Patagonia Indomita

Lace up your walking boots and pack light. Down in the far-flung latitudes of the Chilean Patagonia, Torres del Paine National Park’s ‘W’ trail offers hikers a challenging five-day, 45-mile circuit through crescendoing peaks and hanging glaciers. Words: Amelia Duggan

- Amelia Duggan

“Pick whichever you want, they’re all wild,” Camilo shouts into the wind, securing his beret with one hand and motioning to a lineup of stout, tethered ponies with the other. He and the other stable hands are in the process of coaxing a bucking stallion into a bridle. It’s a fantastic scene — one that, appropriately for our remote setting, seems to speak of the temerity of men in the face of unpredictable, unyielding nature.

Soon, Camilo is saddled up and all is clearly forgiven between him and the truculent horse: “I often feel like that in the morning,” he concedes, patting its mane as he leads our caravan of riders and packhorses away from the Las Torres stables. Our horse wrangler is a baqueano — a Patagonian cowboy — and is a commanding presence on horseback. He’s sporting a felt boina hat, high boots and a knife, sheathed in leather and tucked through his waistband. The earth tones of his woolen garbs chime with the landscape; he’s poetry in motion. My Chilean friend, Felipe, and I, on the other hand, cut less elegant figures in conical riding helmets and neon hiking jackets. Still, as white fog cascades off the foothills and drifts low across the yellow pampas, obscuring our route, I’m grateful for this gentle, trotting introduction to the circuit.

However, the path turns challenging, and my poor pony ploughs through icy torrents, hooves scrabbling for purchase on steep, pitted paths. And as we climb higher and higher, my Spanish vocabulary expands in unpleasant ways. Barranco, I learn after Camilo shouts it back at us through the mist, translates as ‘precipice’. And rachas? ‘Gusts’ — the wind, he says, can barrel through at 100mph.