Description
It is a full day excursion which may include walks through some of the simplest paths of the park.
The outing begins early in the morning leaving from El Calafate through the route that leads, from north to south, to the crossing in the frontier from Cancha Carrera – Cerro Castillo. It consists of two hours of travel in the middle of the Patagonia’s plateau.
From the frontier, you’ll start to tour the beautiful south of Chile, among lakes and forests, until reaching the main entrance of the Torres del Paine National Park. The meaning of this word, in tehuelche, is blue. This is the preponderant colour in the place which dyes the lakes, the forests and the stones. The arrival to the park’s entrance is scheduled at approximately 10.30 hs.
Once inside the park you’ll visit diverse panoramic viewpoints, among them:
– Sarmiento de Gamboa Lake viewpoint
-Blue Lagoon – panoramic viewpoint of the Towers
-Paine river falls, there is the possibility of descending to the river and it takes approximately 30 minutes.
-Almirante Nieto hill / Cuernos del Paine from the Superior viewpoint.
-Amarga lagoon
-Nordenskjold lagoon viewpoint
-Salto Grande viewpoint
-Cuernos del Paine Nordenskjold lagoon viewpoint
-Pehoe lake
-National Park interpretation centre, where the geological phenomena of the massif formation, the characteristics of the flora and fauna as well as the glaciation are explained.
-Toro Lake viewpoint.
A brief walk for the visitors is offered in one of these places if there is enough time.
Note:
The return to El Calafate begins at 7 pm. in order to be able to arrive at dinner time to the hotels. The distance between El Calafate and Torres del Paine is 210 km. The trip takes approximately three hours, back and forth, but there is an aggregate due to customs duty.
The National Park is quite big and most of the trekking paths require and hour and a half by foot thus, if serious hiking is your goal, taking a different excursion which includes two nights lodging inside the Park is necessary.
