My apologies for not starting this blog sooner but I just didn't feel the motivation. Chile is enjoyable but not inspiring to me, just recently that situation has changed. I will start at the beginning and catch you up, we landed in Santiago on the 12th January 2016 stayed at Rio Amazonas which is centrally located with all the sites and the subway close by. We embraced the Chilian lifestyle with lazy mornings, afternoon siesta and late night dinners. The best thing we did was a tour for tips around the city as the guide was infectiously enthusiast about his city. We wandered off to Valparaiso for the day and basically enjoyed and holidayed. We then moved south to Pucon and continued the theme with a volcano hike up villaricia which I thought was a lot of effort for some great views but the actual volcano was a disappointment. This volcano had erupted in March last year so there was a lot of safety equipment, we had to wear all their gear and we had ice pick training. The best part of this day was coming down, there was a series of open tunnels down the mountain a bit of hard plastic to sit on and away you went. Very good fun, you controlled (I use this term loosely) your speed by digging in your ice pick. We also went white water rafting which again was fun and great to cool off in the water as the weather has been really quite hot. We then bused it down to Puerto Montt, the buses are great, we ordered lunch and that was delivered, everything is so easy. The Hostal staff are lovely the food is magnificent but then we flew to Coyhaique to meet our fellow hikers and pick up the 4wds. We arrived on a Saturday and it was like stepping back to the 70s, everything was closed. We slept in and arrived for breakfast at 9.25 to be told we had missed it by 10 minutes. The shops opened on Monday so we booked a cabin on a ferry for 3 nights, only to be told that the final itinerary for the month hike was incorrect and we had to change it. Our friends Bob, Iris, Jo and Steve arrived and that was great to catch up but a nagging and growing discontentment with the lack of communication from Russell the trip leader was starting. We got the vehicles and headed out to Rio Nadis, lovely farm good camping, totally uninspired hiking, got lost on both walks, only my friends cared about each other. Went to Villa O'Higgins for an overnight walk again left to our own devices, again only OK scenery........
Cochrane 9th February
We are now well into the hiking and it hasn't been running as smoothly as I hoped. The main guide doesn't say much and the assistant guide is an over achieving walker with a contemptuous attitude. Our group of six are enjoying each other's company but the others are a bit trying at times. We have been lost several times and Nick and I have been left to walk on our own, which is OK except for the challenging river crossing. I have completely lost confidence in them so didn't want to go on the Tigre glacier walk, then the local guide didn't turn up so they decided to go them selves. I worried about Nick all day and apparently it was a nightmare and dangerous but that is his story to tell, they didn't make it and were lost most of the day, at least they stuck to the turn around time.
We have just finished a two night walk in Tamango national park, it was the first walk we have done that had any form of hiking etiquette happening such as making sure people had maps and waiting at turn offs. The scenery was fantastic, lake Cochrane was an amazing blue. Again I don't think you are suppose to be navigating those sort of heights with a full pack, but we did it without incident. I swam a couple of times both days, so much for the cold and wind! Actually the weather is about to turn so we might be using our winter gear yet.
Tomorrow we are off to San Lorenzo, I will be picking and choosing what walks I will be doing with them depending on weather and if our guide has a clue.
The up side is he is a fantastic cook so having good camping meals.
San Lorenzo 9th February
Only about 30kms out of Cochrane some very rough roads and a river crossing we decided not to take so we had to hike in 30 minutes to our camp site next to the farm house. Of course we got lost trying to find the farm house, we had to loop around to a makeshift bridge of a couple of logs to get over the river and once we could see the cars on the other side walk into the camping area. We could have tried to make the crossing in the morning when the water level is lower but I think this was a much safer option. We have been told that the hike to base camp is only three hours so we are just doing to whenever we feel like it, at least this time we know not to expect any guiding.
