Patagonia - Torres Del Paine Day Mission

The logistics for visiting Torres Del Paine can be a bit tricky and with our time schedule we'd only get one day to do it.  When we arrived in Puerto Natales (the closest town, about 1.5 hours from the Park), they checked the weather forecast and it appeared that our tour day would be very cloudy and rainy.

Uh oh...

This resulted in a 2 hour rush to try and switch tour companies / get better weather forecasts / etc.  We visited one outfitter who didn't speak English; when we managed a question about the weather he just tried to sell us a poncho.

Uh oh.

In the end, the weather forecasts were contradictory enough that we didn't change our tour and lowered our expectations for mountain views....

Our tour started with a trip to the Milodon cave close to town where archaeologists found remains of ancient animals, namely, the Milodon.  This animal existed about 10,000ish years ago and cohabited with humans, although briefly.  Interestingly, we visited sites in Africa where humanity began its spread across the globe and this Southern tip of South America is where we last arrived.  Anyway, here's us with the milodon.  As you can see, we're smiling because we're friends.  Sorry if we made you extinct.

As we drove closer to the Park we ran into more and more guanacos or, as we referred to them, llama deer.

As we entered the park, the forecast started to play-out.  Our first view of the famed "Horns" was stunning in a misty-windy kind of way.  Yup, this is what we were afraid of:

Still, Torres Del Paine (TDP) is magnificant even in these conditions... 

But wait... as we carried on through the park things kept getting better... and better...  We lucked out and finally had blue skies!  Here's the horns without (as many) clouds:

We got to Lago Grey where we went for a short hike and just generally romped around on a big gravel spit in the lake.  Lower expectations meant that this break of good weather made us all ecstatic and the mountains were just incredible.  Here's the girls spelling out TDP (Torres Del Paine)

On our way out of the park we stopped to look at the three towers which have made the park so famous.  You can see them just to the right of center (behind the mountain in foreground).  Like Fitz Roy, these are the big leagues of the mountaineering/rock climbing world.

We had such an outstanding day in the park, a pitcher of beer and delicious dinner were in order.  We retired feeling very lucky to have nailed the weather against the odds!