This amazing Patagonia trip was part of our mission to visit all 7 continents. We quickly realized getting to Patagonia involves a lot of transfers. Our full itinerary on the way to Patagonia was driving from our home in Roanoke, VA to Charlotte, NC to catch a flight to Atlanta, GA, then on to Santiago, Chile. We booked a round trip flight with Delta and then booked a separate round trip ticket with Sky Express to get us from Santiago, Chile to Puerto Natales, Chile. We rented a car to drive the 1.5 hours from Puerto Natales to our accommodation within Torres Del Paine National Park where we’d spend 5 days hiking, boating, and horseback riding around the Magallanes region of Patagonia. 

Day 0 – Travel to Santiago, Chile

We started our drive to the Charlotte airport around 9:30am to make our 4:30pm flight to Atlanta where we connected on a red eye to Santiago. It’s about a 4 hour drive from our home in Roanoke VA, and getting to Charlotte early means we can enjoy the CLT Club Priority Pass lounge before our flight. We’ve got several credit cards that allow us into Priority Pass lounges in just about every airport you can think of. Our first travel credit card was the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, but we also highly recommend to people new to the travel credit card the Capital One Venture X. We also booked the Charlotte airport parking ahead of time using their website which is very convenient – the gate even reads your license plate when you arrive, no QR code needed. 

Day 1 – Santiago, Chile

We landed in Santiago about 2 hours later than expected because our plane had some maintenance issues before takeoff. It worked out though because since we arrived at our hotel around 11am, we were able to check in early and not just store our luggage as we had previously planned. 

We grabbed an Uber, which turned out to be a 40 minute ride but only cost us $20, to the Santiago downtown area. We started with lunch at La Barrita Sanguchera and two amazing Lomo Saltado sandwiches. We had a chuckle at the decision between “water with or without gas” on the menu, and decided we needed a lot more than 16 ounces of water after our red eye flight. We walked around Cerro Santa Lucia, but decided not to summit it, on our way to an ATM, a convenience store to buy mega sized waters, and Brunchitta for 2 iced americanos. One tip with ATM’s in foreign countries is to go to ATMs that are physically attached to banks, they’re usually in safer locations and more liable to interact with you if you have any trouble getting cash out. Also, accept the ATM fee but don’t accept the conversion, your home bank will more than likely give you the most favorable conversion rate. 

We met Tours 4 Tips outside the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes.  We had an outstanding tour walking around the city for about 3 hours. This company does not charge for the tour but only asks that you tip the tour guide. The tour guide said people typically tip $10-$20 USD. She buzzed us into the metro no for a short trip, so we tipped a bit more to cover that. The tour made several stops where we learned about Chilean culture, history, architecture, geography, and politics. The tour guide provided food recommendations at the end so we found ourselves at Chipe Libre for dinner in the cool little neighborhood of Lastarra. On our way out to an area where we could call an Uber, we decided to walk partway up Santa Lucia Hill to get a view of the city skyline with the Andes in the background. 

We had a couple of funny interactions with our Ubers in Santiago, which I think were both related to the strong taxi union still existing in the City. The first issue was that Uber’s are apparently unable to pick you up in front of the airport, so when you call one they will get out of their car and come meet you like they’re your private transfer. I think it would’ve been more efficient for us to just have some Chilean Pesos to pay cash for the 10 minute taxi ride from the airport to our hotel. The Uber we called to our hotel to get us to Santiago downtown went smoothly, except that although I had paid on the Uber app, he started the meter. When we reached our destination, the meter wasn’t mentioned and we hopped out like it was any other Uber. That being said, every Uber driver we had in Santiago was very nice and we had a good experience.

Day 2 – Travel to Puerto Natales

Day 2 started early with a 4am hotel shuttle to the airport for our 630am flight to Puerto Natales. We had a hard time finding the Priority Pass lounges, but they are located down the A gate hallway on Level 3 (where you enter through security). Honestly, at this ungodly hour, the lounge situation wasn’t spectacular – mediocre food, no good seating available, and a TV showing soap operas at full volume.  

Our 3 hour flight to Puerto Natales was a breeze and we landed in an airport I never expected to be so quant. We grabbed our car from the Europcar desk which we had booked through a company called LYS. I would recommend possibly renting a larger vehicle if the budget would allow it, but we were given a 4×4 Subaru Crosstrek that proved to be fairly formidable. The only issue with our vehicle turned out to be a faulty tire plug that was installed on the right front tire, which led to a flat tire as soon as we arrived in the Hotel Lago Grey airport the next day – more on that later. We picked up coffee at Nomad Coffee and then lunch at Patagonia’food. We also picked up groceries at Unimarc which consisted of some breakfast food and trail snacks. We headed to our Airbnb which was nothing special for $30/night USD, but for dinner we had a fantastic meal at Pizza Napoli.  

Day 3 – Travel to Torres Del Paine

We woke up at 6am in our Airbnb to head to Hotel Lago Grey for a boat tour to see the Grey Glacier on Lago Grey. We quickly discovered just how remote Torres Del Paine is when we left Route 9 in Puerto Natales and entered the park near Rio Serrano. We arrived at Hotel Lago Grey, checked in, received our parking instructions, and hiked about 35 minutes to get on the boat. The boat tour was amazing, they provided a cocktail, we bought empanadas for $5, and we were at the glaciers in about an hour. We had plenty of time to take some amazing pictures and enjoy the boat ride. 

When we arrived back at our Subaru, we discovered the right front tire had partially deflated due to a poorly installed tire plug. The hotel staff at Hotel Lago Grey helped us change on a spare, we made it to Rio Serrano hotel where we discovered the right rear tire popped while the spare was on. Rio Serrano hotel was extremely helpful and charged us $25/tire to fix it. While this entire situation was a setback, the people we interacted with that helped us were absolutely amazing. We were able to check in to Lodge Morrena, have a dinner in their restaurant, and walk to the Serrano River to enjoy the scenery before bedtime. 

The Lodge Morrena deserves its very own blog post (more to come). It is a hidden gem in Torres Del Paine, with fantastic staff, rooms, and meals, all highly accessible to the park and all you’d want to see. 

Day 4 – Exploring Torres Del Paine

We started our morning with a walk along the boardwalk to Salto Chico Falls, where the cascading water set the perfect tone for the day. Next, we tackled the challenging 1.5-hour climb to Mirador Condor, and the panoramic views at the top made every steep step worthwhile. Our final hike of the day was at Mirador Cuernos and the Salto Grande Waterfall—a 2.5-hour hike that gave us some of the most breathtaking views of the peaks. This one ended up being about an hour longer than expected because the parking area was under construction, so we had an extra 0.5 mile walk to and from the trailhead. 

We will have a separate blog post helping you navigate Torres Del Paine, stay tuned.

Day 5 – Mirador Las Torres Base Trek

Day 5 of this trip was wholly dedicated to the monumental climb to the Las Torres viewpoint in Torres Del Paine. There have been a myriad of blog posts about this hike, so we won’t rehash the entire thing here. We left our lodge at 7:45am and started hiking around 9am, finishing around 6:30pm. This was a very challenging hike, and we will have a whole blog post devoted to helping you get there, finish it, and maybe even enjoy it like we did! The views along the way are amazing and there is no better feeling than doing a hard thing with 1000 strangers. 

Day 6 – Travel to Puerto Natales

We woke up on our last day in Patagonia and had breakfast at the Lodge Morrena before heading back to Puerto Natales. We had previously scheduled a half-day horseback riding for 3pm in the Puerto Natales area, so we had some time to stop and take in the views of Torres Del Paine one more time on the drive back. There are no shortage of viewpoints on the road in and out of Torres Del Paine. Once we got to Puerto Natales, we had coffee at Hostel and lunch at Cafe Artisan before returning our trekking poles to the wonderful folks at Rental Natales. Around 2:30pm we headed out of the city to Galope Austral, an estancia about 30 minutes north of Puerto Natales. In a small group, we learned how to ride horses then took a scenic ride through the Patagonia mountainside. Kayla and I had a lot of fun for our first time horseback riding, and the guides who run the Galope Austral estancia were great. The horses were well-trained for beginners which made for a great experience. We headed back to our accommodation at Best Western Patagonia afterwards, freshened up, and headed to dinner at Restaurant Jechef. We had some crazy good food at this place and would highly recommend. We passed many restaurants that were packed that night, and this one should have been.

Day 7 – Travel to USA

We sadly began our long travel journey back to the US on day 7. We had breakfast at the hotel and returned the rental car at the Europcar desk around 11am before our 1pm flight to Santiago. We made it back to the Charlotte Airport around 12pm the next day. 

We both felt like this trip was a true adventure. We decided early on we’d like to try to explore this wild and wonderful place without the use of a guided tour and we definitely had to do some strategic planning beforehand and some problem solving on the fly. We enjoy the challenge of navigating a new places and experiencing the culture we’re immersed in. The hikes were epic, the lakes were beautiful, and we had proper excitement driving through the backcountry of Chilean Patagonia.