Welcome Center to Refugio Seron

Finally, I have come back to South America, and come back to Patagonia. I'm actually here, and actually doing the "O" Circuit. But not yet, first I need to take a bus from Puerto Natales (my base of operations for the next 11 days) to the Torres del Paine National Park. This was going to be my first time thru- hiking a trail while camping every night, and carrying all of my own food. My backpack must have weighed close to 30 pounds at the start. I had done some research and bought a lot of ultralight gear for this trip, including the backpack, as well as my tent. Fingers crossed!

The bus dropped me and over a dozen other hikers off at the welcome center to the park, where we watched a mandatory video on what not to do in the park, paid an entrance fee for the hiking permit, and set off onto the trail.

And I took a wrong turn. Instead of going straight at a fork, I went right and ended up heading towards a maintenance shed at the entrance. Luckily I wasn't the only one who got turned around: a pair of canadians were ahead of me and I had been following them hoping they would guide me onto the main trail. As we all turned around one of them (Charles) said "never follow Canadians". From that point forward we walked together for the rest of the day, getting to know eachother along the way. Adèle (studying high-level math) and Charles (working in corporation-land) were from Quebec and had done lots of hikes to the Adirondack mountains in upstate New York. Little did I know but we, and a handful of others, would end up walking the entire circuit together.

This landscape is amazing: rivers snaking through yellow-green fields of grass with snowcapped mountains encircling us, with patches of forest along the way. Not a hard trail either, in terms of ascent/descent and difficulty walking. We were making great time, and it would only take us about 3 hours to get to our first campground on this circuit: Seron.

After walking through the yellow-green fields for about 30 minutes, we entered a sparsley wooded forest. We chatted the whole way through, asking all sorts of questions about where we're each from, what we do for a living, culture norms, etc. The forest did not last long and we were back under the sun once more.

It was so quiet down here, at the bottom of the world. It's a remote area to begin with, along with a really low population density, it felt like we were in another world.

We snaked our way through the grassy fields, taking in the sights around us. A couple of river crossings blocked our path, some of the rivers overflowing from the downpour of rain that hit the area last night. Luckily the trail was not waterlogged, and our socks n' shoes stayed dry.

Maybe three quarters of the way in we stopped for a snack on some tree logs next to one of the river crossings. We didn't stay long though thanks to all of the mosquitos that werwe buzzing around us. Didn't matter though, we were practically done with today's segment. 30 minutes later and a wooden sign on a tree informed us that we had reached Campamento Seron.

The campground had a large tent for campers to cook in, and some heavy-duty tents on raised wooden platforms in a small field that was bordered in by large bushes. There were also hot water showers (yes!) and full-service bathrooms. But the main camping area was "out front" and it was a field full of tall yellowed grass. It was a picture-perfect setting. But as luck would have it, some rain started to fall as we started picking spots for our tents and setting up camp.

For this trip I chose a pyramid-style tent that was made out of a lightweight and waterproof proof material called Dyneema. It was supposed to be great at deflecting winds, and it most definitely was. We had some wild winds overnight, possibly approaching hurricane-force at one point. But I felt safe and secure in my tent, and I slept pretty dang well, even if the ultralight sleeping pad I had bought for this trip made the sound of a chip bag crinkling whenever I moved.