Travel broadens the mind...

Though I spent the night out partying at the bars and woke up not at the hoped for 7:30 but rather a late 11:00, I was determined to get my trek underway. After some last minute shopping I caught a bus to Ensenada, about 8km short of the park and trail head. From Ensenada I caught a lift with a park ranger into the park itself, arriving at the trail head at about 3:00. Though I was told that the refugio was a good 7 hours hike, I thought that I could make it. I would find out that I was wrong. I made the first 5 km well enough, though not in the time that I wanted. It was then that the weather started rolling in, and the pack (in which I was carrying gear and food for 5 days) and the night before started catching up with me. I made it another 3 or 4 km on steep terrain when the rain and wind became more than I wanted to deal with. I made camp on a hillside with beautiful, if not very sporadic due to clouds and heavy rain, views of the lake and mountains. That night the storm really hit, with high winds (that almost flattened my tent at times) and heavy, heavy rain. And though I’m sure now it was just my imagination, I could have sworn that there were slight tremors at various points in the night (remember, I was sleeping on the ground on a volcano). But I faired well and even enjoyed myself to a degree, even though there were a lot of hours to fill.

That night I did decide that since this was supposed to be the weather for the next several days in the region (I thought that I would be a day ahead of the really heavy rains), I wasn’t in the mood to make the trip through the Andes as planned. A bit of a cop-out, yes. I didn’t mind, though didn’t enjoy, hiking in the rain, but what put me over the edge was the views: the whole reason I was making the trip was for the adventure and for the views. But the clouds were low enough that most of the time you couldn’t see anything. So the next day I made my way back to Puerto Varas, where from there I went to Puerto Montt and caught a bus to Osorno (the town, not the volcano) in route to Bariloche.