March 24th- from the itinerary: Alto del Toro- full day, 5 hour moderate hike, 7.8 miles, elevation 1870. We begin our hike with a challenging climb that will take us to ancient Forrest's that are little known and are rarely visited in this park. We will arrive at a viewpoint that will allow us to have a 360 view of the park including the Paine Massif and the southern ice fields.
We woke up to a beautiful sun rise on the Massif.
Breakfast was a buffet.
We met at 9:50 and Cata was our guide.
Only the two of us were on this hike- hurray! The van ride was only about 15 minutes and it must have been rush hour because there were a lot of cars on the road. Luckily no one else was on our trail!
We had a fast paced, but uneventful hike with beautiful views. It was one of the few sunny days without clouds, but very windy.
Along the way we passed several lakes with a number of different types of ducks. These included: Chiloe Wigeon, Specticled Duck, and a Flying Steamer-Duck. We also saw a juvenile condor and a black chested buzzard eagle
We also hiked up about 1000 feet to an overlook where you could have a 360 view of the valley. It was very windy. We saw some juvenile condors trying to glide in the wind- no pictures unfortunately....
Lunch was in an old forest area and was sandwiches, soup and a banana muffin for desert.
After lunch we continued along a rather level bit and saw some mushrooms. The small ones we even tasted and they were good.
We ended the hike at Weber overlook which was amazingly sunny and windy today. We had wonderful views of the lakes in the valley, but had to leave or get blown away. From the base we looked up to where we were and marvelled at how high we were.
At the base we met the car and had a snack before returning to the hotel
Dinner was a soup and salad for me with a mille feulles for desert. (no photos)
We crashed early and got ready for tomorrow's hikes
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