Part 1: Puerto Natales and Torres del Paine
Part 2: El Calafate and El Chalten
Part 3: Buenos Aires
After months of planning and years of dreaming about it, it was finally time for Patagonia!
The trip had a rough start. We arrived at our gate to find that our first flight was going to be delayed. Delayed so much so that not only would we be missing our first flight, we’d have a massive domino of missed connections; we’d miss our international flight from Dallas to Chile, which would mean we’d miss our flight to Punta Arenas and our bus to Puerto Natales. The cherry on top was that it would mean that we’d have to skip our entire trek in Torres del Paine because we’d be a day late and miss our camping dates since we had to book the campsites in advance.
Luckily, our flight delay situation improved just enough where we *might* be able to make our connection in Dallas if we sprinted to the gate. We had no idea if our bags would make it. After some stress-induced crying on my side and talking about the what-ifs, Kyle and I went over to the AA counter fully expecting to cancel our trip since our connection was going to be so tight. Instead, we were surprised to find out that if we made it onto our flight to Chile, our bags would absolutely, 100% be on there, too. We decided to chance it and hope we’d be able to make it to our gate before they closed the doors. We made it to Dallas where we raced to our gate and made it in time to join the last few stragglers boarding the plane.
We made it to the Santiago airport where we cleared customs in record time. We brought tons of packaged food since we were backpacking; we fully expected the customs team to search through our bags. They just asked us if we had any dried fruit (we didn’t) and let us through. Unfortunately, we had tons of time to kill before our flight to Punta Arenas since we couldn’t get into the boarding area until 2 hours before our flight. I ordered some breakfast for us in broken Spanish at the Dunkin Donuts, and we tried to nap on the cold tile floor to kill the time.
We made it to Punta Arenas after a non-eventful flight from Santiago. Even though it was evening, there was plenty of daylight left for our bus ride to Puerto Natales. We made it to Puerto Natales at around midnight, and we headed to the closest pizza place that was still open – a cozy bar/pizza place called Base Camp. With full bellies, we crashed as soon as we made it back to the hotel (Cabanas Ultima Esperanza).
We had a full day in Puerto Natales to get last-minute supply items and explore the town before heading into Torres del Paine National Park. In between pizza at Mesita Grande for lunch, brownie sundaes at Patagonia Dulce, and lamb/salmon at Parilla Don Jorge, we wandered down to the lake, grabbed fuel for the camp stove (side note: all stoves in Torres del Paine need to have a controlled flame, woops), and grabbed a merino wool Buff for me.





The next morning our cab driver failed to show up at 6:30 AM, but we lucked out and ended up hoping on our bus to the park right across the road from our hotel. Score! The bus wasn’t glamorous, but it had a bathroom on board (all the buses we took did). The bus took us to main park entrance, about 3 hours from Puerto Natales. We had to check in with the park officials and then hop on a smaller bus to make it to the start of the trek. The main park office was super nice and we were able to store our bags there before heading out on the trail. For future knowledge, the bag storage area was the Hotel, Refugio y Area de acampar Las Torres.

We left the crowds at the hotel and made our way to the trail. That first day was mostly hiking on a dirt road interspersed with hiking through the wettest bogs I’ve ever had to hike through. At one point Kyle stepped into a section and sunk into the mud all the way up to his knee. It was so insanely wet – a drastic change from the hiking trails we have in Colorado. Trail maintenance was non-existent on this first section of trail. We made it to our final destination, Camp Seron, that afternoon. We were one of the first groups to make it into camp and we were able to pick a more sheltered area of camp. We bought plenty of cookies from the shop and took it easy.













I noticed that my knee was beginning to bug me by the end of the day’s hiking, but when we finally stopped that’s when it really started to concern me. I’ve had IT band pain in the past, but had never had it set in so quickly before. I had a sneaking suspicion at the end of the first day that this was not going to be an enjoyable backpacking trip for me…
As usual we were one of the first people to wake up and start out of camp. I knew immediately as soon as we started hiking that I was going to really need to hit the ibuprofen. Thankfully as we warmed up, so did my IT band. It was painful at first, but it did get a little bit better as we hiked on. The hike started out right next to the river and then went up and over a little hump leading to a beautiful view on the backside of the O-Circuit. We hiked down and were on relatively flat ground for a while going through trees and across more bogs until we finally caught a glimpse of Camp Dickson. It was such a welcome sight! We had to make a steep descent into the camp and picked out a private site in the trees near the beach. Camp Dickson was awesome – we got to shower and grab some food from the main building. Plus the beach near the camp had amazing views of the lake and the glaciers. I could’ve stayed here for a day or two. It was SO beautiful!















The following day was a big one – we had to make over John Garner pass. I grabbed some sticks that morning to act as trekking poles since I could barely bend my knee at this point. They helped quite a bit as we meandered through the trees. The trail eventually opened up as we neared Camp Los Perros. Even at this point, Kyle’s knees were starting to bug him but his weren’t NEARLY as bad as mine. We started the last bit of trail to the pass. It was fairly steep from the outset and became quite snow covered as we neared the top. I was so glad I had my buff when we made it to the top because it was insanely windy. The views from the top of the pass looking towards the glacier were unbelievable.





















Coming down off the pass was a nightmare for my knees. It was incredibly steep. I spent most of the down-climb hiking backwards because that was the only way I could bend my knees since they wouldn’t bend facing forward without excruciating pain. We made it Camp Paso late that day and got one of the last campsites. The bathroom there was a literal shithole – you had to squat and hold onto a rope hanging from the ceiling to do your business. There were no amenities at this campsite since it was a government run camp. We went to bed so early that night since we were exhausted from the extra long day.
When we woke up the next day, my knees were totally destroyed. I could barely bend them. I talked to Kyle about them and how I didn’t think I’d be able to make it to the next campsite. We decided we’d try to make it to Camp Grey, where one of the boats comes into the park, and see if we could get on it. The morning was beautiful hiking with multiple bridge crossings. We made it to the boat area around noon. We lucked out – not only did they have room on the boat but they also took credit card! We hopped on the boat where we enjoyed some pisco sours and some glacier views.














After relaxing on the boat ride, we made it back to the other side of the lake, where we had to hike a mile to get to the hotel. It felt like it took forever. Then it was a nightmare trying to find transportation back to Puerto Natales. After hanging at the hotel for hours, we finally got a taxi driver from Puerto Natales to come pick us up, take us back to the main entrance to grab our bags, and drive us back to Puerto Natales. We rolled in to Puerto Natales and grabbed a condo at our previous hotel. We settled in for a few days where we ate plenty of pizza, read books, and watched the one English-speaking channel.






Our trek wasn’t the experience we hoped for but things happen. Getting off the trail in this case was 100% the right call. It took the rest of our trip (8 days) for my knees to fully recover; I can’t imagine how bad the damage would have been if we had kept going.

Don’t worry O-circuit, we’ll see you again 🙂
-Andrea