Puerto Natales

Puerto Natales is the gateway to Torres del Paine national park.  It's just a hour and a half away and serves as the jumping off point for day hikes, horseback riding, kayaking and multi day hikes on the W or O trekking routes that take you around most of the park.

So first, the bad.  When I got to Puerto Natales I contacted the company I was doing my kayaking trip with, and the weather was not looking good.  I was supposed to leave on the 15th, and they suggested instead we try for the 16th, but more likely we would have to cut the three day trip down to two days and leave on th 17th.

So that was unfortunate, but I made do.  I stayed at a place called Wild Hostel and the atmosphere was really nice and friendly.  The owner, Jarri, was originally from Helsinki so we got to bond a bit as latitude brothers.

I'm pretty sure that Puerto Natales exists solely as a tourism town.  I didn't see evidence of any other industry, and I walked around the entire town (which only takes about 45 minutes).  The upside is that people were even more willing to deal with my poor Spanish skills, and there was a derth of restaurants, shops and bars to enjoy.  Which is good, because my constantly changing plans meant I had a lot of downtime to deal with.

Honestly, with all of the complications I kept on running into part of me was wondering if this whole trip was worth it.  Thankfully, the next day I did my first excursion into Torres del Paine itself.