My South America Trip #15 – Torres del Paine, Patagonian Chile

Torres del Paine, Chile – highlight of my trip to South America

Photo Credit:  PC

Torres del Paine is a national park in the Extreme South region of Patagonian Chile. It is located in the southern tiers of the Andes and features mountains, lakes and glaciers.

The Torres del Paine (Spanish for “Towers of Paine” and “Paine” is the old indigenous name for the color blue), three immense rock towers give the park its name.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torres_del_Paine_National_Park

Believe me…this is the most beautiful part of my South America trip.  I consider Torres del Paine as the climax of the trip.  I have taken many pictures, probably too many that will bore you.  However, I am still keeping most of them in my video, because I want to show how beauty can be built up, slowly, little by little, and then in a full-blown beauty!  I am not sure if you would agree with me.  I hope you will like the video as much as I do.  It may be too long (16 minutes) for many of you.  If you don’t have time, just skip it.  But I do hope you will take time to appreciate the above 4 photos taken by our travel mate PC who has kindly given me permission to post them. My photos are posted at the end of this post.

The guide said that we were extremely lucky, because the weather was nice and we could see the beautiful mountains.  He said some tourists who came for one whole week but could not see a thing!   Not only the National Park is beautiful, the hotel environment where we lived was one of the top choices – Hotel Rio Serrano.  All our rooms have a gorgeous view of the snowy mountains and the turquoise lake.  In the video and photos that I posted here, you can see how beautiful and serene it is around the hotel.

Please enjoy the video and the music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Sonata for Piano No. 11 Andante Grazioso.

Torres del Paine is so beautiful that I do not know how to describe its beauty in writing.  It is like a poetry…yes, a poetry!

To celebrate its beauty, I would like to quote a poem of the great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda who is the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.

Poetry

By Pablo Neruda

“And it was at that age…Poetry arrived in search of me.
I don΄t know,
I don΄t know where it came from, from winter or a river.
I don΄t know how or when,
no, they were not voices,
they were not words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say,
my mouth had no way with names
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering that fire
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw the heavens unfastened
and open planets, palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated, riddled with arrows,
fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry void,
likeness, image of mystery,
I felt myself a pure part of the abyss.
I wheeled with the stars;
my heart broke loose on the open sky.”

Isn’t it beautiful?

I regret that I did not have the chance to visit Pablo Neruda’s residences.  I asked the guide who said it was too far away  from our route.  In one of the tour books that I read, it said that his residence is a “must see”.  Well, there is always another chance, I hope!

Before I end this post, I have chosen the “best” of my own photos which are posted in the photo gallery below.  They may not be as good as my friends’ photos, but this is the best I can do with my iPhone!  The last few photos show the hotel room with a view.

You may also recognize that the header of this blog has been changed since I came back from South America!

Torres del Paine National Park, Chile