{"id":1132,"date":"2011-03-14T06:29:16","date_gmt":"2011-03-14T10:29:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.budgetyourtrip.com\/blog\/?p=1132"},"modified":"2020-08-18T19:39:18","modified_gmt":"2020-08-18T23:39:18","slug":"hiking-torres-del-paine-in-patagonia-chile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.budgetyourtrip.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/hiking-torres-del-paine-in-patagonia-chile\/","title":{"rendered":"Hiking Torres del Paine in Patagonia, Chile"},"content":{"rendered":"

Torres del Paine is a national park in Patagonia, Chile. It is known for some of the most spectacular hiking in the world.<\/p>\n

Update: check out our Ultimate Guide to Hiking in Patagonia<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I met many people as I hiked the park – people doing it on many different budgets. There was Joe from Chicago who camped and lived on porridge for nine days – surely that\u2019s the cheapest it can be done. There were others who stayed at the Refugios with breakfast, dinner and a box lunch included for the trail. In between there was me: I camped, ate one meal at a Refugio, had drinks at the bar during happy hour (when they were half price) and ate a lot of nuts, dried fruit and other easily portable food.<\/p>\n

A guest post by Janice Waugh from Solo Traveler<\/a><\/div>\n

To help you budget your trip to Patagoina, here are the costs I incurred. I\u2019m indicating most prices in pesos except those I paid for in US dollars. The typical conversion is 1000 pesos to $2 (editor’s note: this exchange rate is no longer valid<\/em>). All prices include taxes.<\/p>\n

Getting there and getting back<\/h6>\n

I left Santiago, Chile on a night bus to Puerto Montt. Doing this, you have three choices: a regular bus, half cama or full cama. I chose the full cama where the seat folds out into almost a full bed. In the cost of 19,900 pesos, they include a snack at night and in the morning.<\/p>\n

In Puerto Montt, I took the Navimag Ferry to Puerto Natales which is the launching point for entering Torres del Paine. I chose a cabin for four and took my chances on my cabin mates – I was very lucky. They were fabulous. The cost, which included three nights and all meals while on board, was $600.<\/p>\n

After hiking the park I returned, to Santiago by plane at a cost of $178. Obviously, this is much cheaper than taking the overnight bus and ferry but the ferry through the Chilean fjords was truly a fantastic experience.<\/p>\n

Hiking Torres del Paine<\/a><\/h6>\n
\n
\"My<\/a>
My tent at Grand Paine, Patagonia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Take cash. Almost everything in the park is cash only so, unless you plan to hike every step of the way, carry your food and camp, you\u2019ll need money. I hiked the two sides of the W<\/a> and stayed three nights. I took 70,000 pesos and just made it out of the park. Here\u2019s how I quickly used that money:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Free \u2013 I got a ride into the park to the Towers trail.<\/li>\n
  2. 15,000 \u2013 park entry.<\/li>\n
  3. Free \u2013 camping the first night.<\/li>\n
  4. 5,000 \u2013 after hiking to the Towers and back, I took a shuttle to main road.<\/li>\n
  5. 5,000 \u2013 bus from the shuttle drop-off to the Pehoe ferry.<\/li>\n
  6. 11,000 \u2013 Pehoe ferry to Grand Paine Refugio for camping.<\/li>\n
  7. 4,500 \u2013 Camping at Grand Paine.<\/li>\n
  8. 2,000 \u2013 Pisco Sours at the bar.<\/li>\n
  9. 10,000 \u2013 a meal at the Grand Paine refugio.<\/li>\n
  10. 11,000 \u2013 return on the Pehoe Ferry. (When we took the ferry going we thought we would return via the Grey Glacier ferry but discovered that it was too expensive. We could have saved 3,000 pesos by buying a two-way ticket rather than two one-way tickets.)<\/li>\n
  11. 5,000 \u2013 bus back to Puerto Natales.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    In Puerto Natalies I stayed at the Erratic Rock hostel in a dorm for 9,000 pesos then took the bus to Punta Arenas the next day for 4,000 to catch the plane back to Santiago.<\/p>\n

    There you have it. Hopefully, knowing how I spent money in Patagonia, will help you budget this trip of a lifetime.<\/p>\n

    Travel costs for Chile<\/a><\/div>\n
    \"Towers<\/a>
    The Towers in Torres del Paine, Patagonia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Torres del Paine is a national park in Patagonia, Chile. It is known for some of the most spectacular hiking in the world. I met many people as I hiked the park – people doing it on many different budgets. There was Joe from Chicago who camped and lived on porridge for nine days – surely that\u2019s the cheapest it can be done. There were others who stayed at the Refugios with breakfast, dinner and a box lunch included for the trail. In between there was me: I camped, ate one meal at a Refugio, had drinks at the bar during happy hour (when they were half price) and ate a lot of nuts, dried fruit and other easily portable food.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1133,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_type":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1224,1225,1233,75],"tags":[30,452,76,471,246,478,366,119,307,474,469,470,476,477,475,473,105,78,285,472,15,127],"class_list":["post-1132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-camping","category-hiking-trekking","category-south-america","category-travel-stories","tag-budget","tag-camping","tag-chile","tag-chilean-fjords","tag-dorm","tag-happy-hour","tag-hiking","tag-hostel","tag-money","tag-overnight-bus","tag-patagonia","tag-patagonia-chile","tag-puerto-natales","tag-refugio","tag-refugios","tag-santiago-chile","tag-solo","tag-south-america","tag-tickets","tag-torres-del-paine","tag-travel","tag-travel-costs","entry","has-media"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-30 15:34:58","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.budgetyourtrip.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.budgetyourtrip.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.budgetyourtrip.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.budgetyourtrip.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.budgetyourtrip.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1132"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.budgetyourtrip.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11302,"href":"https:\/\/www.budgetyourtrip.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1132\/revisions\/11302"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.budgetyourtrip.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.budgetyourtrip.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.budgetyourtrip.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.budgetyourtrip.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}