Ruta 40 / Ruta 9: Back to Chile and to Torres del Paine

We gave ourselves a bit of an easy morning before heading out; it was a short, 4ish hour drive from El Calafate to Puerto Natales, where we’d stay one night before returning the rental car and taking our transfer to our hotel just outside of Torres del Paine. Traffic was a bit hectic getting out of the lake town on a Sunday afternoon, but once we cleared the city airport things settled in for what we thought would be a nice easy ride. There was some kind of rally or race happening in the area, and we got to see a few dozen sports cars with number decals heading towards the local race track on the way out of town. We also got to repeat our experience of driving up into the clouds as we starting gaining elevations out of the city.

At some point Google decided that we should take a dirt bypass instead of spending the entire day on Rt. 40. The 70km road ended up being one of the roughest surfaces we’d taken, but Tori kept on going like a champ and we eventually reached the border around 1pm. The Argentina side was easy, and in ten minutes the car docs were stamped and we were on our way. It was a bit of a different story on getting back into Chile, where we’d ended up behind three tour busses going through the checkpoint. Chile is particularly vigilant with customs, especially related to agriculture products. It took about an hour for us to get through immigration, customs, and the ag scan and get back on our way. Puerto Natales wasn’t too far from there, and we go settled into our hotel and did some souvenir shopping and supply restocking before settling in for the night. Of all the towns we’d been in so far, Puerto Natales probably had the largest and most active stray dog and cat population — with one particularly bold gato trying to join us for dinner.

We returned the rental the next morning and headed back to the hotel for breakfast and to wait for our transfer to Torres del Paine, which ended up being a lovely private car. All of the hotels in the park itself were already booked by the time we finalized our travel dates, but we were able to book a lodge just outside the gates that was part of a larger property including a horse ranch. The drive ended up being mostly on rugged dirt roads, but the colors were already starting to change and we got a glimpse of the Patagonian autumn on the way in.

The rest of our afternoon was free, so we walked the grounds a bit and took a hot tub break just in time for the clouds to clear and show us our first view of the Torres del Paine mountain peaks.