, a lot of good this will do for all the English speaking tourista's, then of course we looked at the back........realized the last thing I would ever want to do would be to corner a puma, and god help me if I ran away and "friggered" an attack! For a good part of our day we had guanacos in sight........refresher course.......guanacos are the forefathers of todays llamas.......breeding and domestication has resulted in what we know as the llama today, but the guanaco is where it started, and they remain and are doing very well in these parts as far as we know........they are all over the place Slow guanaco. Fast guanaco Relaxed guanaco Guanaco central Hiked up to the rocks in this glacial valley.....