Our Travel Stories

We chose an easy hike for our second at Patagonia to give us some break. The alternative was to go to the French valley which is another leg of the W trek. This hike went through a different part of Torres del Paine National Park that is not as visited as the W trek and has more opportunity to see wildlife as well as the Petroglyphs left behind by the Aonikenk people.

Today our guide was Nico and he was also a very good guide. We started with a stop at the beautiful lake we had stopped at as we were coming to Torres del Paine. The water was so still that we could see a clear reflection of the mountains. Unfortunately, the towers were covered with low clouds. We were glad we were not doing the Towers base hike today.

This hike was all about wildlife and we saw many small and big birds. Some of them were quite rare. This hike was in the puma territory and saw many puma trackers at the beginning of the trail. That made us aware of the seriousness of our hike. Didn’t now whether to see one or not on our hike 😊

The hike itself was very easy with hardly any ups and downs. So, it was nice to walk looking at the scenery and spotting any wildlife around.

The petroglyphs were very few as the initial findings were not protected as well as they should have.

The area around the petroglyphs was very pretty with a lake down below the cliffs where the petroglyphs were. The rocks also were all cobbly and pretty.

After visiting the petroglyph, we walked through some meadows and came across this beautiful Vari bird. It is pretty rare to see one. The bird gave us many opportunities to photograph. We had to choose a couple from the dozens of pictures we took.

We also came across so many guanacos in many beautiful settings. Again, choosing a couple of pictures was so hard.

And then we came across a flamingo too.

On our hike we came across burnt trees from a fire that was started by a tourist in 2011/2012 that destroyed 125 square kms. The land is recovering and we could see the new growth that is coming up now.

The hike took us to an overlook that looked over the valley and from there it was all the way down.

On this hike we also got to see interactions of the wildlife and this one captured below was an interesting tableau.

The last highlight of our hike was this multi-step Paine waterfall with glacial waters. This view should show the three towers, but this day they were obscured by low clouds. But the waterfalls themselves were pretty, and we spent some time here soaking in the beauty.

That was it for this day. A relaxing day in a beautiful place in a quiet corner of the National park.

At the end of the day, Mayuresh was able to touch the Paine river and was very happy.