Volcan Puyehue

Getting a  bit short on time and loving Chile too much to want to leave and hit ash-covered Baroliloche, I planned a two day stop in Parque Nationale Puyehue 20kms shy of the Argentine border and just east of the Chilean lakes district.

Apart from being a beautiful park, I had heard that there was a great walk one could do in two days spending the night at a refugio at 1600m and then ascending the caldera of Volcan Puyehue to 2240m for some great views of the Andes and the various spectacular volcanoes in the region.

What I hadn{t realised was that just north of this caldera (which last erupted in 1961) is the current Volcan Chico that is depositing tons of ash on Bariloche and the Argentine Andes that  started erupting in June 2011....
So waht was normally a scenic and punchy hike through forests to a quiet hut set in a meadw, is now a trek through ash covered desolation to a deserted hut with no water and then an ascent of the dormant caldera with no path but a scramble over ash and volcanic debris to the summit and you have to go when the wind is right or else you need to take a gas mask!   luckily thee wind was right for me as I hadn{t thought to bring one of these....

So I headed off for a 3 hour walk straight up the guts to the refugio on Monday afternoon and shared dinner at the hut with a little farm dog with the shortest legs, called Penguino (I found out afterwards) who followed me up, despite me trying to chase her back down.
There was no running water and I had been warned to boil any standing water due to ash etc. 

I woke early hoping to catch the sunrise and left by torchlight for the last 600m of climbing making it up in two hours.  It was rough going, with no path and only a few footprints in the scree and mud to follow.  Penguino came along, but seemed to stop at a particulalry hairy section just before the top (although i am now not sure she did), which I was happy about at the time as it was quite steep and loose.  In the pic below which I took from the refugio (hut) when I got back, the summit of the caldera which I was heading for is the high point on the right of the pic and the path sort of followed the gully up the centre before running right up the ridge, the new volcano is off to the left and you can just see its ash cloud.  It would have been straightforward but steep normally, but it was a bit more interesting with all the ash which was a bit like walking on icing on a cake, as it seemed to have formed a wet mud with the rains and so had covered everything in a crusty layer, but part of it was frozen which in the early morning was hard and good for walking on.

360 degree views when I got to the top and it was exhilirating.  It was still early and the sun had come up as I crested the ridge, so from walking in shade I was suddenly in full sun and had this for a view (pic below) looking north west to the new volcan with the frozen caldera of the original Volcan Puyehue below me to the right in the pic.

The views to the south west were also spectacular of Volcan Osorno, Casablanca and a few other domes and calderas as below.

 Here is Penguino on the way up just before she stopped.  When I  walked down though I couldn{t find her and after making lunch at the hut she still hadnt arrived so I headed down and halfway back she appeared behind me a little hurt, seems she had taken a tumble the poor thing, bit of blood and looking a bit unhappy, but I dug some ham out of my bag for her and she was fine after that, wso tail wagging we headed off back down and I dropped her at the estancia where there were many choruses of "pobrecito" but they were happy she had come along and she seemed fine.  One tough pup!

So having had a steak and an ice cream in Barloche, it is time to head home to Lucy, Thornicroft and Uni.....

Patagonia is magnificent and I will be back.

Chaiten and north on the Caraterra Austral

After getting back to Coyhaique after fishing, I hopped on a bus and had a days travel north passing all the spots up the Caraterra Austral that Lucy and I had biked earlier on the trip.  It was pouring with rain, quite a change from the sweltering days we had enjoyed and I felt for the cycle tourists we passed as the rain pelted down.
I had two days in Chaiten waiting for the ferry to get to Peurto Montt and spent these exploring the Parque Pumalin and the caldera of the Chaiten volvano that blew up in 2008.  The town was pretty messed up after the eruption with a lahar bringing a meter of ash and mud down the river and flodding a lot of the houses, many of which have now been taken over by the government and apparently there is a debate going on as to whether the town should be abandoned or rebuilt.
It is in a good spot and some great people trying hard to make a living, so hopefully it survives.
The volcano walk was terrific, it was a bit of a climb to the rim of the old caldera where one could look across to the new rhyolite dome that is smouldering and steaming.  The old rim was heavily forested and now it looks more like a world war 1 battlefield, with all the tree´s either blown over or snapped from the force of the eruption with all the bark on the side facing the volcano stripped off and the wood full of pockmarks from the pyroclastic debris, while the side of the tree´s away from the volcano retained its bark and some are now starting to regenerate, you so you get these half green trees.
The area is quite beautiful and lush and in the Parque Pumalin we walked to a few waterfalls and also to see the ancient Alerce tree´s which are up to 3000 years old.
I caught the ferry north to Peurto Montt on friday, got in very late and then hit the seafood market the next morning.  It was good, but not much chance to eat much except for mussels, clams and fish...although their were one or two interesting little critters for sale raw.
Now the plan is to head across the border to Bariloche via one last national park, Puyehue, and if the clouds lift I might get a two day walk in before flying home.....

Looking up to the caldera of Volcan Chaiten

The top of the old crater rim looking across to the new dome

The pockmarked tree´s and looking back down the valley

Peurto Montt´s seafood market

Flyfishing heaven

It took a few days to organise in Coyhaique, but Friday found me in the car with a local guy who had agreed to drop me off about 60kms south west of Coyhaique at a junction of three rivers that I had heard was good fishing and had spotted a camp site on the map.
Turned out he was the best person to get a lift with as he knew the local farmer who ran the campsite with his wife and so I got to enjoy some good Patagonian home-cooking and hospitality at the same time as camping for three nights in one of their sheds at the river.
The Rio Mogote and Rio Balboa joined the Rio Paloma within a few km´s of each other and I had a stunning 4 days fishing mostly the Mogote and the confluence with the Paloma.
It was classic dry-fly fishing, with long runs that about half the time had a fish in the spot you would expect him to be and they were mostly hungry, so if you got your cast right and found the spots, you were into fish.
Very rewarding!
I fished solid for the 4 days and must have landed well over 50 brown and rainbow trout, with the mix about 75% browns.  They ranged from 8" through to my best which was over 20", and after the first day where the weather was a bit cooler and I took a few on the nymph I fished just the dry and so the takes were great and they spent a lot of time in the air too.
Apart from the great fishing, the scenery was also spectacular, with Lenga forests along the banks and steep slopes heading up to snow capped valley ends, lots of good birds including a few Kingfishers along the river.
The family who´s farm I was on were great and I was roped into carrying milk pails back to the house from the yard one morning as I was walking past, but it did earn me a breakfast of fresh bread, homemade cheese, the first fresh milk I have had in two months and a lunch invitation that included a creme caramal and more homemade treats!  They initially indicated that I give the milking a go, but I was pretty useless and hence was relegated to the more manual labour.

My best brown of the trip.

Looking upstream on the Rio Paloma, the Mogote comes in on the right and my campsite was just down below...

Another nice brownie...

Looking upstream on the Rio Mogote where I fished mostly

One of the brightly coloured little rainbows

I mostly used a fly I called a Patagonian Slop (jandal) which is a high floating beetle imitation which the fish seemed to love.  These beetles were flying around the river and so I suppose it is not too suprising the trout get excited when they see something like this land on the water.  Bit like a whole roast lamb!

The flies I was using and the beetles that made the odd appearance!

Cerro Castillo hiking

Headed south on Sunday morning hitching to Villa Cerro Castillo, a small town below the mountains of Cerro Castillo in the national park.  As luck would have it the hitching was quite fast and when I got into town there was a ´traditional festival´on the go with bull castration, horses being broken in and 10 sheep on the spit for lunch.  I was too late to see the bulls being done over, but watched some great rodeo action as the local gaucho´s broke in their new horses and queued up for the lamb which was handed out to all and sundry in great hunks of meat, no plates, with a sophapilla.  Damn fine food.
The next morning was still raining but I decided to head up on a shortened version of the 4 day tral in the park to tweak out the highlights of the views of the main Cerro Castillo and the head of an awesome valley with a camp aptly named Camamento Neozelande.  It was named after a group of kiwi´s who based themselves here in ´76 to climb a few of the peaks in the area.  A solid few hours of uphill and I got to spend the afternoon with the weather clearing enough to see the peaks at the head of the valley, but still cold enough that it was sleeting in camp and the hills were covered in fresh snow.  The valley that the campamento neozelande is in is quite stunning, circled to the west, north and east by these raggy spired peaks of the cerro castillo range and with morraine walled glacial tarns filling each valley, I was quite spellbound, spending almost an hour huddled in the sleet drinking tea and looking at them through the bino´s.
Camped that night under lenga trees with parakeets for company.
The next morning was still a bit cloudy and wet, but I headed off up to about 1200m in the company of a Swiss guy, Tom, who had arrived at camp the previous evening.  We had a stiff climb for 2.5 hours up to the base of the main Cerro where the views of the peak were really close with a hanging glacier coming off the foot of the cliffs emptying into a laguna.  The wind was so strong, the strongest I have ever had on a hike, that at times i had to crawl on all 4´s to get up the scree and boulder covered slope to the top.  The wind and cold had turned the hard granite rocks on the slope into a field of weathered slices of rock, like onion rings, so it was like walking on rubble.  We had a brief lunch in a tiny bit of shelter at the top soaking in the views, snow and wind before heading bak down to camp.
What was also so good about the walk was I got to see the peaks that Lucy and I had so enjoyed watching when we were biking from Chile Chico south along the southern shores of Lago General Carrerra.  They had looked so stark and awesome from across the lake in that hot almost desert environment we were in that it was a treat to be able to get up close.

south face of the Cerro Castillo with me being blown off my feet!

the foot of the hanging glacier and the laguna at the base of the Cerro looking east

the view from campamento neozelande of the west face of Cerro Castillo

Cactus pack and Saffa hiker at the NZ embassy in Patagonia

Flyfishing Patagonia....hermosa!

A terrific day of Patagonian flyfishing yesterday.  Birthday present from my gorgeous wife saw me finding a guide, which not only opened up the chance to find a river that was exactly what I wanted to fish, but also came with a 4x4 to get there and some advice on flies and tactics.
So we headed out of town at 8 and were at the river fishing by 11 after an hours hike to get up to the stream...calling it a stream would also be a bit of an exaggeration as you could step over it in most places and it was seldom more than half a meter deep, but had some undercut banks and was full of insect life and although you couldn´t see the fish, they were hiding under the banks and a little bit hungry too!
The scenery was spectacular, we were on a part of a huge estancia that stretched all the way to the Argentine border and so had a few horses around and the odd sheep, but it was wild.  There were a few Nandu (the large flightless birds a bit smaller than ostrich), condors, geese and some Flamingos in the adjacent wetlands.
The stream had a good population of Brown Trout and I had a really memorable 5 hours of fishing through the day.  It was all about short casts to water that looked good, the wind was pumping all day and a bit overcast, so it made sight fishing difficult but if you could get the fly in the right spot, and there was a fish there, it was game on.
I took my first fish on my first cast and the fun carried on.
They were all between 16" and 22" and all got a kiss before being returned to fight another day.  Being a small water, they also spent a lot of time in the air after being hooked and the fights were good.
In total I landed 7 and lost a few others, all on the dry fly and the takes were the best part of it, aggressive and on a few times I got to see the fish come up and inspect the fly before slamming it.
Some pic´s below of a couple of the fish, and in the one if you look closely you can see the fish jumping..Am now planning on heading south for a few days of hiking in Cerro Castillo, but the weather has packed it in, so it might be a wet trip....

Tierra del fuego and Ushuaia

Suitably re-fuelled we hit Ushuaia this morning to confirm flights and see a bit of town and get an ‘end of the world’ sticker for our bikes which made the trip without a single problem, not even a puncture!

Funnily enough we also discovered the chocolate shops give you free tasters just for going in…we visited a few!

Interesting town Ushuaia, a bit like Cape Town or Vancouver Island combined with a ski resort, circled by mountains but with yachts in the bay.  We are camping at a great spot below the old chair lift with cracking views across the bay.

Our trip across Tierra del Fuego was a treat, with the highlight possibly the afternoon and night we spent at the colony of King Penguins just north of a settlement called Cameron on the east coast of the island on Chilean turf.  These Penguins are normally only on the subantarctic islands, but 91 of them have started breeding on this patch of desolate coast on the local farmers land and they have just run a fence around them to keep people from getting too close and hired a ranger to take people in to see them.  He was a great guide and as we were the only ones there, we spent the evening with him and shared dinner in his cabin after a great few hours watching the birds incubate their eggs, court and generally do what King Penguins do on a windy beach.  We camped there too, it being our first night out of Porvenir.

Between Porvenir and Tolhuin, we had 4 days of biking with no shops which was good fun as we ended up eating as vegetarians and bumming bread from the local farms, which was good for Simon’s Spanish! 

As we had taken the less followed route to Ushuaia through southern Chilean Tierra del Fuego, we hardly saw anyone and also had to be careful with water, filtering a few times to get by and getting some from local farms and fishing lodges.  This route also took us through the mountains instead of the ‘pure pampas’ of the usual route and we had a nights wild camping in a huge wind but found a spot so sheltered by the local Lenga (nothofagus) that we could cook….

Just before the border crossing, which we had to ford on foot through a river carrying bikes, we stopped for lunch at a Chilean Carabinero (police) outpost to get out of the wind and they offered us their kitchen to eat in….and then proceeded to offer us homemade bread that the cops had made.  Wonders never cease, Simon was so impressed by it he declared it the best yet in Chile and asked for more!  At the Argentinian border post they were having a Asado (Roast Lamb) for lunch and were about to ask us to join them, but Lucy was too quick to tell them we had already had lunch with the Chileans and had more km’s to bike that day.  This was possibly a good thing as true to form the road turned to custard as soon as we had the Argentinian stamp in our passports and we bounced our way through flat hot country for the rest of the day on a road that resembled a river bed.  A friendly estancia gaucho crew let us pitch our tent next to their stables for the nights and pancakes (our new found cycling breakfast of choice) renewed our spirits for another long days biking to Tolhuin where we arrived at 5pm and found a cool little grill shop selling ‘chori pan’ sausage rolls and they were delicious.  The stancia we stayed at the night before had 39 dogs and all the old school saddles and bridles for their horses.  We decided to then split the last 105kms from Tolhuin to Ushuaia into two easier days and so it was that we arrived here yesterday and now looking to do a few day walks in this southern part of the Andes….

The night stop at the estancia

Downhill run to Ushuaia

Arriving into Ushuaia and the view from the port back up to where we are camping ....

El fin de mundo

Just a quick update as there is a queue behind me for the one terminal at camp...so will add more tmr.
We have arrived in Ushuaia, 6 days and 530odd kms from Porvenir and some good riding, a healthy amount of headwinds, bouldery argentinian roads, superb wild camping in the Tierra del Fuego wilderness and estancias, homemade bread, approaching mountains of the Beagle Channel and now the southern tip of the America´s.
Day in town tomorrow exploring and checking out what it has to offer as this afternoon was spent sourcing food and eating and having an afternoon nap and a shower....only had one in the last 6 days!