Monday, March 21, 2016

Day 30 - Lakes, mountains, snow, waterfalls, icebergs

Puerto Natales and Torres Del Paine National Park

We hired a car for the day to visit the Torres del Paine National Park. The mountains are incredibly majestic, with the "torres" being the towers of of rock that give the park its name.


Even though it's the end of summer there was still plenty of snow on the mountains and the lakes were just beautiful, there were some nice waterfalls and we even saw icebergs that had calved from the glaciers in the park (though we've seen better icebergs, as you would expect!). At one stop we arrived at the same time as a horde of trekkers heading off to trek the W, which is the famous trekking route within the park - judging by the numbers it must be like a highway out there.


After visiting all the main vantage points and doing a couple of small walks within the park, we ended the day by visiting the cave of the Milodon, where the original  natives of the area had lived and a prehistoric sloth's remains were found. This sloth walked on all fours but there are lots of statues of him around town that depict him standing on his back legs -  probably because he looks much larger, scarier and impressive that way.

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