We got down to the lakeside and were treated to some pretty special views up towards the Cuernos Del Paine, or Horns of Paine. These are part of the same magma event as the Torres, but the interesting thing about them is that some of the softer rock remains above the magma, resulting in a much darker layer of rock above the light coloured granite. Check out the photos, they really are quite unique.

The trek along the lake to the Los Cuernos Refugio was 11½ km, and was pretty tough going. There was only a couple of major hills, but lots of smaller ups and downs, and I think this was the point when the previous couple of days hiking really started to affect us. By the time we got to the refugio we were pooped!! We were spurred on as we came over the last hill by the distant sight of the Campio Hielo Sur, or the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, the huge ice cap which covers much of the Patagonian

Andes and is where all these glaciers come from. It was a long way away but you could just see this ocean of ice between the mountains in the distance!! There is also a strange phenomenon which we witnessed that in cloudy weather, when looking towards a large ice cap, the underneath of the clouds have a bright glow to them. It wasn’t the first time we’d observed this, but it was one of the most vivid.

One of the annoying things about the park set up was that we’d found the signs along the paths to be very misleading for us. They signpost how far away the refugios are in hours, which I reckon is a daft idea to start with, everyone walks at a different pace - saying how many kilometers were left would be much better!! Also though I reckon they’ve even got their “average walker” times wrong too - resulting in us thinking we were doing really well at one point only to be disheartened