Eight days of ice,
wind and animals.
Torres del Paine to Lago Argentino with twelve people, built around the animals that were shot here for a century and are not any more.
Quoted per group. Rooms, trackers and private hours vary.
Twelve places. The private list hears first.
Late March is when the lenga turns and the summer wind drops — the park empties, and the trackers call the end of the season their best window.
The guanaco herds come down off the high ground, and the cats follow them. Two bases in eight days — four nights under the Paine massif, three on the Argentine side facing the ice — and one long drive between them that crosses a border and most of the steppe.
Pumas are found on foot, by tracks and by watching what the guanacos do, because they see the cat long before you do. Two mornings start at half past five. What happens after that depends on what the trackers find.
Torres del Paine
the road north
Land at Punta Arenas and drive north through the steppe. Explora has sat on the Salto Chico falls since 1993, with fifteen thousand acres of its own reserve behind it, and the first afternoon is deliberately short — a walk to get the legs under you, not a summit.
Base — Explora Torres del Paine, Salto Chico
The Paine massif
guanaco & puma
Two days inside the park, both starting before it is light. The rest of each day is the massif: the base of the towers if you want the long walk, the French valley if you want the other one.
Base — the same lodge, four nights in all
Lago Argentino
ice & the estancia
East across the border to the Argentine side, where the ice field comes down to the water. Three nights at Eolo — seventeen rooms on four thousand hectares of open ground — with Perito Moreno an hour down the road and Estancia Cristina a boat ride up the lake.
Base — Eolo, Lago Argentino, three nights
The last week of March is when the park changes colour and empties. It is not an added activity; it is why the week sits where it does in the calendar.
Nothing here is baited. The trackers are experienced and the odds in this window are the best in the year, but no sighting can be guaranteed.
Two bases in eight days and one long crossing between them. Two mornings start at half past five, and both afternoons after them are yours.
Tell us who is travelling, and we will write back.
Price on enquiry. Every week is quoted for the group that takes it — rooms, the trackers, and how much of it is private. We answer within two working days, by letter or by telephone.