The Saturday, February 6th 2016
We set out from our lodging around 9:30 AM expecting a long, hot and dusty 6 km (3.6 mile) walk on a dirt road to Reserva Nacional Tamango. This is a forest reserve dedicated to preserving the habitat of the endangered Huemul deer. It's been a reserve since 1967 and it is supposed to have one of the highest populations of these deer in Chile. Many wildlife enthusiasts come to see the deer.
We were ecstatic when we got out to the road and saw distance signs indicating that it would only be 3 km (just under 2 miles). We tried without success to hitch hike, many pick up trucks passed, but none stopped. We lucked out when we hit a construction zone which we were allowed to walk through. This allowed us to walk past all of the vehicles who hadn't stopped for us. Once the vehicles were let through, sure enough one stopped for us, and into the bed of the truck we gleefully went! So we only ended up walking about 20 minutes. A ride is quite nice when you are carrying a full load, especially along a dusty road. We are bringing all of our stuff with us, since we will be doing a through hike and not coming back to Cochrane. The people who gave a ride turned out to have been on the O'Higgins glacier tour boat with us several days ago. We keep running into people from that boat ride. I guess that's bound to happen since there is only one main highway and few stopping off points.
Once at the park, a nice ranger gave us information and took our park entrance payment of 5,000CHP each (about $7USD). We had planned to set up camp at the entrance area and explore some of the nearby trails without the burden of a heavy load, but it turns out there are a few back country campsites that we didn't previously know about, one of which would work out well with our plans to traverse to Valle Chacabuco. We didn't want to divulge our plans of the traverse to the ranger since weren't sure if it was an accepted practice, but he seemed like a cool guy, so we went ahead and asked him about it. He seemed very excited for us and gave us advice and showed us on a topographic map what would be the best route. He also talked us out of taking the most popular trail along the lake and river, as 30 people had already set out before us. We had heard in town from the tourist information kiosk that some of the park trails may be closed due to a recent puma sighting, so we asked about that also, and he had to call someone to make sure it was reopened and we could indeed camp along the route. He came back with the response that they have more confidence in foreigners to react appropriately in the face of a majestic mountain cat than they do Chileans and that we were good to go!
We began a several hour steep ascent up away from the valley of the Río Cochrane. The vegetation in the area is mostly dry scrub type plants and pine trees, but it's hard to tell if that's how it should look or not. Like in Argentina, many of the Chilean forests were burned down in the 1930s to open up the land and promote ranching. After the massive forest fires there were terrible problems with erosion, so many non-native tree species were planted, including eucalyptus and pine. So there are many tree farms and pine trees sprouting all over the place around here. Lumber is now one of the top export in Chile! We were mostly in the sun during our hike and it was hot (80 degrees) and sunny with very little wind. But we did pass though several patches of nice lichen covered lenga forest, with some nice shade. After about 3 hours of climbing we reached a plateau with views out across the valley of Cochrane to some large snowy mountains of the Northern Patagonian ice field. Within the plateau are several high alpine lakes, one of which we are camped along side of. We are very pleased to report that no cows or cow poo were encountered along the way. This may be our first South American hike free of any signs of cows and their excrement.
We finished the hike around 4 PM and have had a leisurely afternoon of swimming, taking sun and lounging. Our tent is in a nice field of grasses overlooking the lake and we have a nice picnic table and log stumps for sitting on. The lake is clear and pure, clean enough to drink from. The trail we hiked doesn't seem to get much use, we saw no one else the whole time. One other guy has since shown up to our camping area, but he has set up quite far away, so we still have the feeling of being alone in the wilderness. We talked to him a bit, he is an interesting young French guy who is an environmental engineering student. He just finished a several month long biology internship cataloging plants at a national park near Puerto Montt.
For our meals today we had peanut butter and banana sandwiches with some of the softest bananas I have ever eaten, they would have been banana bread quality back home! But amazingly they were still good on the sandwiches. For dinner we had pasta with tomato sauce, a $1 meal! The pasta we have has tomato and spinach powder, a small nutritional upgrade from plain refined pasta. With each meal my backpack gets lighter. I always carry all of the food when we hike, so at the start my back pack is probably heavier than Jeffs and at the end it is lighter.
It's now 9:30 pm and we are ready for bed inside of our tent, and it's still light out! It gets darkish by about 10 here currently. We are feeling surprisingly well and not in pain from hiking with the heavy backpacks. We covered about 6 miles today.
<I wore my bug net most of the evening, as there were many mosquitos and extremely annoying horse flies.
Sunday, February 7th 2016
Today for the first time this trip, we awoke to frost outside on the ground and on our tent. At about 3,300 feet, it is understandable, but we were surprised all the same since we remained so nice and warm through out the night in our sleeping bags.
After our mushy banana overnight oat breakfast, we hiked up and over the pass, leaving Reserva Tamango and entering into the (future) Patagonia National Park/Valle Chacabuco. From our camp it was a mostly gentle 1 1/2 hour climb to the pass. At the pass we were above tree line, and got nice views of the high mountains of the Northern Patagonia ice field to the West, the lake from which we had come and also views over into the beautiful Valle Chacabuco. There were a number of small lakes on the pass and a family of guanacos. It was very exciting to see them up close! We have never seen them while on foot, it's always been from a vehicle window in the past.
After a short break, we decided to leave our backpacks and take a short 1 hour detour to the top of Cerro Tamanguito (4,972 ft). From the top the views were spectacular in all directions and we believe they may be the best views we have this whole trek. We could see more of the high mountains to the west and all of the surrounding lakes, valleys and rivers.
We knew the trail would be marked to the pass, but figured from there to the nearest trail in Parque Patagonia we'd have to find our own way, but it turned out to be well marked with rock piles and a worn path on the ground. In under an hour descending/traversing from the pass, we had met up with the Lagunas Altas Trail. This trail winds around several alpine lakes and then eventually leads down into the bottom of the valley. From beginning to end its over 13 miles, but we got to skip the uphill part of the loop and cut off about 5 miles.
We enjoyed the lakes and views down to the valley. The vegetation is mostly dry grassland with an occasional lenga forest. We had expected to see lots of other hikers as soon as we came over the pass but only saw two groups of people. One of the groups was 4 young people who passed us while we were having lunch. For lunch we had hot chocolate and hot oatmeal with chia seeds and lots of homemade apricot jam that was squirreled away at our hotels breakfast yesterday.
Towards the end of the hike we began to really feel the weight of our backpacks and the fatigue in our feet, and we dreamed of the meal we would have when we arrived to the restaurant in the bottom of the valley. Shortly before arrived we saw the only other hikers we'd seen all day, two guys doing the same through hike as us, only in reverse.
We finally made it there at 7:30 and discovered it was an extremely fancy place and dinner didn't start until 8. We wanted to preserve our food supply by eating dinner in the restaurant so that we could have an additional cushion of food security, so we waited until 8 and agreed that we didn't care what it would cost. While we waited we looked at a large coffee table book, detailing the various projects of Doug and Kris Tomkins and discovered that their conservation efforts are more extensive than either of us knew and include many parks beyond the two we knew of: Chacabuco and Pumalin (which we will visit in a few weeks). We also wanted to eat in the restaurant because we had heard they had a greenhouse and grow a lot of nice produce on site, and since produce is something we lack while backpacking, it sounded very appealing.
When the time to sit down to dinner came, we asked the waiter if they could make us something vegan. We didn't know what it would cost, but decided we would be ok with what ever it ended up being. They came up with a gourmet 3 course menu for us. Each course was a minuscule portion, it was all about the presentation! We got a small pile of salad on the first course with maybe a cup of lettuce tossed with vinaigrette, a few nuts, some shaved zucchini. The second course was some curried bell pepper and greens with quinoa that was somehow made green. For dessert we had small shortbread cookie topped with fresh fruit and a dab of raspberry sorbet. I highly doubt the cookie was vegan. People down here seem to have a hard time grasping what vegan means and often think it's the same as vegetarian and we're just pronouncing the word wrong or something. The food was all very good, but we had hoped for much larger portions! Due to the small portions we had pear and apple juice to supplement our meal and asked for bread, which they didn't offer. The people at the table next to us asked and got some, so we figured we better get our money's worth and have some too! After the meal we had fresh herb tea, however we accidentally ate most of the herbs before the hot water came cause we thought they were brought out for us to sample and choose from, but we were wrong, so we had hot sugar water with the few remaining leaves instead! We were quite surprised when it came time to pay that the total was $80! We don't regret it for a minute, but definitely prefer hole in the wall family owned restaurant and the larger portions that come with them.
Our dining companions weremainly snooty rich old people with rental cars staying in the lodge. It is doubtful they do any hiking. For a double room in the lodge it's $500 a night!! All of the buildings in the valley are very fancy, made of ornate wood and stone. It seems no expense was spared in construction. It is strange to us, it feels very elitist and exclusive. In our experience many people who enjoy national parks, enjoy them for the affordable recreation opportunities they provide. That is not the case here. There is no other restaurant or lodge for people on restricted budgets and no other access to food.
After dinner it was almost 10 PM and getting darkish. Luckily as we were leaving the building we heard some of the snooty people condescendingly asking a lady how she was enjoying her tent. Apparently they could fathom nothing less than their $500/night suite. She responded that she loved her tent and loved her sleeping bag!
Jeff swooped in and asked the nice lady if she could take us with her to the campground. She agreed, and took us the two miles down the dirt road in her neat former ambulance Toyota SUV. We were so grateful, as we had were exhausted. She was very interesting. Her husband was the private pilot of Conservacion Patagonica and they had spent more than 10 years working for the Tomkins here and in Pumalin Park.
Once at the campground we wandered though a big field in the dark, settling on a nice alcove surrounded by bushes and hastily set up our camp and passed out at 11 PM after what we approximate to have been a 15 mile hike.
Monday, February 8th 2016
It rained over night and was still raining lightly when we woke up. We set an alarm for 7:30, even though we could easily have slept hours longer. We needed as much time as possible to attempt to hitchhike down the park road to the next leg of our hike. We believe the distance to the next trailhead is 28 km (17 miles), not something we want to walk, especially not on the dusty dirt road. It remains dusty even with the bit of rainfall because it's been a dry summer here.
It was annoying trying to pack all our stuff up underneath the droopy wet tent vestibules. While we were doing so a large furry spider made its way inside, scaring the crap out of me. In the small space I managed to stand myself up and get as much distance as possible while Jeff removed the intruder.
Once outside we got to see the campground with the advantage of daylight. It truly is just a big grassy field. It's definitely man made. Someone clearly comes around regularly and mows all the grass. The whole meadow is bordered by forest and there are several cook shelters and a bathroom with solar heated showers. Again no expense was spared in construction!
We went to the nearest empty cook shelter to dry out the tent, make breakfast and come up with a plan. The shelter had 3 big long tables with benches. We took one of them and shortly after, someone else came in. Jeff got to talking with the guy and found out that he had plans to go to the trail that we needed to get to and that he could take us! Yay, no standing in the rain and attempting to hitchhike. There were at most, 20 other tents set up at the campsite, so our chances wouldn't have been great, especially since most people seem to have full of people and truck beds full of gear.
The guy's name is Matias and he is from Viña Del Mar. He's traveling with some friends, one other guy named Eduardo and a couple with a young daughter. Matias and Eduardo were awake but waiting for the rest of their group to wake up. So as long as we didn't mind waiting they would take us. The others didn't end up waking up til about noon, but it turned out to be a fine rest for us and while we waited the weather cleared.
Matias spoke really good English and Eduardo was not so bad either. We sat and talked to them most of the time that we waited. We talked about all sorts of things, including GMOs and various national parks and protected areas. They shared maté with us and we got to learn some of the etiquette involved in the ritual of drinking it and also how to best prepare it. Yerba maté is similar to tea, but large quantities of the leaves are put in a cup and hot, not boiling, water is poured over it. It is then drank immediately and repeated until the leaves lose their flavor. It's sipped through a straw with a filter at the bottom to keep the leaves out. Everyone shares the same straw and cup and when it's passed to you, you drain the liquid, then it's refilled and passed to the next person. While we had maté they also shared their breakfast with us, some toasted rolls with smashed avocado and also some cookies dipped in chocolate called Doblon. We couldn't believe how nice they were and how lucky we were to have met them. We didn't mind waiting at all and really had a great time with them.
By 1:30 we were finally driving away. Jeff and I sat in the bed of their pickup truck, and ended up riding there for 2 hours, because they missed the trailhead parking lot and we drove, 72 bumpy kilometers all the way to the border with Argentina, and then back to the trailhead. It was neat to go to the end of the road and get to see the whole park, but I can't say the ride was comfortable! The road was pretty rough with dips and washboard sections, we nearly had our brains rattled out of our heads. By the time we got out we both had headaches from the 2 hours of constant rattling and we were covered in dust. We were still very grateful and happy for the ride. We don't feel that today could have gone much better.
It was 4pm when we began hiking and we contemplated just camping at the trailhead and beginning tomorrow, but we decided we'd better cover a little ground. The trail goes up the glaciated Avilés Valley, following along the river most of the way. We hiked in about 4 miles and set up camp outside the ruins of an old cowboy refuge. The landscape is really interesting, we are on a plateau shelf sort of thing high up within the valley and a river cuts a deep canyon through the middle of it. The valley is surrounded by big beautiful mountains and the ground is carpeted it low scrub vegetation and lots of grasses.
We didn't have much of a lunch, so we were starved by the time we stopped. I found an abundance of dandelion greens in the area, so I picked a bunch of them and we had them mixed with pasta and tomato sauce. We used the pasta cooking water to make hot chocolate, sounds gross, but is very nice.
We kept seeing our new friends on the trail but we hiked separately for the most part, us very slowly under the heavyweight of our backpacks. They were faster since they were just doing a day hike. We said our final goodbyes as they were coming back down the trail, and Matias gave us his phone number and email address in case we make it up to where he lives and he can show us around.
What a great day it was!
Tuesday, February 9th 2016
We hiked about 11 miles further up the valley today. We had constant beautiful scenery. Much welcomed clouds and wind in the morning gave way to direct sun and heat in the afternoon. The trail was just a slight uphill grade the whole way, with some occasional hills and was never too difficult. One especially beautiful mountain we saw is called Cerro Pintura, that is a beautiful red color due to the presence of iron oxide. We drank some water from one of its many streams and could could distinctly taste the iron in it!
In the morning we followed a family of guanacos for awhile. They were scared of us, but too stupid to move any other direction. They just continued down the trial in front of us for awhile.
After a few miles we crossed the river via a 95 foot long suspension bridge that spanned a canyon section of the river. We were 110 feet above the water. It was a bit scary walking across and we decided to go one at a time to minimize swaying motion.
Along the way today we encountered 3 more ruins of old cowboy camps, the 3rd of which is just a lean to, we are camped at now. We spent 10 hours on the trail, stopping about halfway for a long lunch. We are once again good and tired.
We had to ford 2 swollen glacially fed rivers late in the day, the worst time to do so, but we made it safely across. The first river was very swift flowing and we we thought at first we would have to camp there and wait for low water in the morning, but we made it across ok. The second river had 5 separate channels but was much easier than the first.
We saw only two other groups of two people each pass us going the other direction late in the day. We had the trail to ourselves the rest of the way.
Our meals today consisted of bean stew for breakfast, an experiment that didn't go so well. We bought a bean soup mix consisting of lentils, splits peas, pearl barley, pasta and spices. We tried soaking them for awhile then boiling them, then soaking them again. We did this once before bed and again in the morning, but we ended up eating slight crunchy beans. We have learned not to bring bean soup mix along again. For lunch we had oatmeal with our favorite Dos Caballos brand canned peaches and more pasta with dandelions greens and hot chocolate for dinner.
We have about 16 miles remaining and will probably split in into two days. However our food supplies and fuel for our stove are running low, but we think doing the hike all in one long day will get us in near or after dark, an inopportune time for hitch hiking out. It's 60 kilometers to the nearest town, Chile Chico, and the park is at the end of a dead end road, so we are hoping it's a popular place for a day trip!
Wednesday, February 10th 2016
At our campsite in the Upper Río Avilés Valley, about 3,000 feet in elevation, we came out of our tent in the morning to a chilly 35 degrees. It seems the forest protected us slightly, as we noticed frost in the open meadows as we began walking. It remained cold until almost noon, while we covered about 4 forested miles, continuing the rest of the way up the river valley, then up and over a small pass into Valle Hermoso (Beautiful Valley). While in the forest, we saw some of the tallest lenga trees we have ever seen. The pass marks the dividing line between Parque Nacional Patagonia and Reserva Nacional Jeinimeni. There was no clear dividing line, but we started to see strips of stretchy pink and orange plastic ribbon attached to occasional trees to mark the trail. The path was easy to follow though, so we didn't really see the point. The ribbons will eventually photo degrade and end up as litter.
Once out of the forest we came out onto the banks of a wide glacially fed river cutting through a flat expanse of smooth river rocks. From where we stood at the head of the valley we had views of approximately 8 different glaciers, their icy blue meltwater and several jagged mountains. It was quite spectacular.
We continued along, this time down the river. For the next 3.5 miles we traveled slowly over the river rocks, weaving back and forth across the branches of the braided glacial river. The trail was not well marked here, but we knew we needed to keep to the right side. There was some forest along the bank, but since no trail had been constructed and the forest was full of thick underbrush of thorny pokey plants, we stuck with the intended path of the river bed. We had to take our shoes off 4 different times, wading through multiple channels each time. Even though it was slow going and difficult on our ankles with the uneven footing, the scenery was amazing. The mountains in the valley are made up of multi colored rock and it's hard to take your eyes off them, they are just so pretty and unique.
After 3 hours we had completed the challenging section and stopped to rest and have lunch on the shores of Lago Verde, the lake into which the river flows. The lake it the most amazing turquoise blue color, and sitting on its shores you feel like you are on a sunny beach in the tropics!
We ran out of pasta sauce, but still had some pasta, so I improvised a peanut sauce using salt, peanut butter, garlic powder, cumin, smoked hot pepper powder and pasta water. It made for a surprisingly delicious and and satisfying meal.
After lunch we had a steep, hour and 15 minute climb up away from the lake to Paso de La Gloria. From the top we had nice views of the lake and of Valle Hermoso. Coming down the other side took less than half an hour. To the dismay of our ankles we arrived at another stony riverbed in yet another glacially fed river valley. We were however pleased to see water again, as we hadn't had any to drink since we'd left the lake.
After 45 minutes on the river bed and two more streaming crossings that required the removal of our shoes, the trail returned to the forest. A short while later we were on an what looked like an old farm road, with two well worn tire ruts in the path. Then we came to a junction with another road. We weren't sure which was was correct, so we went right and ended up at the other end of Lago Verde at an awesome campsite with a cook shelter where we stopped for the night. Above the lake are the high cliffs of a wild and jagged mountain. It was almost 7:30 when we stopped and we had covered about somewhere between 10 and 11 miles.
We had it to ourselves for awhile and took a nice little swim, but eventually a truck with one guy in it showed up. We had no idea you could drive out there, so we thought maybe he was a park ranger coming to tell us we couldn't camp there or something. But he turned out to be just another tourist. He was a really nice guy, named Fernando, who grew up in Argentina and now lives in Brazil. He spoke to us in English, and told us he also speaks Italian, so he speaks 4 languages, wow! He was a banker in Brazil and had flown to Southern Argentina and rented a car and driven here. He had recently been on a business trip to New York City where we visited the Patagonia clothing/outdoor gear store. There he bought a freeze dried meal of organic black bean soup that he'd brought along on this trip. It got a conversation going between us, because we have never seen freeze dried meals for sale down here and didn't know that Patagonia had their own line of them. He ended up sharing a generous portion of his soup with us. We had eaten oatmeal with raisins and walnuts for dinner, and it was very nice to have something different from oatmeal or pasta! We talked to him for awhile after, then we to bed around 10:30 when it was getting dark.
It was another full but fantastic day in the wilderness! We again had the trail to ourselves all day. It's amazing their aren't more people enjoying this wonderful place.
Thursday, February 11th 2016
We got up early and ate the last of our oats in the form of overnight oats with cocoa powder, chia seeds, walnuts and raisins. After admiring the view of the rising sun lighting up the mountains above the lake, we set out for the park entrance to complete the remaining 6 miles of the hike. We had to cross two more shoe removal streams, but otherwise the trail was flat and easy. We followed along the worn tire ruts of the road. It would be quite a crazy rutted road to drive! Most of the walk was along a second lake, Lago Jeinimeni (Hay-knee-men-ee). This lake is connected to Lago Verde by a stream. A lot of the glacial silt must settle out in the first lake, as this one is a clear bright blue, and also surrounded by lovely colorful mountains.
After 3 hours we arrived to the entrance area, around 11 am. Just before we arrived we saw one SUV coming down the road toward us and into the park, but the place was otherwise a ghost town and we were not hopeful of getting a ride out. We talked to a ranger and he said our only option was to wait for someone to leave. He said there was one family in the campground.
We sat down to snack on some of our last remaining food, Oreo type cookies called Triton (made by Nestlé) with peanut butter spread on them and some dried prunes. Poisonous cookies sure are delicious! (They are also accidentally vegan.) We still have another bean soup mix, but not enough fuel to cook it properly.
On the way to the park ranger office we had passed though the campground, which consisted of 8 or so sites with nice big cook shelters, some of which were right alongside of the road. We figured that would be a better place to wait. After an hour, the only vehicle (an SUV) in the campground left and was filled with a family of 4 and lots of gear, but no room for us. While we sat, we watched another SUV with a family and pick up truck with a young couple enter the park.
Another 4 hours later, the two SUVs were leaving the park at the same time, but both were filled with families and gear and had no space for us. So we continued to wait and hope that the couple in the truck would only be visiting for the day and that they would take us with them when they left!
We were prepared to camp, knowing if they didn't take us we could wait for Fernando to come out the next day. To entertain ourselves we read our guidebooks, and Jeff found out the rangers had a spare can of fuel we could use if we had to camp. We were grateful for the shelter, as it had gotten rather windy and a bit rainy and stormy out. Without the shelter we would have been quite cold.
Just before 6, a group of 5 Chilean guys arrived from the same trail we had come, they also needed to hitchhike and waited in the shelter with us. They said they had seen a guy on the trail who had given them a ride in Valle Chacabuco and that they suspected he'd be coming back out tonight since he wasn't carrying an overnight backpack. We suspect the person they were talking about was Fernando, who we knew was doing a day hike to Valle Hermoso today and that he planned to camp at Lago Verde again. So we continued to hope that the couple with the truck would come save us!
A short while after the guys arrived we saw the truck coming back out. The guys flagged them down and asked if they could take any of us. They agreed to take 3 of us, so Jeff and I got to go, along with one of them. The couple were very nice and interesting people. They had just gotten married over the weekend and were now on their honey moon. They flown into a nearby airport, rented the truck and had a week of driving around this region of Patagonia before returning to the vineyard area south of Santiago. The man was a winemaker and the grape harvest is coming up so they had to get back for that. He was from Spain, but his Dad was English and his mom was French, so he spoke perfect English, French and Spanish and she was from Santiago, but her mom was American, so she also spoke perfect English. We felt bad for crashing their honeymoon, but in this area of Patagonia there seems to be an endless stream of hitchhikers, they all line up for their turn. We wonder if they have picked up others, or just us, knowing we had no other way out.
The ride was beautiful, dry desert/steppe vegetation with big mountains and a river canyon along side the road. We passed a lagoon with lots of geese, black necked swans and flamingos and we saw a lot of sheep and horses, since it was all the private land of an estancia. Our driver drove efficiently down the bumpy dirt road, and by 7:15 we were in Chile Chico.
We did a bit of walking around before deciding on a place to stay. We considered staying in another guesthouse like we had in Cochrane, but we always find those to be a little on the awkward side, and no one answered the door of the one we tried. We also tried a hostel, the only one listed in our guidebook, but it seemed to be in renovation and we couldn't find any one of the property, just an attack dog! We walked back across town to where we had started out an settled in in the backyard of the Kon Aiken Guesthouse. They allow camping along with the use of their facilities for $5.75 per person.
Before bed we wanted to go out for some food. We tried the only restaurant that's listed in our guidebook, but it seems it no longer exists. We ended up going into a random restaurant that advertised Arabic food. There was no menu and we were given the option of chicken, beef or salmon. I asked for vegetarian and we were offered a green bean frittata, not vegan but we agreed. It came with rice and a small lettuce, cucumber and tomato salad. After 6 days of pasta and oatmeal, it was a fine meal! After dinner we went to the grocery store and bought beers, more delicious poison cookies and potato chips and continued our victory meal before bed.
<View of the impressive mountain above Lago Verde where we camped. It had been back light the night before.>
Here are the only maps we had available to us, photos that I took of maps at the tourist information center in Cochrane:
<Reserva Tamango. We started at the bottom middle and followed the trails on the left (western) border of the reserve, camping at the lake along the way. Where the red trail runs out at the top is the pass that connected us to Valle Chacabuco and the next map.>
<There is a pen marking at the bottom middle showing the pass we climbed on the second day.>
<Here is a map showing the final 4 days of the hike, it's not great detail, but gave us an idea of where we were and what type of terrain to expect.>
Love reading your blogs...so glad you're safe! Jacki
ReplyDeleteThanks for having a look at it! (:
DeleteLots of great information, April. I enjoy it so much.
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad to hear that! Thank you!
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ReplyDeleteBeautiful pictures and descriptions, as always. I have always wondered why some mountain lakes and streams are the varied colors they are. Yeah, I know it is supposed to be because of sediment, etc. But it is still mysterious to me that one could be as turquoise as Lago Verde, and the next lake down that it flows into is brilliant blue. Just another facet of exploring that makes it so rewarding. Lago Verde is similar in color to Canada's magnificent Lake Louise, which I have always wanted to see in person. Thanks again for the maps, which add so much perspective. Interesting to read how you overcame the logistical problems of journeying between points with very little chance of finding a ride. It can seem so daunting to figure out things in advance, while trusting that things will work out if you just hit the trail.
ReplyDeleteYes all of the logistics make my head hurt! Sometimes we have to just stop thinking and do something! I can't comprehend how some people are able to plan out their trips in advance reserving bus tickets and hotels and knowing exactly where they will be each day.
DeleteI have been burned both ways. Sometimes it works best to "just do it". That usually works out. Sometimes it is a disaster, if I roll into some town in the middle of the night, hoping to find a room, and realize the whole place is booked for the annual rodeo or spelling bee. That's happened once or twice. I don't know if you remember the infamous "Cattleman's Motel" in East Bumphuck, Texas, where we had to stay once. So horrible! We had to use the oven in the kitchenette to stay warm! I used to threaten you and May that I would take you back there, if you didn't behave in the car...
ReplyDeleteYes I actually do distinctly remember being there and using the stove for heating!
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