Viewpoints, wildlife and the Grey Glacier

Torres del Paine national park

On the last full day, the easy option was so easy that even I decided to get off my butt and go with them.  And as Nic had already done a similar walk to the challenging option, and was still coping with his blisters, he stuck to this one too.


Guanaco



Rhea



 We left at a civilised 10:30am and drove around the park, stopping at various different viewpoints along the way.  Obviously the views weren't as good as those that you got if you walked closer to the peaks, but they were still impressive and much less effort. 



As we walked up to one of the lookouts, we passed by a set of Guanaco bones, which had presumably been a puma kill and then picked clean by the various smaller animals and scavengers in the park.  Once at the viewpoint we got some good condor sightings as well as the views of the mountains.

Patagonian fox eating another fox






We also saw rhea, live guanacos and a Patagonian fox.  The fox had found the remnants of a puma kill, which looked like another fox, and was happily if slightly warily, eating while we watched.



Salto Grande waterfall

 



We stopped off at the Salto Grande Waterfall.  The walk up to this was incredibly windy, and it was actually quite an effort to stay on your feet at times.  You could quite see how it was that the wind carried the fire so effectively.  And we saw plenty of evidence of the fire during our drive, but I am posting on that separately.



Torres del Paine national park

After stopping off to eat our lunch we headed for the Grey Lake.  Here we took a short walk down to the beach and got into a zodiac to reach the ferry that was going to take us around the lake and to the edge of the Grey Glacier.


 

Torres del Paine national park







The ferry was back on its normal duties now after having been pressed into action rescuing people who had been stranded by the fire.  The captain had only had about three sleep a night for three days as he made multiple journeys carrying firefighters out to try to control the fire and collecting walkers and staff whose route back was cut off.

Grey Glacier



And all this trying to land the boat on a rocky shoreline, with no piers, in very high winds creating huge waves on the lake.  Thankfully by this time he had caught up on his sleep and wasn't having to cope with such difficult conditions. 

Grey Glacier



The trip across the lake was best done from inside the boat.  The waves were fairly strong, and even going slowly, the icy cold water splashed up over the front of the boat.  When we got to the glacier itself, the water was calmer, so we ventured out into the cold to look at the glacier and take our photos.

Nic at the Grey Glacier



  



There was a free drink included in the trip, I think solely for the novelty of serving the drink with ice from the glacier.  Not that we needed any extra ice by this time.

The glacier was nice enough, but having recently seen the Perito Moreno, we decided to head back into the comparative warmth of the cabin after a while, and look at the rest through the window.

 

Grey Glacier



We were nearly driven back out again by a rather noisy, grizzly and irritating child, and a number of us agreed that we were sorely tempted to throw him overboard.  We just about resisted, but I think we all had our fingers crossed that he would fall in when he started moving around early on the zodiac on the way back!







Torres del Paine, Fire and The Eco Camp



Eco Camp and the Torres del Paine



Torres del Paine is the main National Park in Chile and covers an area of around 935 square miles.  It takes its name from its most famous mountain peaks, the Torres, or Towers, of Paine.  In addition to the four peaks that make up the Towers, the park has at least a further thirty peaks of over one thousand metres high. It has eleven large lakes and many smaller ones, with connecting rivers and waterfalls.  It also has glaciers and Magellanic forests.

Tourists come here in their thousands to see these sights and trek around the park, in particular to do the famous W circuit.  Whilst most of these tourists are welcomed with open arms, there is sadly the odd one that the park wishes had never crossed its path.  In December, an Israeli tourist was rather foolishly burning his toilet paper in very windy conditions, and managed to start a forest fire that, driven by winds of over 60 miles per hour, burned for weeks, destroying 18,000 hectares of Magellanic forest and other parkland.  The park had to be evacuated and it was thought that it may not reopen for the whole of January.  Luckily for us it did reopen early and we have been able to take the trip we had booked.

During our trip we saw some of the burned areas and it was quite shocking how much damage one careless person can do.



Our Eco camp dome

Rather than doing a multi day hike and camping, we have decided to stay in one place and do day hikes.  Our home for the six nights that we are spending in Torres del Paine is the Eco Camp.  The camp, like most of the lodge accommodation in the park, is in a privately owned area near to the start of the main hikes.  Whilst most of the accommodation is on the flat, the Eco Camp is on top of a hill, which makes for excellent views over the surrounding area and up to the Torres themselves.


The rooms here are individual domes.  They are metal frameworks covered in insulation and plastic, on a wooden base.  They are based on a combination of safari lodges and the nomadic constructions that the indigenous people of the area used to build.  They are apparently built to withstand winds of over 130km/hour, so they clearly could cope with the comparatively low winds we had, but it still did sound like the wind was going to tear right through them a couple of times.  Still, with our experiences so far I had made sure I knew what we were supposed to do should we need to evacuate due to strong winds or fire.



Eco camp bathroom



The camp has dome suites which have a stove to heat them and an ensuite bathroom, but we just had a standard dome and used the shared bathrooms.  But our dome was quite warm enough and the bathrooms were nicer than many of the hostels we have stayed in, so we were very happy.  The entrance is hobbit size, but once inside it is nice and roomy and you have a proper double bed and bedside tables.  And the window in our dome looked directly onto the Torres, so we had a fabulous view even without leaving the room.  This is a kind of camping that I could get used to.



Eco camp dining room

As well as the dormitory domes, they had three core domes for communal use.  There was a dining room, a small lounge, and a bigger lounge with a bar in it.  All of these areas were great and as I decided that I was not going to kill myself walking when Nic had plenty of other people that he could go with instead, I made this a very nice home for myself.  It was fabulous just being able to lounge around in the warm and dry, have a few cups of tea or beer, and read or draft a few blogs, knowing that everyone else was struggling up some hill or other in the wind and occasionally the rain.  And I didn't get any blisters either!