Torrents of Rain

We crossed over the border to Chile, after cooking our steak and vegetables for lunch because you can’t take meat into Chile. We stayed at Puerto Natales and got ready to go trekking. The next day we drove into the park and then started a big 3 hour climb, crossing streams and rocks to a lovely little campsite called Campamento Torres. We put up our tents and it started to rain, it rained all night and we thought it was never going to stop! In the morning we climbed up to see the towers of Torres del Paine, we had to climb over boulders that were slippery in the rain. We could see the lake and the glacier but not the towers! So we packed up our tents and walked back down. We stopped at a refugio for some lunch and had lovely soup to warm us up because we were wet right through!!! Even our waterproofs had leaked! And it still hadn’t stopped raining! As we were so wet and there were no views we decided to abandon our 5 day trek 🙁 .We got back to Dotty and had some hot food and a hot shower…it was still raining so we played cards inside Dotty. When we woke up it was still drizzling, but after breakfast we could see some blue sky. We went to see a very beautiful waterfall and then walked to a viewpoint and the clouds cleared and we could see the mountains. The mountains were rocky and snowy and we could hear avalanches! It sounded like thunder. We met some American people who recommended that we go and see the glacier and ice burgs at Lago Grey. We walked onto a beach and we saw loads of ice burgs. There was a ginormous one that was so big it had ice caves. Dad’s fact is, there is more ice burg underwater than above so that is why they didn’t wash onto the shore. I did hold a small piece of glacier ice that had floated towards the beach. It was very freezing!!! we could see the enormous glacier coming down from the mountains to the lake. We went to wild camp with an amazing view of all the mountains. In the morning Ellie and I could see the mountains and even the towers from our sleeping bags! 🙂 ….even though I only opened one eye!