5 days of trekking. kg backpack, 4 nights in a tent, 65km walking trails and 31 amazing pictures – which can be found in the gallery unter „Watch Me!“

After a big day in El Calafate I drove to Puerto Natales in Chile. This little town is the entrance to the spectacular national park “Torres del Paine” (=“Blue Towers”). A very famous hiking track in the park is called the “W” and means a 5-day walk through different valleys with amazing landscapes and breathtaking views.
The whole park covers 180.000 hectares and the variety of different vegetations leads to a large presence of mammals like pumas, condors, guanacos, flamingos and an enormous bird fauna.

After a long bus ride, I arrived the town at 10 p.m. My hostel was overbooked so I had to find a new one. I ended up at another hostel with a weird owner called Omar.
He looked like a child-eating ex-prisoner, but close to midnight I had no other chance. The next morning, surprisingly Omar baked fresh eggs for breakfast, helped me to plan the trip and turned out to be really friendly.
The first day started at 6:00 a.m. I drove to the park and caught the catamaran to cross the lake that I could start from the beginning of the “W”-circuit.
This route takes 5 to 6 days, covers 80kms and is about 35 hours of walking.  I carried 23 kilos. The backpack was full of food, a tent, a sleeping bag, a mattress, clothes, cooking facilities and lot more stuff. After the first day I realized that the information signs for time & distances were not really realistic.
It always took me longer as I was taking pictures and enjoying the beautiful scenery. I finally came across windy lakes and a mirador (lookout) of the Glacier Grey where I stopped for lunch. It was a stunning view with the sun shining on the Glacier. The 1^st day it was sunny all day with only a few high clouds and strong wind – much better than I expected. The night in the tent was uncomfortable and filled with the noisy of the wind blowing outside the tent.
On the 2^nd day I walked a long distance of 18km – too long for unexperienced hikers. Marco got pain in his knee. Therefore we decided to take a shorter walk on the 3^rd day. We arrived at the camp after a 5 hour hike at 3:30 in the afternoon and had plenty of time to relax.
On the 4^th day Marco stayed at the camp to rest his knee so I hiked the next track alone. A rain started drizzling down as I trekked along the mountains quickly followed by sun, which was followed by rain again, than by sun again, and so forth… I was done when I arrived at the last campground in front of the three high towers of Torres del Paine. The next morning I was too lazy to start at 4 a.m. to see the sunrise so I got up 5 hours later but the view was still amazing. At the end, I was proud to have completed the long track and met Marco at the bus station. To celebrate, I finished the day off by a nice shower, fresh clothes and a big “bife de chorizo” (Steak) ;-).