What is the O-Trek? What the heck is a Torres Del Paine?

The O Trek, named because it completes a full loop around Torres Del Paine, is a 150+km journey, usually spanning 8 days and 7 nights in Torres Del Paine. Torre is the Spanish term for “tower” referring to the massive stone towers that rise high above the valleys, carved out by ancient (or current) glaciers. It’s in Patagonia, which actually is way bigger than I had imagined. It runs up Chile and Argentina for many many square miles, including several other parks and areas. To get to the park, you have to fly to either El Calafate, Argentina, and then bus to Puerto Natales in Chile, or just fly to Punta Arenas and bus to Puerto Natales. It’s a long way down, with Puerto Natales being almost at 51 degrees south, below any other continent or city not in South America (and palpably close to Antarctica). It’s really freakin’ cool, and although the weather is notoriously windy and unpredictable, it’s actually not as cold as I thought.

Tip: Patagonia is not like a lot of other trekking areas around the world, and space can be very limited when booking accommodations. We booked in January for a trek in late March and still had to push it back because it was already sold out. The only available option was to rent a tent and sleeping bag on site, which actually I would totally recommend anyway, but still be wary when booking to give at least 3 months for an easier experience.

Preparing for the Trek – Puerto Natales:

After arriving in Puerto Natales, our only goal was to prepare for the trek (mainly buying food, finding out information about what to bring, talking with people who had just returned, etc.). Puerto Natales is actually a super cool place, very backpacker-centric, with a lot of coffee shops, bars, and other cute places aimed at attracting the slightly more upper-class crowd that Patagonia draws. 

Hostel Recommendation: I stayed at Lili-Patagonicos, which was fantastic. It’s small, but you can rent absolutely anything you need for the trek, store your bags, the staff was incredibly nice and helpful, and the free breakfast (which starts conveniently before the busses leave for the trek) is maybe the best I’ve had in a hostel.

Food: We decided to bring our own food for the trek, as opposed to buying food at the sites or bringing dehydrated meals (more on this later). This was quite the experience, because after hearing about the prices in Chile (god I miss the blue dollar) we decided to buy our food in Argentina and bring it on the bus to Chile to prepare. We found essentially what was an Argentinian Costco and stocked up on rice, lentils, tuna, spaghetti, cereal bars, and other essentials we felt would sustain us (this included a massive bucket of dulce de leche, because it’s cultural right?). Although we rented tents in the park and didn’t need to bring our own, we quickly found that with the food we’d bought our packs were largely heavier than people who were bringing their own equipment as well. This was an extra challenge for sure, but it ended up paying off in the long run.

Day 1: Bus to Laguna Amarga, trek from Central to Seron:

After spending a couple days in Puerto Natales, which I actually ended up really loving (if you’re there, get the York Carne at Masay, I dreamt about it almost every day while trekking and immediately got it again on my return) it was time to take the bus to Laguna Amarga. We had met 5 others in our hostel who were leaving for the trek at the same time as us, so we grabbed breakfast at the hostel and headed to our respective busses, unsure of what to expect. After a beautiful and anxious 2 hour bus ride, we had finally reached the entrance to the park. We hadn’t bought tickets beforehand, which I would totally NOT recommend, because we had to wait in a long line upon arrival, leaving us on one of the last shuttles to the starting point of the trek. After said shuttle (which consisted of a Chilean man absolutely tearing through dirt roads while blasting Spanish EDM) we were ready to begin. I picked up my bag, absolutely daunted by the sheer weight of it, and headed out to Seron, which was about a 4-5 hour hike away. The weather was absolutely perfect, and in the distance we could see the famed Torres which we would be looping back to see 7 days later. 

The hike itself was not crazy strenuous, but the over-packing of food definitely added a little extra oomph to it. We passed by crazy pampas, started to get near mountain peaks, and ended up descending down into a beautiful valley, while also getting to see some gauchos herd a group of horses up the mountain in front of us.

Thoughts:

The unexpectedly great thing about the O Trek is that it’s a much smaller group than the W-Trek (3-4 days), meaning that in every site you see the same people you had seen the day previously. This fostered a real sense of community in the mountains, and we ended up meeting some absolutely incredible people during the journey. (If you’re going to go to Torres Del Paine, brush up on your German. I swear like 2/3 of the park was from somewhere in Germany). We found a group of a couple Americans, 3 Germans (of course) and settled into our “premium tent”. The sleeping situation actually ended up being pretty great for the entirety of the trip, as it was all already laid out for us on arrival, and no deconstruction was required in the morning when we left. Mentally, this was helpful, because there’s nothing worse than having to set up a tent in ultra-windy conditions after a tough day of trekking. 

We ate our first taste of rice, lentils, and tuna, played some Uno with the friends we had recently met (with German rules, which I’m still not totally sure about), and settled in for the first night. 

Day 2: Seron to Dickson

This day, unexpectedly, was maybe my favorite of the trek. We woke up early, made oatmeal, and hit the trail to get a jump on the day. It was another perfect day, and as we climbed up through the valley we crossed a ridge that overlooked the entirety of an absolutely massive canyon with crazy mountains in all directions. We were walking on the ridge of a large mountain, and the wind was CRAZY. There were definitely a few times we stopped walking to grab on to surrounding rocks to avoid being blown off the mountain (we later learned that a few of our friends had been blown over completely). This was our first true taste of the Patagonia experience. As we walked parallel to the valley on the cliff I couldn’t help but take in the surroundings. The desolate nature of the mountains, the tall grasses blowing in the valley, the massive cloud-capped peaks in the distance, and the stark contrast between vegetation in all directions. It was an incredibly long day, especially with the weight of our bags, but all the pain left my legs once we crossed a ridge and saw where we’d be staying the night. Dickson is absolutely awesome, it’s on a peninsula in the lake which is between a set of absolutely stunning Torres and mountain chains. It’s also on Lake Dickson, which has massive Dickson Glacier at the end of it (which you can actually see, even though it’s in Argentina) and the view from the beach near the campsite was one of my favorite viewpoints of the entire journey. The tent was great, and although incredibly windy, we still managed to convince a few others we’d met to take a dip in the glacial lake (we had gone in the day before in Seron and wanted to continue the streak, plus people pay a lot of money to get into water this cold at home for cold-therapy, so wouldn’t it be a waste not to?). This was a fantastic memory, and I’ll never forget the feeling of being in the water, or the view that we had while doing it.

Day 3: Dickson to Los Perros:

This hike was relatively uneventful for the beginning, mainly curving in and around the forest in the valley above Dickson towards the daunting mountain pass which laid before us. As we hiked above the tree line, the wind hit us on the glacier next to the campsite. We stood for a couple minutes, or tried to stand, leaning as far as we could into the wind, almost unable to lean far enough forward. The view of the glacier with the lake was ridiculous, and the barren shale surrounding it made it feel almost like another planet. The hike had taken us almost a full hour less than expected, but it was so nice to take off our boots and just relax for the afternoon. The day after we knew we had to conquer John Gardner Pass, plus hike to an extremely remote campsite, so we treated the afternoon essentially as a rest day, although we ended up not actually sleeping that much, due to a new friend (who was a rodent). 

The Great Mouse Incident of Los Perros: 

After finally getting into bed after an extremely eventful day, we were quickly started by scurrying near the tent. We had been warned about this campsite because of a mice infestation, but I thought it was a classic “this won’t happen to me” kind of scenario. I was wrong. After shining a light on the outside of the tent, we saw a mouse on the lid of our cooking pot, staring directly at us. After some shooing, he scurried beneath the floorboard of the platform we were on, which definitely did not comfort me even a little bit. We sprayed enough bug spray around the tent to probably kill every insect within a kilometer radius, thinking that this would deter the little guy. Once again, I was wrong. When we woke up, I found a large hole in my bag which had been clearly gnawed through, which I later found had also happened to both my bread and a large bag of peanuts I’d been carrying. This was a little scary, because we now had to deep-clean almost all of our possessions just to be sure, but in the end it only resulted in a few pieces of bread, some peanuts, and a little bit of fabric on my bag lost.