After a money-saving but sleepless night in the Punta Arenas airport, we began our journey to Peru. We flew from P.A. to Santiago, touching down in Puerto Montt along the way. As we flew, we saw many volcanoes out the plane window! We then flew from Santiago to Lima. The flight arrives too late in… Continue reading Peru

Our last stop in Chile was heading back to Punta Arenas, where our flight landed around 10 days before. We stayed at a wonderful bed and breakfast called Tragaluz and spent some time checking out the city. The big event of our time in Punta Arenas was visiting the Isla Magdalena National Park to view… Continue reading Punta Arenas, Chile (Penguin Alert!)

After finishing our trek, we decided to stay another day in Puerto Natales. Wanting to see something else interesting, we took a boat into Bernardo O’Higgins National Park to see some glaciers. This was a pricey excursion, and we probably would have enjoyed something else more if we had done more planning from home. Instead,… Continue reading Bernardo O’Higgins National Park

Day 5 was the final day of our hike, completing the right/east side of the W by viewing the park’s namesake, the Torres del Paine. Torres means “towers” in Spanish, and Paine means “blue” in the Tehuelche Indian language. We began our day about 3:30 AM to arrive at the towers in time for sunrise. It… Continue reading Torres del Paine National Park, Day 5

We departed Los Cuernos on Christmas morning, hiking along the beautiful Lago Nordenskjöld. Then came the most I’ve ever sweated on Christmas Day! Our hike took us from Los Cuernos to Campamento Las Torres (the right/east tip of the W), and much of the day’s hike was through very open areas with no shade. Each… Continue reading Torres del Paine National Park, Day 4

Day 3 was a big day – we hiked up the “middle” of the W, back down it, and over to Los Cuernos refugio area. A big blessing for this day:  since you backtrack a large part of the day’s hike, you don’t have to take your big pack! The day’s hike is a lot… Continue reading Torres del Paine National Park, Day 3

Day 2 took us down the left/west side of the W and part way up the middle section. We left Glacier Grey in the morning (it really looks never-ending) and hiked back to where we started the day before at Paine Grande/Lago Pehoe. It is really beautiful there, but our plan did not allow us… Continue reading Torres del Paine National Park, Day 2

Confession: I had great intentions to finish my South America trip series and wrote the first post about TDP a long time ago. When I hit “save,” wordpress made an error and lost my post! I was super frustrated and just couldn’t bear to try again until now. Here goes… There are two main backpacking… Continue reading Torres del Paine National Park, Day 1

  One of the two towns used to access Torres del Paine National Park is Puerto Natales. That was our first spend-the-night destination, and we thought it best to stay a couple of days post-travel before beginning our trek. It’s small and pretty touristy, but it was an enjoyable town with some good food and… Continue reading Puerto Natales, Chile

We arrived in Santiago about 10am, but our flight to southern Chile didn’t leave until 2am. We happily checked our bags at the airport storage and hopped on the city bus to downtown. While there, we took a free walking tour with Spicy Chile (they work for tips) and saw the basic sights of Santiago.… Continue reading Santiago, Chile