In the morning we had a great breakfast at our hotel in Rio Serrano and went to the Torres Del Paine to hike. We reached the entrance in about 5 minutes. Scanned in with our multi-day passes that we bought online on the official site and headed in.
We first went up to Condor lookout. The trailhead is about 12km from the entrance gate. It is a very scenic drive. Mirador Condor hike is 2.4km return with 200m of elevation gain. It took us less than an hour to go up, we spent half an hour at the top and another half hour going down. We did stop alot to admire the scenery and take pictures.
After Condor hike we headed to Estancia Pudeto to start our hike to Cuernos lookout. Pudeto is the departure point for catamarans that take trackers across Pehoe lake to start their multi day O and W hike. Some people also take day trips on catamaran across the lake. When we arrived we saw many cars and buses parked along the road. We were worried the hike would be very busy but turned out most of these vehicles were for the people who took the catamaran across.
Cuernos means horns in English. Idea being that the mountains look like horns with their glacier chiseled sharp shapes. We felt the hike was easy. It is a bit over 6km return with about 200m elevation gain. But it is mostly very gentle up and down rolling trail. Views are really pretty with cuernos, Cerro Grande and lakes. By this time the clouds mostly have cleared and we had a good clear view of the mountains.
It took us about 1.5 hours to get to the lookout making many stops to look around and take pictures. We made it back in about an hour. Magically beautiful scenery all along.
We finished the hikes well in time to get back to our hotel, have a nice dinner and get a good rest before our big hike to Torres base next day.