Patagonia: Day 2, Historical Patagonia Hike

Today we joined a small 7-person all-day “Historical Patagonia” hiking tour. The weather was a bit better today and we’d be heading to the East side of Torres del Paine, which tends to be a little drier and has a greater concentration of mammals. We were tempted to join the “Base of the Towers” trek, which I had done with my father and a few of his friends 33 years prior. When I did it we had outstanding weather, but today, while looking brighter, still looked dicey. We considered our options and realized you run the risk of hiking 15 miles for 10 hours and seeing nothing but rain, clouds, and snow. So, we thought we should go for the sure thing, and Patagonia did not disappoint.

We started the day with a better view of the Horns of Paine (Cuernos del Paine) which we could only see a portion of yesterday in our rainy Miradores hike. Today we could see them from a vantage point where the lake in front of us was full of Chilean Flamingos, which we saw in their breeding grounds in Atacama. It was a nice way to start out the day. We even saw a few guanaco from the road.

There are two entrances to the eastern side of Torres del Paine, and we’d be hiking a route that connects them, starting at Lago Sarmiento and hiking to Laguna Amarga.

The hike was a gradual but steady gain in elevation, eventually taking us to a large butte with majestic views of the Cuernos del Paine. We climbed a steep trail around the far side up to a cave which showed evidence of prior occupants of Patagonia, thousand-year-old cave painting petroglyphs made by nomads of the Tehuelche people. We stopped and admired the artistry and thought of earlier times, with the same view they had of this unspoiled landscape. We had a warm cup of tea before carrying on the four mile hike.

We descended into the valley below and saw a few guanaco lazily grazing the day away. This was prime puma spotting area, so our senses were heightened as we carried on. While we saw evidence of pumas (a few guanaco skeletons) we saw no pumas or foxes, only some distant condors and a few black-chested buzzard-eagles.

It was a pleasant hike with great view points and it was inspiring to have likely walked in the footsteps of ancient ancestors.

We were picked up at the other eastern entrance to the park (Laguna Amarga) and were driven to a very cold Laguna Azul which has great views of the Towers in the distance. Today we could only get ghostly and brief glimpses of them. It looked like white out conditions at the base, and as we ate our lunch we felt confident we had made the right choice.

We carried on with a stop at Cascade Paine, which was very picturesque, and hit a few viewpoints for more dramatic views of the Cuernos del Paine and photo ops for our Patagonia t-shirts.