Puerto Natales - January 10th

Despite noise of water over rapids outside the window, it was actually a pretty good night’s sleep in the refugio.  Breakfast was also not too bad, and we set off about 09:00 for a second days trekking in the park.  Our plan, after consulting with the guides, was to go as far as we could alongside one of the big lakes in the park, but we would have to backtrack on ourselves at some point as there was no way out at the other end due to the fire.

To get to the lake we took a ‘shortcut’, although it was an official path, there seemed to be nobody on it.  This was in contrast to the previous day when it seemed like the world was trekking in Torres del Paine.  I think it is because so much of the park is closed that everyone was concentrated into one area, and also it is the showcase trek, so even day trippers are doing it.  Today’s trek is not very high, never going above 300m once we descended from the refuge, but it is quite up and down.  The ups do reward us with some great views though.

Eventually our shortcut took us to the main path, and we encountered more traffic.  This path takes people to another refuge, but we decided to stop before the last slope down to this refuge and turn back.  This was about lunchtime, and we weren’t sure how long it would take us to get back if we went any further because it looked pretty steep back up.  Our bus back was at 20:00 so we didn’t want to miss it.

As it happened we would not have missed it.  We got back to the main hotel in the park at about 17:00, enough time for a tea and then to find out that the only shuttles to take us back to the park entrance were at 19:30.  So we had to wait for 2 hours in the sometimes quite warm sunshine, sometimes quite cold wind, as the crowds built up waiting for the bus.  It was a bit stressful hoping there would be enough bus places out, and there were, but only just.  Still we made it back to Puerto Natales for 22:00, enough time for a quick burger before heading back to our hostel and our bags.