Sunset on the mountains... view from the refugio.
At the refugio Frey next to Cerro Catedral.
I had a lovely time working at the hostel and met lots of people from all across the world, but after a week of emptying out trash bins and being awoken at 6:00 to help make omlettes for breakfast, I was ready to move on. The girls, Amy and Cortney, had a great time in the park, doing the same trail that Mark, LP, and I did and they arrived back healthy and happy. After finally leaving Puerto Natales and Torres del Paine, we headed north to the island of Chiloe off the coast of Chile. We had been told that it rained 370 days out of the year on Chiloe (no, not a mistype) and so we were expecting the worst. What we ended up with was rain as we drove in and then 3 very lovely days among the hilly, somewhat bizarre, island. The island basically looked like what I would picture Ireland looking like. Hilly with flowers coming out the wazoo and very very green from all the drizzly rain they get. So, we found a cute place to stay which got us out of the blustery wind and then promptly decided that we were going to do an overnight camping trip into Chiloe National Park. After consulting with CONAF (which is now my archnemisis - also the Chilean National Park Service) they informed us that all the trails were open and marked and that the campsite/refugio at Cole Cole Beach was a lovely place to stay. After purchasing food and getting dropped off at the entrance, we promptly got lost on the ¨educational trail.¨ We finally figured it out and got pointed in the right direction towards the Pacific beach. We walked along the beach for about 2 hours before reaching a large river of water. After contemplating it for about 20 minutes, we took off our shoes, and forged across - freezing our feet off. After warming up we started hiking up the hill only to look back and see a brige about a half mile back. Thanks for the trail markers, CONAF. Eventually we ended up in this mountain mans backyard with a bared teeth dog running at us. Fun times. He pointed us in the ¨right¨ direction and after walking on that trail for about 30 minutes following up about 7 hours of hiking, we decided to camp in the middle of a horse field. Ah camping with the smell of horse poo all around. Lovely. Fortunatly, we woke up to a nice clear day and descended through the 40 degree rainforest full of flocks of parrots (WEIRD!) back to the beach where we were met with gale force winds and sand being peppered into our faces. We pushed through and finished our hike finding both of the bridges we missed the first time and getting back to the hostel with a breath of relief. We spent the next day visiting churches around the island. There are 150 churches built by Spanish missionaries.
Leaving Chiloe, we headed to Bariloche, where LP did her Spanish studying. The city is fairly nice, but it is extremely touristy and freaked Amy and I out a bit. This prompted our decision to fly to La Paz, Bolivia, next week. While in Bariloche, we took advantage of the lovely lake district scenery and did an AWESOME hike up to Cerro Catedral, a mountain nearby that is a ski resort in the winter (June, July, August). After 5 hours of sunny, gorgeous hiking, we arrived at the refugio Frey and watched a beautiful sunset on the jagged peaks that were barely a stones throw away. Later in the summer, the place will be crawling with climbers, but for us, there were just 15 people staying at the refugio with us including a really friendly couple and their 11 year old son from Crested Butte, Colorado. Hiking back down the next day was equally gorgeous and we stopped for about an hour for lunch to enjoy the sun on our first hiking in shorts day. Also, as an aside, we probably saw 30 lizards scurrying around on the ground. It was a very exciting day for lizard spotting.
Today is our last day in Argentina and we are headed to Chile to see some lake district towns there before heading to Santiago to catch our flight to La Paz on Nov. 20.
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