Chile: Hiking Patagonia & Penguins

We left New Zealand on April Fools Day, and the joke was definitely on us. We were headed to the other side of the world, just about as far south as you could get, to Punta Arenas, Chile. We were traveling backwards in time, making April 1^st last for two days. Our flight pattern was one that could invoke nightmares: Auckland to Sydney (3hrs), Sydney to Santiago (13 hrs), a layover in Santiago for 20 hrs, ending with a flight from Santiago at 2a.m. to Punta Arenas (3 hrs). We arrived dazed and confused, but incredibly excited for our adventures to come in a new continent.

Isla Magdalena and Los Pinguinos

We spent a few days in Punta Arenas, a small town that acts primarily as a jumping off point for getting to the Torres Del Paine National Park. It was cold, rainy, and quiet. We got some much needed recovery time to catch-up on sleep. However, there was one place I learned about that I knew we had to go to. We had to go to Magdalena Island to see the penguins!

Magdalena Island (Isla Magdalena) is located about 30 minutes from town, inside the Strait of Magellan. On the island lives a colony of Magellanic Penguins currently estimated at 69,000 couples. They come each year to mate and nest before swimming north to Brazil each April when it gets too cold to stay. The island was made a National Monument in 1966 to protect the Magellanic species and to allow people to come see the penguins in a safe manner.

Josh and I arrived at the very end of the season since it was April, but we tried to get out there anyway. Ironically we ended up on the last tour of the season! Weather can get really dicey out there, and the seas extremely rough, but we were able to go. Our group took a small boat out to the island, then had an hour to walk around and check out the penguins. It was freezing cold and incredibly windy, but worth it! During high season there are thousands of penguins on the small island, but since they were heading north, there were only a few hundred left. When we first arrived we didn’t see many, but over time we could see their nests that they had burrowed into. After a little walking we realized that there were actually a lot of the penguins still in their nests! They would pop out for a minute, dance around a little bit, then jump back in. It was adorable! We loved seeing the penguins authentically in their natural habitat. We also saw some sea lions, cormorants, and dolphins along the way. The boat was a little rough, but it was an awesome experience!

Hiking the W-Circuit at Torres Del Paine National Park

Ahhh, Patagonia…a hikers dream. Definitely one of our dreams. And we were able to make it a reality.

Follow our footsteps in our video as we hike the W-Circuit in Patagonia here:

We’d been dying to make it this far south for quite some time. It is not an easy place to get to, especially when you only have a couple weeks of vacation time from work. But Patagonia is IT. It is absolutely worth every ounce of effort. Luckily for us, we were able to travel slowly.

W-Circuit Trail Map

We decided to begin Patagonia with the W-Circuit hike, in Torres Del Paine National Park. It’s one of the most famous multi-day treks in the world, and can be done in 3-5 days, depending on the route you take. Since we didn’t need to rush, we decided to take our time and plotted out a five-day route, starting a day early by hiking into our first Refugio (overnight hut) the night before.

Patagonia is known for having volatile, crazy weather. We condensed our packs down to a much smaller size for the hike, but packed for all four seasons expecting the worst. It was also shoulder season, meaning that it was turning fall and the weather could be extremely cold. But we got incredibly lucky. Not only did we end up with perfect hiking weather every day, we were also blessed with vibrant fall colors. The entire hike was filled with burnt oranges, reds and yellow trees, with fresh snow dusting the mountaintops. Shoulder season made transportation much less frequent into the park, but it also meant that the crowds were smaller than usual, making the hike more serene.

I normally have a really hard time choosing ‘Favorites.’ When someone asks me, “What was your favorite place you’ve been on your trip?” or “What’s the coolest thing you’ve seen?” I normally think of a handful of places immediately and can’t decide. Patagonia changed everything for me. We saw the most incredible, breathtaking scenery we have ever seen in our life here. Every day was absolutely jaw dropping for both Josh and myself. We couldn’t get over it. The steep rock faces, the perfectly clear water rushing past us, the gigantic glaciers that stood in front of our paths…. I could go on for hours. Patagonia wins. And Torres Del Paine wins too, as the best hike I’ve been on in my life. Watch our video, and enjoy the ride.

Day 2 on the W-Circuit Hike