Around 10 am on Saturday the 4th, we arrived to the national park Parque Nacional Torres del Paine and had to pay an entrance fee of 15.000 pesos (around 25 US$/ 150 DKR), but because we have the Chilean identity card and therefore legally are "Chileans", we only had to pay 4000 pesos (7 US$/40 DKR) - long live patriotism, haha:-)! Anyway, we got to the Lake Pehoe which we had to cross in a catamaran - a beautiful 30 min. tour with a view to beautiful mountains and green fields!
When we arrived to the other side, we started our trek. We had a map with the paths that we chose to follow and began the trek. We walked for around 2 hours through amazing landscaping: hills in all the different brown, red, orange and green autumn colours, mountains with snow on the tops and lakes in different green and blue colours.
After the 2 hours we got to a camping spot where we left our backpacks to go up a valley - Valle del Francés - where we could see a glacier, (Glaciar del Francés) that had some blue spots (like the glacier we saw in Ushuaia), a small waterfall, the forest with rugged trees and at the end of the valley: a lake. B-E-A-UTIFUL! There were supposed to be condors (one of Chile's national animals), but unfortunately we didn't see one.. We walked back to our backpacks and walked on for another 2 hours. We passed by the lake - Lago Nordenskjold - we had seen from the Valle del Francés, and it was beautiful! The "beach" was all small, round and white stones, and the water was completely calm and turquoise blue and VERY cold! 
We reached the Refugio Los Cuernos at 18:30 when it was getting dark. We rented tents (that were already set up for us - NICE!) and went inside the refugio to make dinner in the sittingroom (pasta, ketchup and tuna - a cheap and VERY delicious trekking-meal:-D ). We were all tired and had sore feet and legs, but it was so nice and warm, and even though people at the next table were having a fancy meal and would be sleeping in a warm and cosy bed, there was a nice atmosphere, and the waiters were really nice. We actually got dessert AND a homemade brownie from them - the best brownie ever!!:-) They also gave us a thick blanket so we wouldn't be cold during the night in our tents - so thoughtful!
Anyway, the facts of the day was:
Distance: 15 km.
Time: 6 hours
On Sunday the 5th we left the Refugio Los Cuernos by sunrise; at 7 am. We actually got up around 5:15 to have time to go inside the refugio to make porridge, and we also thought that the sun would rise aroung 6:30. But the door to the refugio was locked; it was dark, cold, we were tired and was it raining.. So we ended up half-way scaring the first person we saw inside the refugio: a (very bearded!) man who was just passing by the glass-door to go to the toilet - I guess we knocked on the door so hard that the guy working at the refugio also heard us, and in the end we got inside. Again, the very nice waiter gave us freshly baked bread and hot coffee - free of charge! Now, THAT'S customer service:-)
We left the refugio and trekked along the lake Lago Nordenskjold and through a more flat landscaping than the day before. Still stunning, though! 
Some parts reminded me of what some of the landscaping in Scotland must be like. We didn't see a lot of animals, but we did see an eagle floating over the lake and valley - you don't see a lot of eagles in Denmark, so it was fascinating to see how calmly it navigated with it's backtail. We arrived to the Refugio Las Torres around 11 am - that is after 4 hours of trekking:-S
We were tired, and made lunch on the mini-gas burner that we brought, left our backpacks in our tents at the camping spot and around 12:30 we went off to go up another valley to see the Torres del Paine - the 3 pillars that give name to the park (Torres del Paine means The Paine Towers). Our legs were shaking and I guess we would all have preferred to wait another day before we did this trek, but we had to go back to Puerto Natales the next day, so off we went. We started up a rather steep hill, and when we got to the top, we turned around a "corner" on the mountainside of the valley, and the wind was almost paralyzing! It was SO strong, and I was only happy that we didn't carry our backpacks; it would have been difficult to stay in balance and not fall off the mountainside...!:-S
We kept on going down into the valley, through the woods and up another mountainside, but we could see that we might have overestimated our own strenght, and around 15:15 there was still no sight of the Torres del Paine. People we met on our way going down said that it would be at least another 1 1/2 hours to reach the view point to the Torres, and at this time we weren't able to speed up at all. I wanted to be back before sunset, so the two other girls, Melanie and Rebecca, and I decided to go back. We were back around 18 pm, and still had some daylight to take a shower and go to the refugio to get some heat. In the restaurant at the refugio, we actually met the bearded guy who had tried to let us in at the other refugio:-D What a coincidence!
Facts of the day:
Distance: 24 km.
Time: 8-9 hours
On Monday the 6th we slept in - or, that is, the ground was very hard and it was freezing cold, so I was up around 8 am. The funny thing was that we actually had the best view to the Torres del Paine from the camping spot - so bacially we hadn't had to go up the valley the day before.... But it was a nice trek anyway:-)
We only had to trek the last 7,5 km. back to the entrance of the park, where a bus would pick us up to go back to Puerto Natales, but it was some tough km.'s!
All together, these are the cold, hard facts from the tour:
Distance: 46,5 km.
Time: 16 hours.
Me, Rebecca, Melanie and LasseI'm proud of us:-)!
When we got back to Puerto Natales Monday afternoon, we had planned to go on a 4-day boattrip up through the fiordos and rivers of southern Chile to reach Puerto Montt, leaving Tuesday from Puerto Natales. The engine had broken going south from Puerto Montt, though, so the trip was cancelled:-( We - and a lot of other people who were going on the same tour - stayed another night in Puerto Natales, and on that evening desperately tried to find a flight or a bus going north to Santiago. It was a battle against time, and since a lot of other people were looking for the same, and Easter was coming up, it was almost impossible to find anything! Puerto Natales is already a very small town, which only lives off of the tourists going to Parque Torres del Paine and the boattrip to Puerto Montt, so the buses only left some days of the week, and there would be practically nothing to do if we had to stay more days in Puerto Natales.. Finally, we found 4 bustickets to Santiago leaving early the next morning, but we had to use all of our persuasive skills to buy the tickets, 'cus the office that we went to had to book the tickets by phone at another office in another town - and that office had closed..! So we bought the tickets having to get on the bus at 7:30 in the morning in Puerto Natales, not knowing if we would have the tickets for the next bus that we had to change into some hours later somewhere in no-man's-land! But apparently, the very nice man at the office in Puerto Natales had made some phone calls that same morning, so when we changed buses, we got the tickets, and could continue our trip calmly:-)
This is where we changed buses - wouldn't wanna stay there for long...!The bus trip from Puerto Natales to Santiago took us all together 24 hours + 8 hours of waiting in Osorno somewhere in Chile + another 12 hours to reach Santiago..!:-S When we finally arrived to Santiago on the morning of Thursday the 9th, my feet had swollen to what felt like twice the size, and they really hurt:-S
We spent Thursday and Friday in Santiago the four of us, and 3 other exchange students from La Serena who came down that same weekend. We enjoyed the nice, hot weather as a change to the cold weather in the South. We just relaxed and went up to see the Parque Metropolitano on a hill/mountain where we could see almost all of the city.
In the evenings, we went out for cerveza and ron y coca cola and a lot of salsa:-) On Saturday the 11th, we went back to La Serena, tired but very happy after a trip full of events!
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