Round the World with Michaela and Tom: The 'W' trekkers (and a couple of Utrekkers!!)

So after Fitzroy and the Perito Moreno Glacier we headed further south along the famous Route 40 in search of more amazing scenery and glaciers!! We crossed the border for the third time from Argentina to Chile to a small town called Puerto Natales. Here we

The Chilean and Patagonian Flags

had 3 hours to hire all the camping gear and get all the food that we needed for the famous 4 day W trek in Torres del Paine National Park. In that time we managed to get together a 2 man tent (which really just about fitted the 2 of us in to it - with our bags outside in a wee porch bit!!), waterproof trousers, gas stove, cooking pot, soups, cereal bars, noodles, pasta sauce, smash (yuk never again!!), powder milk & tins of tuna. We’ve never had to analyse what we bought at a supermarket based on its weight before!!!! But we are glad we did as we had to carry our house on our back for 4 days as well as all our food!!!!

The W trek picks up the Grey Glacier on the first day, the French Valley on the second day, the Lakes on the third day and the highlight of the trek, by far, was the Torres (towers) del Paine on the last day. The full trek is about 75km and 9 of us from the truck did the W (well 3 of us did the U and skipped a small bit in the middle!!). When you do the W trek you have the advantage of getting to Torres del Paine for sunrise and the views were so worth the 4am start and clambering for an hour up the final stretch in the dark. It was so cool walking up in the dark - all you could see in front of you and behind you was a snake of headlights leading the way!! When we got to the top and waited for the sun to rise the atmosphere was really cool. There was only about 50 people who had trekked up for sunrise and they were all there in their layers of clothing and sleeping bags waiting waiting waiting...

As you can see from the pictures the weather was nearly perfect for the sunrise and they reckon that only one in ten days is good enough to see the sunrise so we were very lucky :o)

Myself and Tom at the Summit - the end of four long days trekking and very early in the morning but it was soooo cool!!

The sun just starting to rise... Me & Tom with the sun just hitting the towers...

The sun rise on the towers was beautiful and the reflection in the lake just in front of it made it just amazing!!

All in all it was great fun getting off the truck and camping, sitting at a campsite after a greats days hiking & cooking with our little stoves, carrying all of our camping equipment, clothes and food every day whilst hiking felt like an achievement!! We met some cool people along the way and bumped into another Irish girl from Mayo who told us about her trip so far - she'd bumped into a guy in Quito, Ecuador who was riding his motorbike from his home in California to the end of the Route 40 in Patagonia!!!! She jokingly asked if he had room on the back for her and he said yeah and he had a spare helmet so off she went!!! How cool!!