High on the Chile Bucket List is ‘visit at least 3 more national parks’ for obvious reasons; this country is brimming with diverse and incredible landscapes (soon to be significantly less incredible if HidroAysen goes through, but that’s another story). So I picked a nearby spot, called a few people and organized a camping weekend.
We were leaving Friday morning. Thursday night at 10 pm, I get a call from my camping people – they had picked an entirely new spot and tripled the size of the group. So much for planning.
Regardless, I head to the bus stop bright and early at 8 am, like everybody agreed to, only to find zero out of the other six gringos. I had already bought my ticket, so I hopped on the bus and crossed my fingers that everybody would show up in Santiago. My phone had just ran out of minutes entirely, so I had no way to communicate with the others. Can you guess the theme of this trip yet?
Luckily, everybody met up eventually at the metro stop. We had to cross the entire city, right at morning rush hour, with a bunch of camping gear on the metro. The other Friday morning commuters weren’t the happiest looking Chileans I’d seen, but so be it.
On the flip side, we needed to stock up on food before heading out. Remembering the theme for the weekend, we broke up into three groups to buy food. Thus, we ended up with nearly three times what we needed, including… over 2.5 pounds of liquid caramel, nearly 5 pounds of sliced turkey, 4 pounds of rolled oats for oatmeal, plus many others (all to feed 7 people for 3 days… except after purchasing and leaving, one girl decided it was a good time to share the fact that she had already brought all the food she needed from home).
We leave Santiago by taking over a minibus headed for the hills. Most people are a little unhappy about the excess of food, so we shared two party bags of chips and a roll of cookies with the rest of the bus. We missed the next connection in podonk rural Chile, and would have had to wait over two hours for a shot at the next, so we paid off some locals to drive us up to our first site.
We posted up right next to a beautiful, deliciously cold glacial stream and went for a DIY hike up a nearby mountain. Later on, we set up camp. I brought a four person tent from home. We opened it, only to find that the tent had no poles. So four of us slept right outside on a tarp with no pads and no pillows. Hey, at least I had some sleep saved up from class last week.
The next day we intended to head a little further up the valley near a national park. We had no way of getting there, so we broke up into groups and tried to look friendly on the side of the road. Bret and I went first and hitched a ride in the back of a pickup. We got to the town, waited right alongside the road for a few hours and fished. On my first toss, I caught something huge that fought for nearly 15 minutes before snapping the line. After sitting around for another couple of hours, it was beginning to get dark and we were losing hope that the others would make it.
There was a small campsite in this town, so we pitched a tent. Nobody was at the office/shack. Later, somebody came and yelled at us for pitching a tent, and we had a little argument. Then, this guy changed his mind about us and invited us to take a walk. He showed us this little two bed A-frame hut that he owned and invited us to stay there. We couldn’t refuse.
We cooked some dinner and offered some to our host. He ate a little, and we made some small talk. He was an old dude, but a profilic mountaineer back in the day. He had every major peak in South America and Europe under his belt. He described how the bond between mountaineers was stronger than any other human relationship. Since his climbing days were over, nothing really matched up, so he lived alone with a crippled dog he called Pito (Spanish slang for marijuana).
Out of nowhere, he turned the conversation into a heavy spiritual discussion. He had once lived in the Vatican as a priest, then completely changed his views and now does the whole New Age spirituality thing head-on. We went to bed with our heads spinning in circles.
The next day, we tried to track down the others. There wasn’t much we could do unfortunately as the whole area had no cell coverage (as well as no internet or even electricity – just 60 miles outside of an enormous metropolis). Having no luck, we decided we might as well make something of the day and launched right into the national park.
It wasn’t a big park by any means, but it had all the essentials. A gorgeous valley with springs and rivers, wild horses and condors, capped off by an impressive mountain and glaciar system at the far end. The hike was about 10 miles round trip, rising about 2500 feet. The glaciars were accessible despite a very weak warning sign, so we headed up to check it out.
The front end of the glaciar was flat-out wild. The top of the ice was covered in rock and dirt, so it looked like ground except for the gaping entrance to an icy cave. It was everything you could want from an ice cave; crystalline icicles, layered wavy blue walls, a dripping stream and a ferocious echo. It actually went all the way through – it ended with an opening to the top of the glaciar. Constant falling rocks, slippery conditions and melting ice made it one of the most beautiful but naturally dangerous places I’d ever been.
We still hadn’t heard from or seen our friends by the next day, so we assumed they had turned back. We took the opportunity to outdo ourselves with an even more incredible hike. 17 miles through a different valley, vertical climb of about 4000 feet and featuring dinosaur bones, more towering Andes and a Hindu colorful-flag-mountain-shrine among other attractions. It was too long of a hike to complete before dark, but the moon was full and what was stunning by day was surreal by night.
The final day, we went fossil hunting. We both found a couple of old mollusks in the valley. I was working on a bit of a theory – the higher up the valley, the better the fossil hunting would go. I ended up giving up looking for fossils; eventually I just wanted to summit that dang mountainside and get a good look at the whole range. The climb was tough and getting tougher, but I was literally less than 100 feet from the summit… before finally giving in to that nagging little voice that says ‘hey you – don’t die!’ I gave up.
I stopped ascending, but quickly realized how big of trouble I had already gotten myself into. I was climbing a crowned ridge about 10 feet wide packed with crumbly, loose material everywhere and a brutal drop on either side. I panicked, talked some sense into myself, and slowly wriggled down like an inchworm. It took me a half hour to go about 50 feet, but I just kept going. Once finally off the ridge, I crabwalked it down the entire mountain face to try to avoid causing a rockslide. The two crazy dogs who followed me had just as much trouble. It was the most danger I’ve ever been in. Notice all the superlatives from this weekend? With the ice cave from the day before, that climb became yet another data point in the ‘in adventurous situations I am a serious danger to myself’ theory, which has by now more than enough data to be statistically significant. See also ‘spelunking in valley of the moon’ earlier this spring, among many others.
Its worth putting in a word about this town as well. Picture a classic Puritan settlement during fall in a temperate forest around the 1700s. That image should include farm animals, tall trees with piles of leaves blowing around, a small stone church on the top of a hill, plenty of cabins with smoke coming out of the chimney, stone walls here and there, etc. That place is our town – Banos Morales, Chile. Comically rustic and beautiful.
After finally getting off the mountain and meeting up with Bret, it was time to head out. We hitched a ride on a mining truck and slowly made it back to Valpo. With cell phone reception, it was time to place a few phone calls. Here’s what happened on the second day: Group number 2 hitched a ride with some clown who was convinced that Banos Morales was two hours north, not a half hour east. They ended up camping out around there before heading back. Group 3 actually made it to the real Banos Morales and incredibly slipped by us for two whole days, despite our search efforts and a local gringo alert we put out. We just missed them on the way in, in the national park, and then again on the way out. In such a tiny town, that was nearly impossible.
So that’s that. Going on the trip meant missing a little class including a quiz, but I think I had my priorities straight. I’ll still pass the class, and in exchange I got an bizarre and unbelievable weekend, a good story or two and some lessons on how not to plan a camping trip. With any luck, national parks numbers 2 and 3 to be crossed off will further the story…
Dude, your marshmallow is on fire.
Patrick,
ReplyDeleteThat is an incredible story! Good luck at the next two parks, I can't wait to hear all about them as well. the pictures are inspirational.
Melanie
thanks melanie!
ReplyDelete