Less than 3 weeks to go... I can't get hold of maps for this route, which starts in Puerto Williams. Does anyone have suggestions? I can't remember the titles (I'm at work now), but there are two, 1:50,000 scale mentioned in the LP guide. The net shows I can pay something like 74US$ each - sod that! We're hoping we'll be able to obtain something adequate in Punto Arenas or Puerto Williams, but I don't much like leaving it that late. We walked mapless for much of one day in N Sweden last year following a change of plan - the little shop we tried had run out of that map. Potentially more serious in Pati?
Maybe someone might be able to send me a copy their own? Or possibly lend me a map - we have very good copiers at work! Obviously we wouldn't take the original with us.
Should anyone ever look at this with the same question, it has been answered well on Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree forum - go to S America > Chile etc. I've tended to have useful replies to posts there, but use OM initially. It seems TT has a wider following from other parts of the world, so useful for obscure questions such as mine!
Should anyone read this who needs to know, we couldn't get 'proper' maps so used a copy of the cheap map a mate got while there before, available at the local gear shop in Puerto Williams. It's 1:100,000 scale and not brilliant, with lakes missing etc. Route finding, especially for us being there so early in the season (mid Nov) was interesting... The description in LP is not too reliable, for instance reference to a 'rectangular lake' but with no mention of size, in an area of uncertainty on what lake is shown.
But it was our favourite area by some way out of Cerro Torre/Fitzroy and Torres del Paine, where there were far too many people and restrictions! We saw more people on Day 1 on the Fitzroy trail than we did in our 6 days on Isla Navarino, including a night and half a day in the town of Puerto Williams. On the Dientes, we saw no-one in the 5 days' walking, and you are able to camp where you like.
