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Torres del paine
Written by sophie et jeremy   
Sunday, 21 January 2018

Torres Del Paine, the most known Chilean national park attracts thousands of tourists every year, it's the hiker’s paradise.

route de la fin du monde route de la fin du monde

First, we take a few days in Punta Arenas to use our credit card and buy new tires and some tax free articles (like goretex jackets and chocolate), and french food at Eric, listening to some past french songs.

Few kilometers south is the historical city of port hunger, where all the colons died starving because they couldn’t grow tomatoes. We drive up to the end of the southern most road of the continent. Still no whales, but we’ve seen many ship wrecks, and beautiful fields of wild flowers.

ship wreck ship wreck lupins lupins

Then, we head to to Pali Aike national park, a volcanic area at the border with Argentina and Chile, where we hang around 7000 years old lava fields. We also see caves where prehistoric men and animals have inhabited, including the Mylodon, some king of giant sloth. As usual, we see thongs of guanacos and ostriches, but still no puma...

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We arrive at Torres Del Paine under the rain, we can't see anything, it's a bit disapointing. There's a incredible amount of tourists, all the campings are full, and it's out of consideration to walk the famous "W trail" without booking (which we haven't, mountain huts are anyway out of budget). The weather rapidly clears up, and we'll eventually find ourselves lucky with the sun, which allows us some walks with great viewpoints. A one day hike leads us to the food of the spectacular granite towers overlooking a glaciar lake, another one to a very windy pass with views over 3 enormous glaciers, and the last one along lake Grey and its turquoise water where some icebergs are floating. It’s gorgeous but too popular for us, we leave after 4 days to Argentina and Los Glaciares national park.

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