The bus will collect you at 7:30am.... Or will it?

Friday

As is thankfully so often the case our bus journey was short and uneventful, just 5 hours and 1 border crossing out of Argentina and in to Chile. We arrived at our B&B  mid afternoon and were welcomed by an incredibly enthusiastic Chilean lady called Fabby and her very dour English husband Brendan.

Saturday

We both slept like logs, waking up just in time for our 9:30am breakfast on Saturday morning. In the afternoon we went to a free talk about the 'W' Trek run by the Erratic Rock hostel, it gave us good advice on what we should take (half of what we'd planned) and some basic info about the hike. We bumped in to a few people at the talk that we'd met at various points on our trip - one of them was the guy who had his bag stolen when we were on the bus from La Serena a couple of months ago, I'm amazed he recognised us! 

Unlike the majority we planned to complete the trek from east to west, no particular reason but Abs who had done all of the preparation for this part of the trip had taken some good advice from some people she'd met at our hostel in Mendoza.

After dinner at El Living, a veggie restaurant run by a guy from Croydon who was travelling around the world 15 years ago, arrived in Puerto Natales and liked it so stayed, it was back to the B&B for an early night.

Sunday

The bus was due to collect us between 7:30 and 8:30 and so we were up at 6:30 for breakfast and ready to go at 7:30, and we were still ready to go at 8:30 when Abby asked if we should be worried that the bus hadn't arrived, Fabby laughed and assured us that Chilean time is different to UK time and that the bus would arrive. 15 minutes later Abs checked again and Fabby said we had nothing to worry about but phoned the bus company who told her the bus was on it's way. At 9:30 a second call to the bus company revealed that the bus had forgotten us...... 

Fabby who had organised the bus for us was doing what she could to get the bus company to sort out a private vehicle to take us to Torres del Paine and that's just what they did unfortunately it was someone else's private vehicle.... They had rather cheekily tried to sneak us in to a people carrier that had been booked by 6 other people for a private tour! 

So at 10:30 we were back exactly where we'd started, not for long though as after another call from Fabby a cab arrived to take us to the start point of our trek, or so we thought..... as we tried to establish why it felt as though we were driving in the wrong direction and Abs was trying to clarify that the taxi driver was taking us to Torres del Paine which he assured us he was he pulled on to a driveway and tooted.... he'd driven to his house to pick up his wife who got in to the car clutching what were clearly some hastily made sandwiches .... well how often does a metered taxi get asked to take a fare more than two hours away to one of the most beautiful places in the world....

So there you have it, I've told you the punch line, in my opinion Torres del Paine is one of the most beautiful places in the world.

Aside from forgetting to take my camera on the first walk there were no more mishaps, just five amazing days of walking in an incredible Biosphere Reserve, drinking water straight from the streams and having a wonderful time.

So as I said, brace yourselves....

Raine x