The park has several trekking trails with distances ranging from a few hours to 8 days long. It has hotels, restaurants, and camping grounds. We were lucky enough to find an available hotel room in spite of the high season; much better than our plan B alternative of sleeping in the car :)
There are large granite mountains in the center, including the Cuernos del Paine and Torres del Paine, and the trails take you around providing views from different angles. There are several lakes colored in different shades of blue and green, big and fast rivers connecting them, and a few glaciers; Grey is the largest and most famous, but smaller than the ones we saw on the Argentinean side. Vegetation is very scarce like in most of Patagonia, and we managed to see a few animals, mostly guanacos. Also, as in most of Patagonia, there is a lot of wind, at times blowing really hard. In the picture I'm struggling against the wind, but enjoying the view of Cuernos del Paine across Lake Nordenskjold (European names are ubiquitous in Patagonia). The views are really impressive. None of the mountains exceed 3100 meters, but they are sharp, raising to the clouds, and some even show marble cake colors. If you look at the picture, the Cuernos are dark brown on top, and lighter brown further down. Very cool.
Our hiking approach was to choose several short trails (usually backtracking), but this allowed us to see the place from several different perspectives. The car was invaluable getting us from one trail to the next. Except for those easily reached by tourist buses (mostly with German tourists for some reason), most trails were extremely peaceful, as if we had the place to ourselves.
Overall, we are glad we chose this detour. Chile is expensive, particulary inside the park, but everybody seemed friendly, the rangers were extremely helpful, the park was less crowded than expected, and the hiking was superb.
Now we are on our way back to El Calafate where we will return the car, and shortly thereafter take a 3.5-hour bus to El Chalten, the base for trekking on the Argentinean side. We had to leave Chile early this morning, so that we can reach El Calafate before noon when the rental car company shuts down for lunch (and probably siesta since it doesn't open again until 4pm). It rained overnight and the passenger seat was soaked with water. We discovered that the passenger side door does not close properly, it must have had a previous accident. Most likely it was blown by the wind, since we have been told that it is very common to find tourists, who are not mindful of the wind, opening the doors in the direction of the gust and ending up with a door open 180 degrees, like the little doors to enter a bar in those western movies. Winds here are really that strong. Anyway, pure speculation, wind or not, something happend to my door that we didn't notice when we rented the car, and now I'm seating on a wet seat. Well, I decided to move to the back seat and Simon is performing as my personal chauffer. :)
Mercedes
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