How to book the W Trek in Torres Del Paine: Everything you need to know
YEP! It’s frustrating. We’ve been in your shoes and there have even been tears during the process! Torres Del Paine National Park is a hikers dream and is quickly becoming more and more popular each year. Unfortunately this means reserving your spot can be very difficult. To give you some idea, we booked our campsites at the end of November and were only just able to get in for first week of March.
We want to lay it all out for you as simple as possible so it doesn’t take you hours and hours of researching to try to figure it out! If you can’t find the answer here or simply have a question, leave us a comment so we can help you out!
This is what we have included:
Booking your campsites for the W Trek and through which company
First off, you need to understand that there are 3 different agencies that offer campsites and refugios along the W Trek; CONAF, Vertice Patagonia and Fantastico Sur. When booking your campsites online for the W Trek, your reservations will be made through the corresponding websites of each company. It’s important you plan your route in advance and go onto each website listed below to make sure your desired campsites are available. It can be difficult to get refunds for reservations less than 90 days out, so this part is crucial!
It is important to book all your campsites on the same day and at the same time so you don’t run the risk of having an incomplete itinerary and having to start all over again.
Paine Grande: Book with Vertice Patagonia
Refugio Grey: Book with Vertice Patagonia
Camping Italiano: Book with CONAF 6-8 months in advance (free campsite)
Camping El Frances: Book with Fantastico Sur
Los Cuernos: Book with Fantastico Sur
Torres Central: Book with Fantastico Sur
El Chileno: Book with Fantastico Sur
W Trek map - our distances and hours
Before you start the W Trek - staying in Puerto Natales
We stayed in the town Puerto Natales, which is a popular starting point for those doing the W Trek. Here there are plenty of equipment rental stores, accommodations willing to put your belongings in storage and decent sized supermarkets. Check out our full meal plan for the W Trek, which includes our breakfast, lunch and dinner.
We stayed at Hostel Last Hope and found the owner Diego and staff extremely helpful. They gave us a plenty of great tips about the trek, helped us book our shuttle bus to the national park, showed us where to rent our gear from and took us through the various additional costs such as: shuttle bus to and from Torres Del Paine, catamaran cost to Paine Grande and the park entrance fee. Click here to see our full breakdown of these costs.
Where to rent your equipment for w trek
The town is full of great rental places where you can rent out all the equipment that you may need. You can go into the stores and rent whatever you need on the day of your trek, there is no need to pre-book. Not sure what to pack? We have listed our entire packing list here and you can even download it!
As mentioned, our hostel recommended Rental Natales whose equipment was really great quality and reliable. It was slightly more expensive than some of the smaller places, but very ideal for good quality sleeping bags, tents and stoves. You can browse their website to see the daily costs and range of stock. Another good rental shop in town is Erratic Rock, you can find a price list for their rental equipment here. Erratic Rock does daily information talks at 3pm about the W Trek, we recommend going to get all the goss!
For rental equipment such as hiking poles, sleeping pads, cooking sets etc you can sort yourself out at any of the cheaper stores that your accommodation recommends.
but that’s not all…
That’s right, we have more info to help you allll the way. Check out our next blog where you have a clear break down of our W Trek Itinerary, our packing list, our meal plan plus all the additional costs that we completely forgot about until we arrived in Puerto Natales!
Click here to get the low-down!
if you found this blog helpful
Please leave us some love in the comments below! Even better, pin the picture at the top of this post for us to help our fellow travellers understand the W Trek booking nightmare! ;) A lot of hours has gone into this so we would appreciate any help spreading the word.