Hiking Torres del Paine – Sorry You Couldn't Come Along

Before hiking, is simply arriving; and, Torres del Paine National Park is remote by any definition. We were grateful for a steady hand at the wheel for exceptionally long twisting turning journeys on minimally maintained gravel roads pocked with quite impressive potholes. Here, Jorge (also very adept at spotting animals) is enjoying maté, a social habit, typically shared by passing it among friends, each successively draining the cup freshly filled with almost boiling water over a caffeine rich herbal mix. Not getting any takers among the clients, Jorge would share with our Argentine principal guide Georgina and our local guide Nicholas.

Yes, another glacier, into another fjord, yet far from the open sea.

Thank you, Google Maps! As you can see, Torres del Paine is well inland (for this remarkably long and narrow country) and close to the Argentine border. We had come by bus from Punta Arenas, passing by Puerto Natales, the small city where we would then catch our flight up to Santiago de Chile.

Believe it or not, the wonderful blues you’re seeing in the lakes are pretty true, except for in the photo, below, of Nicholas.

Nicholas explaining the fate of a lake with no outlet. Just like the Great Salt Lake or the Dead Sea, the water has become very saline with a high mineral content, leaving crystalline deposits around its shore.

The three namesake Torres del Paine (Towers of the Paine {an indigenous term for the area, “blue”}), known simply as the North, South, and Central towers, and impressive challenges for climbers.

. . . meanwhile, back at our hotel, just outside the park . . .

On our way to the airport, we stopped by the famous cave where milodon (an extinct giant sloth) remains, initially just hunks of hairy skin, were found in 1895. For those of us who had read about the cave in Bruce Chatwin’s **In Patagonia**, the scale and grandeur of the place were quite a surprise.

Mummified milodon skin in Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin. When first discovered, people assumed it was from a still living animal, rather than one that had been extinct for 10,000 years.

The presence of humans here in southern South America has been documented to about 12,000 years ago. The animals in gray, above, are still around. The largest extinct one is the milodon. The model looming over Amanda is somewhat exaggerated in size and apparently wouldn’t have been able to rear up like that to intimidate us puny hominids.

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