Paso El León

Just like in previous years, we left Santiago behind for the end-of-the-year holiday season and went "down south". Christian's brother and his family were visiting Chile around that time, so after a weekend spent together in Santiago in mid-December, and then sending them off to Punta Arenas for some whale-watching and Torres-del-Paine-exploring, we had arranged to meet up again in the Puerto Varas area just before Christmas. We had hired a cabin for a few days, air fares (for our visitors) and bus tickets (for us) were all booked... except, this is Chile and things don't always go as planned.

Lago Llanquihe and Osorno Volcano near Puerto Varas and Puerto Montt

The day before we were all meant o meet up again, Chile's air traffic collapsed because of an airport ground staff strike, closing down several airports (among them Puerto Montt where they wanted to fly into). For a moment it looked like they might get stuck for a few days in the southern-most city of Chile, but in the end their airline managed to "evacuate" them back to Santiago. By then, of course, all the sensible bus fares (not even speaking of the comfy 1st class seats) were sold out, leaving only the "epic" category to choose from (i.e. including a 2h Temuco lay-over in the middle of the night and stopping in every village along the way). Anyway, they made it in the end, and only 24 hours later than originally planned... it could have been far worse.

Our cabin was located near Ralún, about an hour from Puerto Varas. This part of our holiday was a little more family friendly than what we would normally do, we chilled, went for little strolls, cooked, ate, drank, played with the kids, etc. Quality family time so to speak...

Our Christmas meal

With Christmas out of the way, and our family visitors moving on to visit the North of Chile before heading back to Europe, it was the two of us again. We had some unfinished business in Cochamó to take care of from last year, and since we were in the area why not go back there?

Last year, our attempt to cross the Andes to Argentina was cut short by a sprained ankle a little under half-way into the adventure. The route starts from the village of Cochamó and goes up to La Junta (the "Yosemite of Chile"), on to El Arco, Lago Vidal Gormaz and finally to a backcountry border crossing at Paso El León. There is a detailed route description on wikiexplorer. As we found out only recently, the route is also part of what people are starting to refer to as the "Greater Patagonia Trail", a long-distance trek that some crazy dude mapped out and that seems to be trending towards one of the top-10 in the world. Don't think very many people have done the complete thing, yet, though.

Our part of the trail follows an old transit route for herding cows between Argentina and Chile, and to this day it remains the only option to access, by horseback or walking, some of the remote farms in the area. Much of it goes through dense temperate rain forest and the quality of the trail is accordingly, i.e. mud or standing water and very eroded in many places.

That's what the quality of the trail is like in many places...

On the bright side, the route goes through some fairly untouched and remote wilderness, where one can still marvel at a few impressive Alerce trees, which I would guess are the closest southern hemisphere equivalent to North America's Giant Redwood trees.

One of the impressive Alerce trees

Christmas chilling

Wikipedia claims that back in Charles Darwin's times there used to be specimen with diameters of in excess of 12m in parts of Southern Chile, but they have all been logged or burnt. Now they are quite rare and strictly protected, although illegal logging and burning still happens.

We went at a relatively leisurely pace, partly because of the slow progress that one makes on a trail like this, partly because we simply wanted to enjoy the scenery that was on display along the way. In total we trekked about 65 kilometers over the course of 5 days, ranging between about 8 and 15 km a day, or perhaps 4 to 6 hours. This allowed us to walk for half of the day and then relax, recover and enjoy the location, views, swims in the river, etc. for the rest.

We also thoroughly enjoyed our camping locations. The first night, at La Junta, one gets a lovely campsite with solar showers, compost toilets and beautiful views of the near-vertical granite walls surrounding the valley. On the second night at El Arco, one is surrounded by wilderness and there is a water fall under a stone arch (hence the name "El Arco"). The third night we camped on the northern shore of lake Vidal Gormaz, from where one gets great views of the lake and surrounding forest, although the evidence of burnt Alerce trees to make space for the couple of farms which are up there now, is still visible after (presumably?) many decades. Our fourth and last night we spent at El Torrentoso, which is another little farm with a campsite by the river, which actually had the best swimming spot. Apart from El Arco, one generally has to pay a small fee to the local landowners to pitch your tent, but in exchange there are pit latrines in relatively good conditions (and which keep people from shitting everywhere) and one can buy bread or even a few veggies from the locals. Beyond La Junta we were generally by ourselves and only one of the nights we had a bunch of other hikers camping nearby.

If we were to mention any downside, it would be the very persistent horse flies (called "Tábanos") in some parts of the trail. They are fairly harmless on the whole but worth mentioning. At one point, Patricia got so fed up with them that she decided to wear her Goretex, despite the heat, to keep them from biting her, and to no longer have to worry about them and be able to concentrate on the trail!

One of the Tábanos sampling guess'whose's knee

On the last day we crossed the border into Argentina, where a dirt track connects to highway 40, which in turn connects to the town of Bariloche. This bit one can more or less easily hitch-hike, and from Bariloche we caught a bus back to Chile the following day.

In all, a very memorable way to end the year 2015. As usual, slide show below and a link to a version in higher resolution here (or here if you can't use Flash).