Torres Del Paine (day five)

The alarm rang out at 3:45am. What? Already? But I'd hardly slept a wink... My mind had been racing when I'd clambered into my bag the night before, and had kept me awake like a group of noisy Chilean campers. Then when I finally had dropped off I kept waking up in fear of over-sleeping. I felt totally sapped of energy from the 8hrs+ of trekking and climbing the day before, and the cold that was seeping slowly into the tent was not very inviting. It was then that I made the decision that I would not join the others for their crazy sunrise escapade.

As I tried (in vain) to fall back to sleep, the others all started on their way back up the mountain. Funnily enough they decided to climb over the boulders rather than up the scree wall, but at 4am and with no food inside them they still found it really heavy going. After all their sterling effort lady luck was not with them. They were greeted with wind, rain and plenty of cloud. The towers, which should've been shining like scarlet beacons, were shrouded in think, grey, woollen clouds. They'd taken up their stoves and sleeping bags, and so defended themselves from the cold by wrapping up behind large rocks and slipping hot soup.

Tired and disappointed they returned to camp. Rather than feeling smug about not going up myself, I felt frustrated for them. At least we'd managed to see them the night before though.

After packing up we made a swift exit. James was particularly keen to get to the park entrance and get it over with. I think that the promise of a cold beer was also another pull for him to finish quickly. Dean asked us to continue without him again, as he could see that James was a man on a mission, and didn't want to put too much strain on his knee. Tiggy and Jess joined us as we picked up the pace. It started to rain gently, and we were all thankful that this had been the only bad weather we'd seen the whole trip.

We managed to do the 4hr hike in around 2.5hrs. Even the skies turned blue to hail our return. I don't think any of us have ever been so happy to see a bar. We'd just finished using the bathrooms and buying our beers when Dean walked in, only around quarter of an hour after us. He quickly bought himself a beer too, and we toasted our success of managing to do the "W". We all felt tired but pretty good, and I even felt like I could've continued on and done the extra couple of days of the circuit if we'd had the supplies and the time (something that I never thought I'd say in a million years).


The minibus came to take us to the main buses out of the park. We all piled on and started off down the bumpy road, only to discover that it had a puncture. Luckily the cavalry appeared in the form of 2 other minibuses, and we made it in just enough time to catch the bus back to Puerto Natales. We even managed to meet back up with Daniel on the bus home. He'd completed the "W" with a couple of other guys from Brazil.

We checked back into the Erratic Rock Hostel, but this time we were lucky enough to get into the main hostel, which was much nicer. We shared a hearty dinner of steak and loads of veggies with Dean, which our bellies very much appreciated. We even managed to squeeze in a cheeky bottle of wine. That night we slept like babies; those beds felt like lying on fluffy clouds in comparison to our camping equipment.