Downhill is just as bad as uphill....

Ah, Torres Del Paine. A beutiful spot that is picturesque from every angle. We arrived at around 10am to find the sky clear and the wind gentle, perfect. We, being the intrepid explorers that we are, started our hike from the eastern section of the "W" at Lago Amarga with the goal of Base Camp Torres that was a simple 7 hours away, uphill. p.s. we bought nice sleeping bags in Puerto Natales, knowing that it would be colder in the park than in town which was already chilly. We made it to Torres tired and back/foot sore and decided that we would go to the lookout for the torres first thing in the morning. It was around five and we made our selves a little backpackers dinner of soup with bread, salami and cheese. Tired, but very proud of ourselves. As the sun set behind the mountains we crawled into our newly purchased bags, which are rated for 2º Celcius. Let us tell you about the FREE campsite, it had no lights (but we did have a flash light), the only running water (which was very good and cold water) was the strem and a lovely bathroom the didn´t flush! It was so out of a movie and we loved it! After jumping in the tent we anticipated the morning. What we didn´t anticipate was how FREAKIN COLD it would get that night. The ground was freazing our feet also freazing. We both got maybe four hours of sleep and that was in painfully short increments. Sounds pleasant right? Then around 3am the rain started and it got really cold, and damp. We finally woke up and made coffee while still rolled up in our bags and wondered what we got ourselves into. Finally we stepped out of our tent and look up to the torres to see nothing but clouds. We started up to the lookout which was one hour for camp to not be able to make it up because of the rain. It had washed the trail out. We were pretty bummed, we should have gone up the day before when it was clear. We started back down the trail on the way to the next campsite, 10 hours away, when we looked at each other and said enough. Our feet hurt, our backs and shoulders hurt we were cold and tired. It was time to go back and call it quits. We walked back to the starting point and caught a shuttle to the bus pick up. Along the way we over heard another trekker who had also started the W but could not finsh say that last night was the warmest that they had been through. The shuttle driver said that night it was -5º C down outside of the mountains. After hearing this we knew we made the right decision. We had come at the very end of the season and right before snows were to really start, and we were cold. He also stated that at this time of year only pro-trekkers do the W, which we are not! It´s all good. We have trail names now though! I´m "Ñandu" and Jay is "Guanaco" as in "You can do it, Ñandu!" and "Let´s go, Guanaco!" Cool, huh?

So we came, we camp but we only conquored one night...