Hiking in Southern Patagonia during summer allows for long, leisurely days, with little stress concerning daylight. (Weather is a different story) An average day, around 15 hours of light, allows one to hike whatever time of day seems fit. Several walks during our 6 day trek were long, but none over 8 hours. We often chose to sleep in, especially as the week went on, dragging our sore bodies out of the tent well after nine.
To begin the second day of our trek we hiked from Los Torres campsite to Los Cuernos Refugio/ campsite.
It's about a 5 hour hike, with ups and downs, nothing too backbreaking. You can find delicious cold water along the entire trail, (like most of the W) so we never had to worry about carrying water.
The trail mostly followed a large glacier lake to our left, with occasional streams coming from the mountains to our right. We were lucky and had great weather, but it was a typical windy Patagonian day.
As we wound over a rocky ridge into the Cuernos private site / property, we could hear waterfalls, horses, strong winds over Nordenskjöld lake, hikers eating and taking hot showers.
Approaching Cuernos; Tiny Private Cabanas Line the Valley
Cuernos has the most diverse lodging we saw on the trail, private bungaloos with hot tubs, dorms with bunks, some sort of weird domes, platform camping, and rocky hill- dirt camping. (We took the latter) The site is still on private land, so it's not free to camp. We actaually made a reservation in advance for a site, but they had given it away by the time we got there. Reservations don't really make sense, since people back out, or timetables change. Anyway, we were a result of this loose reservation system, but they found us a spot. We saw people circling the site for hours looking for a place to pitch a tent. Also to mention: this was Christmas eve. After setting up camp, and throwing on sandals, we bought two Torres del Paine beers, which we were already familiar with, from visiting the brewery a few days earlier, HERE.
Torres del Paine Cervesa
View from Camp
The camp was by far a favorite of the trip, people singing, drinking box after box of wine, everyone genuinely enjoying themselves. The crowd was also one that wasn't on a day trek, but multiple day journeys. This usually made a difference. We were all tired and sore, and excited to get our heavy packs off our backs. You make quick friends when you all smell the same.
We paid the extra (too many) pesos to have Christmas eve dinner at the restaurant, complete with a 5 peso (0.60 USD) box of wine.
Christmas Eve Dinner, Fleece Navidad
This was probably the best meal we had in our entire lives. We slept real well that night.