Chile – A Summary

After a longer than intended stint in Chile, we bid it farewell for Argentina, as we continue our loop back up the Eastern side of the Andes.

Our exit has been pretty smooth. The bus ride back from Pudeto in the Torres del Paine National Park showed us the full extent of the walk we’d just accomplished. It now makes much more sense why it took so long to get between legs! The mountains and peaks look even more vast and impressive from afar, and we can’t believe we were walking at their feet just a day or two ago.

We have one last night in Puerto Natales and, after returning my jacket and picking up our full packs, we decide to just eat in our latest hotel. We’re paying stupid money to stay in this basic locale after realising too late how far in advance you need to book accommodation here, and it’s made all the more painful when the receptionist tells us we can avoid the 19% VAT if we pay in dollars (which we don’t have), or avoid a debit card charge if we pay by credit card (which we also don’t have). It’s an oddity of Chile we won’t miss. Not paying the tax, but being constantly reminded we can avoid VAT if you use USD and people looking at us like it’s our choice to pay it, that and the exorbitant cash withdrawal fees.

Bags repacked, mediocre breakfast inhaled, we’re back on a bus to take us to El Calafate, a town on the Argentina side of Patagonia. Let’s see what this next leg brings!

Chile Rule of 3 Summary

Highlights (James) – San Pedro scenery and atmosphere, avalanches in valle Frances, the enormity of glacier grey

Highlights (Alex) – bimbling about on bikes in the sunshine at the vineyard, the bowl-like range at Mirador Britanico, Glacier Grey disappearing into the sky like the end of the world (special mention to James’ Halloween meal and the run in Puerto Natales where I felt really ‘present’).

Lowlights (James) – food poisoning and ongoing nausea, being on edge in Valparaiso, supermarket shopping in Santiago (the prices!!!)

Lowlights (Alex) – Mendoza getting scrapped, our first blow-out (pretty good for 2 months being constantly in each other’s company, all good again), being electrocuted all the time and still flinching before touching any metal door handle

Takeaways (James) – finding clarity on what environments make me happy, the culture seemed less distinctive here, Chile is more westernised compared to Peru/Bolivia

Takeaways (Alex) – I need to learn to let go of my idea/dream of what this trip should be and try and go more with the flow of what it actually is. Humans are capable of horrendous things, and we seem to learn nothing to stop the same abuses happening over and over. The USA really messed up Latin America with all its ‘meddling’.

How to Describe Chile (James) – varied – from bone dry deserts to giant slabs of ice, the Switzerland of South America (pricey but beautiful), go to Patagonia!

How to Describe Chile (Alex) – expensive, ‘local’ cuisine severely lacking (Jordan tells us a theory that it’s because all the food would get exported so they didn’t learn to embrace what they had like peru did), just beautiful, from the driest of sandy deserts to snowy peaks of Patagonia.

Entertainment

TV & Film: Cyberpunk, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Killers of the Flower Moon, Chef’s Table, Ricky Gervais, Black Mirror, Beckham

Books: Motorcycle Diaries

Podcasts: A short history of…, TOTD, Criminal, This Is Love

Tips for the W

Before we forget, here’s some tips for anyone else who is going to do the W in 5 days, 4 nights:

• Don’t bother pre-booking and paying for lunches, they were not worth the money, and there are cafes on the way that you can buy pizza/burger/quesadilla for significantly less at lunch-times. You just have to check the hours and your route if you don’t do the same as ours as they only serve these at certain times
• there is very little information easily provided, but you can email the companies (Vertice or Las Torres) and they should get back to you
• Toilet roll was actually readily provided, only once did I need to use my own
• showers in Chileno and Grey (even the refugio) are in cold blocks. Frances has the best, you wouldn’t think you were in a campsite. Paine Grande was inside the refugio, don’t know what the camp was like
• you have to take all your rubbish with you throughout the trek and out of the park to Puerto Natales, think about that when considering whether you take a can of tuna in oil (oops)
• If you are going to make your own lunches, take wraps instead of sandwiches. The bread doesn’t get squashed and it takes up less space
• East to west has the benefits of starting out camping and then being able to end in the refugios. You don’t have the sun in your eyes on the walks. You get the view of the green lake opening up infront of you rather than having to keep looking back. And you get the steepest part done on the first day when you have the most energy and adrenaline
• wine is better value than beer, the measures are a full glass, no 125ml here!
• have your booking information downloaded or printed, and make sure you get what you’ve paid for. More than once they didn’t have a clue and guests had to remind them they were owed a drink, meal, pillow
• you can fill up water from the mountain streams or the campsites/refugios
• day 2 was the worst for us, I think we’re just not used to carrying so much weight, but it was a long day with all our kit and we found it the hardest for that reason
• practice walking with weight, we just practiced walking
• take blister plasters and tape to stop any from forming early on
• if you can get to Grey early enough, maybe you could make it to the elusive third bridge, but we didn’t have time or energy
• the boat back to Puedto was an hour late, and we still had 2 hours to kill until our pre-booked bus, which was annoying as it was too cold to sit outside. There is a lovely warm cafe, but of course you need to buy something
• Internet was $10 for 1 hour. Just enjoy switching off
• there were plugs in Chileno, Paine Grande and Grey, although we just used our power bank as we didn’t take our adaptor
• The tents in Chileno and Frances were brilliant. Yes, they were on a raised platform, but they included a mattress so you didn’t need a roll mat, and you didn’t have to worry about mice. The campsite in Paine Grande was totally exposed to the strong wind, and the one in Grey was on a woodland floor. I think camping with Vertice (Paine Grande Grey) would have been a very different experience to the camping we did with Las Torres (Chileno, Frances)
• the staff here are avid adventurers themselves, service is not their vocation, expect chaos, but with a smile
• the Las Torres website is confusingand horrible, Chileno costs about $50 more than Frances. No idea why and that was not clear to me when I booked it
• you might get lucky with being able to rent a sleeping bag on site, but it’s probably not worth the risk
• Staying at Chileno gives you a second chance at seeing the Torres
• Rental Natales in Puerto Natales were brilliant for hiring a warm jacket for the trip. There were also other rental places but they opened after 3pm so I can’t vouch for them. Plus Guillermo at Rental Natales is lovely
• There are boutique hiking stores selling all your brand-name kit. There are also your cheap everyday stores that sell your non-brand stuff. Like our Hong hiking poles and waterproof suit in a bag for £13
• Highly recommend a buff/snood for the wind, everywhere, not just for the W
• you need to book early, everywhere sells out fast. We’re pretty sure the travel agencies reserve everything before they open up, so you might get lucky when they release their chunks at later dates, but when we looked on day 1 of bookings opening for the season, many places were already sold out. Jordan had to pay to sleep in a tent even though he was carrying his own because that was all that was available
• if you can’t do the full W, there are ways to do day hikes to see the Torres del Paine and Glacier Grey. I’m not sure about Valle Frances. There was a guy doing the central and right leg and then taking the boat to the left leg, because that was the only available way to do it. If you’re determined, you can find a way. It just may be a bit of a weird way.
• if you can’t do the day hikes either, there are some incredible views from the south side of the lake that are accessible by tour group in a car/bus, and on the expensive lago grey boat
• there will be a printout of the weather forecast near or by each Refugio eatery, just ask if you can’t find it
• That being said, I went in October before and the weather was better than what we had in November this year. There’s no predicting the weather. Every forecast except day 1 was wrong.

The Bits In Between

• our first overnight in the airport = freezing
• a distinct lack of clear signage to help people navigate buses, and without Google maps, I don’t know how you know where you are
• the buses have WiFi on them!
• we keep thinking of how great our time was with our guides Odi and Walter, and how lucky we were to have them guide us on the Inca Trail and Uyuni respectively. It must be hard work being a guide and crossing paths with so many tourists each year, so we’re just so grateful for the energy they put in, and we carry what they taught us with us still to this day
• having my first bit of intentional banana. We struggled to find fruit (that wasn’t incredibly expensive) in Santiago and so I resorted to trying a chunk of banana in my morning oats to help ‘liven’ it up
• I still dislike bananas intensely
• so many bear/dogs just laying in the sun in Puerto Natales as the wind blew in their face. Absolutely gorgeous creatures and way calmer than any strays we’ve come across so far
• having to create a bath plug out of a plastic wrapper and socks because apparently tourists steal them (?!)
• forks being a sought after commodity and having to make do with teaspoons and knives
• nearly everyone on the W seemed significantly more capable than us. I don’t think we overtook anyone. Compared to being the gazelles of the Inca Trail, we can’t figure out whether our fitness has tanked, or everyone here is here for a holiday and way more prepared
• listening to podcasts with adverts of products and services from home makes me weirdly miss it more
• In San Pedro we saw an odd painting of a stripey man, which we then saw throughout Puerto Natales and the W. We eventually found out (thanks to Google Lens) that these depictions are of the Selk’nam tribe, one of the last indigenous communities to meet European colonialists in Latin America.
• you probably think you know what happens next, but it’s even worse than you’re probably imagining. There is a genocide of these people, most are slaughtered in the name of “progress” or “civilisation” and for the ranchers to protect “their” land. Others are stolen and sent to human zoos in Europe, where they are also studied “for science”
• this tribe is sadly now extinct, along with their language. I strongly recommend reading about the tribe, their history, and what our ancestors did to them
• we see the indigenous community represented everywhere, including stunning portraits in the Paine Grande Refugio on the W. There’s beautiful murals painted all over Puerto Natales of these people. The Selk’nam ‘spirits’ are even the artwork on some buses. What was done to them is a loss to us all, but it gives me some hope in humanity that these stories are being brought to light, that their existence from the history books isn’t wiped out like their existence on the planet was, that they continue to be remembered, and continue to remind us of the capacity of human cruelty, to inspire us to fight against the worst of our species commiting these atrocities again.

Photos From the Cutting Room Floor

Painting of a Selk’nam spirit in San Pedro de Atacama, a long way from home!:

James not enjoying the odd flavour of the Terremoto cocktail:

After getting my Vivo boots from my mum’s colleague, with the sun shining, and a nice jaunt around the more sophisticated part of Santiago, this sign is a little reminder. (We then spend 20 minutes walking in a cold torrential downpour trying to find the cinema we didn’t realise was so far away and life feels less good again):

Some more of the fantastic sunset in Santiago:

Playing around in the vineyard:

What do you do when you’re leaving your accommodation that day and you only have oats and icecream left… mix them together for breakfast. Tasted really good!

In case you weren’t sure which button to press on the airplane walkway:

First view of the snowy peaks of the south of Chile from the plane:

Some of the Puerto Natales bear-dogs chilling out after a few too many beers:

Treating ourselves to brisket burgers in Puerto Natales:

Finding an amazing pizza/pasta place with a visual menu:

What to do if you see a puma:

And many more from the W:

Bit disconcerting seeing this in the shower!

Trying to predict the weather each day and failing:

Two fires caused by backpackers. One accidentally kicked over their stove. The other set fire to some toilet roll (an extreme attempt to leave no trace?). The devastation is the size Santiago: