Buenos Aires to Vegas - The Trek

8 hours on a bus on a winding road through the Andes is meant to be pretty spectacular... it was a pity I slept through most of it but I did see some salt flats, salt mines and volcanoes (many still active). A short wikipedia description: "San Pedro de Atacama is a Chilean town and commune in El Loa Province , Antofagasta Region . It is located east of Antofagasta , some 100 km (60 mi) southeast of Calama and the Chuquicamata copper mine, overlooking the Licancabur volcano. The town lies at an average altitude of approximately 2,400m (7,900 ft) and visitors often experience mild altitude sickness such as dizziness, lethargy and headaches. The local climate is extremely dry (with little or no rainfall recorded in the town itself)" The town with a big volcano in the background We arrived at San Pedro de Atacama at 5pm and had to go through Chilean customs which is in the town itself. The weather was hot and intensely dry. At the post we met Marcileno , a local Chilea...

Now that El Chalten was over we could turn our focus to the even greater challenge of the Torres del Paine park in Chile . This was the point where Irina had to leave us and return to London . Must have been pretty tough returning to the doom and gloom! We decided that the best (and cheapest) place to prepare was back in El Calafate so we hopped on an early morning bus there and booked 2 nights at a small hotel. Our aim was to do the 7 day Circuit route of Torres del Paine which is a few days longer than the standard “W” trek which takes 4-5 days. In order to do this there were a few things we needed to do: Buy camping equipment Buy enough food for 2 people for at least 8 days without any supplies Organise a bus to Puerto Natales (the closest town to the park) and also sort accommodation there We had heard that it was possible to do some fishing in the park so I enquired further about this at a fishing store in El Calafate. It turned out that there were definitely opportunities to catc...