The Drive into Torres del Paine - 5 of 10

The drive into Parque Nacional Torres del Paine is grand. Let me just say now that I will probably be boring you with all the superlatives used to describe this park. I know that it is cliché to say that there is nothing else quite like it, but maybe this cliché started with travel writers trying to give a sense of what this park is like. Everyday a different beauty of the park was revealed to us and everyday we looked up at the mountains and were taken away by their beauty. The Torres del Paine and the surrounding peaks are exceptional.

The landscape moves from flat and rolling, wide open steppes near Punta Arenas to more dramatic mountains just north of Puerto Natales. As you drive into the park (along the new road) the valleys and mesas of the mountains are numerous. Then you spot a corner of a rich, sky blue lake. Then you round a bend and are blasted with wind and then you top a small ridge and you see the entire lake and then you drive another two minutes, round a couple of turns and you see these spires of multi-colored rock shoot straight up into the sky. Your mouth drops and you continue on until you reach a scenic pull off. The wind nearly pulls the door off its hinges as you get out to take a photo. When you finally get out of the car you are almost blown off your feet by the wind and you snap a few photos of the spires and the peaks and then you turn and see the rest of the blue lake. It is immense just like everything else around you. And as you drive closer to the park, you want to take photo after photo.

Torres del Paine is the name for the entire park but in many of the pictures what you see are a couple of mountain peaks, called the Cerros, next to the multi-colored, horned peaks, called the Cuernos, and then hidden behind the Cuernos are the actual Torres (Towers). Many times when people speak of the Torres, they may be referring to both the entire park and/or the Torres themselves. Many of the photos on the post only capture the Cerros and the Cuernos as the Torres themselves were almost always hidden behind the clouds while we were there. The constant cloud cover around the Torres made the park all the more mysterious and enticing as you never knew when you would be able to look up and see something obscured the minute before by the constant cloud cover.

With or without the clouds the austere beauty of the Cerros, Cuernos and Torres along with the surrounding mountains, valleys, lakes and glaciers is what makes this park so incredible. The area around the park, the intense colors of the lakes, the wind, the fast changing weather, the clouds on the peaks and the general other worldly feel reminded me a lot of the landscape of Tibet. North of Lhasa, Tibet, there is a lake called Sky Lake (Nam Tso) where I was lucky enough to spend one night. Over the course of that 24 hour period in July of 2000 Sky Lake seemed to offer a new panorama every hour because of the weather that moved through. The lake was enormous and reputedly required 21 days to walk around its perimeter. Torres del Paine was like that area around Sky Lake in Tibet: nonstop changing of the weather from wind to rain to sun to heat to wind to clouds to blue skies. And the resulting fleeting beauties of nature made me want to sit down and smoke. (Of course, I don’t smoke. Nonetheless, the urge was present. Instead, I usually took multiple photos.)

That first night we were lucky enough to stay on a small island on Lago Pehoé, a lake whose turquoise blue color was so vibrant that in some photos it looks like the sky. The location of the hotel was prime with unobstructed views of the Cuernos and on a clear day we speculated that you could see the Torres from the hotel as well. We ate dinner and the next morning’s breakfast in the dining room which was on the edge of the lake overlooking the lake and the mountains.

The pictures.

Above left, Bruce taking a fine photo from the scenic overlook where the wind almost blew our doors off.
Above right, the view of the Cerros, Cuernos and Torres (behind the clouds) from the Río Serrano Valley.
Below right, another view from the Río Serrano Valley of mountains outside of the Park.
Below left, Paul in the wide windy valley.

Above left, Jane and Sarah on the bridge to Hotel Pehoé.
Above right, Hotel Pehoé with the Cuernos in the background.

Below left, Lago Pehoé's entrancing turquoise waters.
Below right, another evening shot of the Cuernos.