Puerto Natales & Torres del Paine

I'm a little behind on posting, simply because I haven't had time. So let's travel back in time a few days now...

Puerto Natales, Chile. About five hours by bus from El Calafate. I had a laundry list of things I had to organise once I got there, so as soon as I had left my bags at the hostel, I had to get busy.

1. Book a day trip to the national park of Torres del Paine for the following day (only had one day before I wanted to continue to Ushuaia)
2. Book the bus ticket to Ushuaia, since it can't be booked online
3. Change my flight dates from Punta Arenas to Santiago - this had to be done by phone, and since it's a Chilean airline, it would be significantly cheaper to make a domestic call

So I got cracking and first booked the tour to Torres del Paine. I'd had a quick look at viator.com, a site I usually like since they sell a lot of local arrangements all over the world and are often the only option to book these online. I found a day trip to Torres, but people also said they had paid over the odds. And I can certainly confirm that. The price on viator.com was £46. I paid £25! The guide only spoke Spanish, and perhaps that means a lower price, but someone seems to be skimming a juicy profit off this!

Torres del Paine was beautiful! Tall mountains, including the famous three towers that gave the park its name, plus a lot of lakes. It was quite a long day, however, 12 hours in total. 7:30 am to 7:30 pm. In addition to the beautiful scenery, we saw guanacos, rheas, armadillo and some small foxes. One of the larger lakes in the park were named after a Swedish explorer, Nordenskjöld, and Lake Sköttsberg also has a Scandinavian ring to it but I haven't found any explanation as to where that name comes from. It doesn't really sound Swedish.

It was ridiculously windy on the afternoon of my arrival. Luckily the wind died down overnight, so the day out in Torres was perfect.