9th December 2024

Disappointingly, the breakfast included in our booking was late, meaning we had to catch our bus with no breakfast. Stomachs grumbling, we headed towards the bus terminal and boarded the bus to Puerto Natales bringing our Argentinian chapter to a close at the Chilean border.

At first glance, Puerto Natales comes across as a run down town with patched up buildings and dust swept streets. However, underneath the dust you’ll find charming locals, warm hostels and surprisingly good food.

We navigated the town first dropping off our packs before heading out to pick up our camping rental gear in preparation for starting the O circuit tomorrow. The chap at the rental place was a keen walker and had plenty of knowledge to part with.

Now starving, having had a poor dinner the night before and no breakfast or lunch we decided to have an early dinner and settled on a pizzeria with a proper pizza oven. This was a vast improvement over yesterdays pizza disaster.

We then had to trek to the market to pick up food for the next 8 days. Unable to buy anything that needed refrigerating and due to the store size we were somewhat limited (although, while they did not sell peanut butter, they did sell Waitrose mustard!).

We ended up settling on making tuna and couscous dinners with guacamole seasoning and olives for flavour. For lunch we agreed on the unorthodox combination of wraps dipped in dulce de leche and crisps. For breakfast we mixed oats with chia and linn seeds, nuts, dried apple and apricot plus vanilla milkshake powder as a substitute for sweetener and dried milk powder.

We retreated back to the hostel and spent a considerable amount of time packing our bags ready for 8 days in Torres del Paine before falling into a deep sleep.