Towers of Pain?

I was a bit disappointed when I found out that Torres del Paine didn’t mean Towers of Pain as that sounds pretty cool, like the title of a cheap aeroplane thriller. Paine actually means blue in the local native language, which is not nearly so thrilling. They don’t even look blue. But towers they certainly are, an impressive granite massif of spiky pillars rising up from the rugged Patagonian steppe.

It’s a geographer’s dream, with glacial moraines, volcanic intrusions, hanging valleys and knife-edge arretes aplenty. Even the wildlife is exotic: giant ostrich-like rheas, wild guanaco llamas, flamingos, wild foxes, hares, woodpeckers. We hike up to a lake for perfect reflections of the towers and listen to the intermittent rumble of avalanches on both sides of the mountains, watching for the tell-tale clouds of icing sugar snow to fall. A picture perfect end to our day trip to Chile.