Planning

It had been more than a year and a half in planning… And as has been our custom, it started with a comment from Jeanne – how about Machu Pichu? We were looking for something off the beaten path, and that certainly sounded like it fit the bill…

But then, a bit of research, and some of the buzz on the net suggested that it was pretty crowded area, and even so, once you see the sites, what then? So, out comes the map, and a bit more research (remember, all those frequent flyer miles from college tuition payments were burning holes in our pockets). Fairly soon, we settled on Patagonia and were off to the races – planning away…

Torres del Paine National Park, in southern Chile, only about four hours north of the Straight of Magellan, no problem, only on the other side of the earth! But the images looked amazing and there were stories of a multi-day trek adventure that included mountain huts (similar to the Huts maintained by the AMC in NH and elsewhere) so that settled it.

The park has two primary routes – the “Q” and the “W”, so-called because of the path they trace out on a map, in the form of those letters. The “Q” was longer, and required a bit of overnight camping – just not our thing, so we settled on the “W”, and traced out a trek we could do in 5 days of trekking and 4 nights in the mountain huts, or Refugios. Logistics being what they are in that part of the world, there’s only a few airports, only so many buses per day, no trains at all, and no opportunity to rent a car… So, scheduling was a bit more complex, with far fewer options availableFirst things first, of course, book the flights, make sure we can get there and back. With a full day of travel in each direction, we wanted to pack in as many sights as we could, realistically expecting that this would be one of those once-in-a-lifetime kind of trips. We opted to fly through Santiago, Chile on the south bound direction, and then through Buenos Aires on our return. Ok, cool, but that meant we’d be carrying every thing we needed on our backs, not returning to the same place twice… 20-20 hindsight, maybe not the best of ideas, but we’re optimists, so why not…

Flights booked, only 11 months to go (you have to book that far in advance to make sure the frequent flyer seats/flights are available). We ran into snags almost immediately on booking the huts – seems they don’t book anywhere that far in advance. So while we knew what we wanted to do, and a fairly clear idea of what our itinerary would be, again the logistics being more difficult in that part of the work, just making the reservations proved a challenge (less Internet connectivity, etc). Fortunately, we were able to hook up with an in-country outfit, Experience Chile, who took our custom itinerary and made all the reservations on our behalf, even suggesting a side trip/excursion to the Perito Moreno glacier on our way north to Buenos Aires. While not our usual cut-of-tea, it sounded interesting, so we included that as well.

That done, and coupled with some AirBnB and other logistics and we were done with our planning – and then wait, and wait, until the travel day arrived.

Next section: Getting there