Visit Torres del Paine in Patagonia: champion of the sustainable holiday. Photo / Getty Images
Visit Torres del Paine in Patagonia: champion of the sustainable holiday. Photo / Getty Images
Torres del Paine National Park in Patagonia is on your bucket list for all the right reasons, writes Charlotte Lyon
The lake at Mirador Condor begins a rich royal blue, weaving its way around the Sierra Baguales mountain range until it becomes fringed with teal, then aqua. Blue is the colour in Patagonia, where the sky and water serve up every shade from dawn until long into its summer evenings; cobalt and cyan and turquoise are always in view, somewhere, beyond 10pm. Dubbed the eighth wonder of the world, Torres del Paine - the national park stretching between Chile to the west and Argentina to the east - is well-versed in showing off its natural majesty, via its array of local wildlife, snow-topped mountains and climate-defying glaciers, to some 300,000 visitors each year.
Torres del Paine is often dubbed the eighth wonder of the world. Photo / Getty Images
For those in search of eco-friendly adventure, Patagonia, a 100,000-hectare expanse, is leading the way, with activities and accommodation that put the environment centre stage. It’s a testament to that ethos that at the midpoint of its high season, Torres del Paine still feels wild - an expanse of gravel tracks, undisturbed greenery and condors swooping overhead.
Patagonia is known for seeing every weather type in a day, and then some: with winds hitting 70km/h (on a good day…), rainbows form in the steam splashing off the waterfall at Mirador Cuernos, a gentle trail on which snow, sun and rain frame the views of the Cordillera Paine mountain range and Lago Pehoé by turn in different, spectacular ways.
The region is a popular stop for both hiking aficionados and those travelling between Patagonia and Ushuaia, the southerly corner of Argentina known as the edge of the world, and Antarctica. In spite of its vast popularity, it looks scarcely touched - in part due to the curbs on excess numbers in the park, which on certain trails are capped at under 100 people per day.
Torres del Paine is a popular stop for hiking aficionados. Photo / Getty Images
Patagonia’s range of walks, wildlife safaris and mountain biking trips can all be decided according to that morning’s whim, and making the most of that starts with where you stay, with all-inclusive packages often proving the greenest way to course the park. Sustainable stays have been popping up at pace in recent years, like PatagoniaCamp where yurts are sprinkled over Lake Toro, and connected via lush tree-lined walkways. Staring up through the top of the yurt as dusk falls brings the magic of the night sky right to your bed: it is quite something to see the sun eventually turn to black late into the night, a sprinkling of stars drifting overhead as you fall asleep.
PatagoniaCamp have sprinkled a series of sustainable yurts beside Lake Toro.
Photo / Getty Images
Food, too, forms a major part of its eco-attitude: Matetic, the wine featured at each meal, comes from the country’s hotter south; the lamb sweetbreads and onions and tuna come from Chile too, with local sourcing at the heart of its offerings. The lodge has an entirely organic water treatment plant, composts its organic waste, and gives guests a metal water bottle to take on excursions too - little nudges that ensure reducing our planetary footprint is never far from mind.
This group-activity option is a sociable way to see the park, certainly, as well as minimising the number of cars on the road. If you do drive solo, it can take some getting used to (expect a solid dust coating by the time you return your 4x4) - though you may not be alone for too long, as hitchhikers’ thumbs regularly poke out along the route. With no petrol stations in the park itself, filling up at Puerto Natales, the nearest town (around two hours from the southern gate) is the closest you’ll get: you can stay there, tripping in and out of Torres del Paine each day, but securing accommodation nearer by or inside is well worth it.
If you drive on Torres del Paine roads, expect a solid dust coating by the time you return your 4x4. Photo / Getty Images
Many come to this region for the famed “W” or “O” treks - four days to a week of crossing the park that takes in the Torres (or towers) themselves. (The “W” is the shorter, passing the Ascencio and French Valleys and Lago Grey, while the “O” is 120km long and reaches a peak of 4000ft - both can be done with rental gear and staying at campsites along the way, if booked in advance). For those who prefer day walks, the Torres del Paine hike can be completed in around eight hours - a relatively easy trail with a rocky last ascent to its granite peaks.
But eco-adventures offer more than walking (even if it is spectacular); around a fifth of Chile is now protected land, allowing its nature spots to flourish. Fly-fishing, marathon runs, horse-riding and puma safaris mean every day can be wholly different to the other - ditto the corner of the park in which you pitch up. The east of the Chilean part feels at odds with its blue southern counterpart, more closely resembling the American West. This is cowboy country, where gauchos - horsemen of the South American plains - abounded in the mid-18th century. If you fancy trying your hand, Estancia Cerro Guido, a cattle ranch-cum-sustainable boutique hotel, offers gaucho excursions among a raft of eco-centric activities as part of its all-inclusive package. In this drier farmland where guanacos (llama-like camelids native to the region) line the roads, growing and animal-rearing take precedence, along with the area’s history: the estancia’s overland tours chart that unique backstory, offering trips across 100,000 hectares of the Magellan via the Laguna dos Flamencos, and down the Baguales river.
Try your hand at playing gaucho (cowboy) in Torres del Paine, Patagonia. Photo / Getty Images
Along with horses, pumas are a central focus at Cerro Guido. It has been active in conservation efforts for the park’s predators, the population of which has increased to up to 200 within Torres del Paine. While pumas have long been a subject of controversy in the area, killing livestock and being hunted in return, ecotourism has played in their favour, with puma-watching tours now a favourite among visitors. These involve an early-morning journey to puma trackers’ HQ, where the camera traps are monitored for recent sightings, before heading out to see the beasts cross the long grass in the wild.
Puma-watching tours are now a favourite among visitors to Torres del Paine.
Photo / Getty Images
After a few days among the bronzes and navy blues of the park’s Chilean east, the icy azure of the Argentine side feels like entering another planet. El Calafate, around four hours over the border (buses from Puerto Natales are the planet-friendliest route), is not only home to the largest lake in Argentina, but a growing glacier, Perito Moreno. A trip to the 250km blue-and-white monolith is accompanied by the frequent crack of ice thundering into the water below; it is one of the few globally to keep growing (not bad, given it’s believed to be 18,000 years old). The shade of blue or white depends on the day you visit, its crater-pocked surface never more impressive than when glinting beneath a sheer blue sky. Surrounded by the Andes mountains, the glacier - which was in 1981 named a Unesco World Heritage site - can be picked over on ice-trekking tours (patagoniachic offers excursions in multiple languages) or, if you’re less keen to grab your crampons, a boat ride across the water offers incredible views of not only Perito Moreno but the detached chunks of ice drifting along the sapphire lake.
Perito Moreno glacier can be picked over on ice-trekking tours. Photo / Getty Images
In spite of being among Argentina’s most remote areas (almost 3,000km south of Buenos Aires), El Calafate is one of the few areas of Patagonia with a more developed tourist town attached: the Calafate berry ice cream is a must-try at one of Avenida del Libertador’s heladerias (ice cream parlours), with the fruit said to pull anyone who eats it back to the region. It’s also the perfect place to grab a local beer - Austral being the ubiquitous Patagonian brew served on both the Chilean and Argentinian sides of the park.
The two countries are already leading the charge on sustainable travel - which one 2022 survey found was now a priority for 87 per cent of tourists - and they aren’t done yet. A rewilding project is under way at Parque Patagonia in Argentina, which was designated a national park in 2014 (but remains far less visited than its counterparts). With dramatically different landscapes to the Chilean side - there’s the rainbow-streaked Sendero Tierra de Colores, where oxidation has turned the rocks shades of red and orange, and the desert-like canyon around the Pinturas river - it’s an extra splash of colour on an adventure that has so many in abundance.
Shades of red and orange at the desert-like canyon around the Pinturas river. Photo / Getty Images
Flying is near non-negotiable from New Zealand, though a direct 10-hour flight from Auckland to Santiago (followed by a domestic one to Puerto Natales or Puntas Arenas, the closest airports to Torres del Paine) is a less emission-pumping route than this remote region might suggest. It’s the one not-so-green element of an otherwise uber-sustainable trip - one that will only reinforce the importance of protecting the natural world, as well as providing a much-needed global blueprint for preserving its beauty.
CHECKLIST: DETAILS
Torres del Paine, Patagonia
Getting there
Fly from Auckland to Punta Arenas Airport with LATAM (one stop) or Qantas (two stops). This is the closest airport, a 4-hour drive south of Torres del Paine National Park.
