I based myself for the first two nights at Hotel Las Torres, a working estancia-turned-lodge just inside the park's eastern entrance near Laguna Amarga, roughly a 40-minute drive from the CONAF ranger station where you pay the park fee. The current entrance fee for foreign visitors runs around CLP 30,000-35,000 (about USD 32-38 in late 2025), valid for multiple consecutive days if you keep your ticket.

That first afternoon I did nothing more strenuous than walk the short trail behind the hotel toward Laguna Azul, a pale turquoise lake fed by glacial meltwater, and let my eyes adjust to the scale of the place. The Cuernos del Paine — the 'horns,' twin dark-capped peaks that sit beside the towers — dominate the skyline from almost every angle in the park's eastern sector, and I found myself stopping every few minutes just to look.

This was the day I'd built the whole trip around: the hike to Mirador Las Torres, the viewpoint that sits at the foot of the three granite towers themselves. From the trailhead near Hotel Las Torres, it's roughly 19-22 kilometers round trip depending on which map you trust, and it took me a little over nine hours with generous photo stops, a long lunch, and one ill-advised nap on a sun-warmed boulder.

The trail climbs gently through lenga forest for the first two hours, crosses a suspension bridge over the Río Ascencio, then turns brutal for the final 45 minutes — a scramble up loose glacial moraine with no real switchbacks. Nothing prepares you for cresting that last rise and finding the towers rising directly above a milky turquoise lake, close enough that I could hear rockfall echoing off the granite. I sat there for close to an hour, eating a hard-boiled egg and a stale sandwich I'd packed at breakfast, and it was, without exaggeration, the best meal of the trip.

I moved lodgings on day three, driving the gravel road west to Hotel Río Serrano, a low-slung property with unbroken views of Paine Grande, the massif's highest peak, and easy access to the park's central sector. From the Pudeto dock, the catamaran across Lago Pehoé to Refugio Paine Grande takes about 25-30 minutes and runs a few times daily in high season; a one-way ticket cost roughly CLP 20,000-25,000 when I went.

From Paine Grande I did the out-and-back day hike into the French Valley, following the Río del Francés up through southern beech forest with the Cuernos looming on one side and the Paine Glacier's hanging ice on the other. It's about 15 kilometers round trip to the first mirador and back, closer to seven or eight hours if you push on to the upper viewpoint, and twice I heard the low thunder of ice calving off the glacier before I saw the plume of snow drift down the rock face.

The Grey Glacier tour was the one part of the week I'd booked well in advance, since the boats fill up fast in the January-February peak. From Refugio Grey's dock, or from Hotel Lago Grey on the southern shore, catamarans run out toward the glacier's face for a look at the calving wall and the blue-white icebergs scattered across the lake; tickets ran somewhere around USD 90-120 depending on route and operator.

Up close, the ice has a color I hadn't expected — a deep, almost electric blue in the cracks, the result of centuries of compression squeezing out air bubbles. The guide cut the engine about 200 meters from the face and let us drift for ten minutes in near silence, apart from the occasional groan of the ice shifting. I'd been warned the wind out here can be brutal, and it was; even in a borrowed parka I was shivering within minutes of stepping onto the open upper deck.

My last full day inside the park I deliberately kept unstructured. I hired a local guide, a Puerto Natales native named Fernanda who'd grown up on a sheep ranch near Cerro Guido, to drive the park's back roads at guanaco pace rather than tourist-bus pace. We spent a morning near the Laguna Amarga and Sarmiento sectors watching guanaco herds, spotted a pair of Andean condors riding a thermal above Cerro Almirante Nieto, and stopped twice for ñandú, the local rhea, ambling across the road.

We never saw a puma, though Fernanda pointed out fresh tracks pressed into mud near a fence line and told me, with the flat confidence of someone who'd seen dozens, that they were maybe six hours old. I left the park that afternoon a little disappointed not to have spotted one, and entirely certain I'd be back to try again.