15. Tuesday 16 February 2010 In a Moderate Rainforest It's Not Warm But Cold

If you believe it or not, but while I was reading the last blogpost from the "homefront", I had my orange socks on!!!! (Really and truly!!)

That said, further with the trip story:

We took the airplane to Puerto Montt and went directly to the nearby town--- much more pleasant and smaller---Puerto Varas. This small town lies on the Llanquihue Lake and has a beautiful view over the Osorno Volcano.

Inspired by the Spanish and Brazilian teams from the Wenger Patagonian expedition race, Kapu and I decided to organize our own race from Puerto Varas: 4 days with a kayak, horses, and on foot through the beautiful moderate rainforest of Cochamo.

We began with a day of kayaking. To my great consternation, the kayaks were sea kayaks. I had hoped for a calm babbling river, where you let yourself float through the streams when your arms begin to feel a bit tired..... but no, we went kayaking in a fijord. In the beginning, things went well, but then the tide began to come in and we were going against the winds and strong waves were developing......but to be totally clear: it was certainly very nice!!!! We saw even a stray penguin swimming around and we frightened a few sleeping sea lions.

This time we did not take the tent with us, but slept in a lodge. Memories of our hike in Torres del Paine came back: the sparse breakfast of old bread with jam, sardines out of a can, the digusted ready-to-eat dinners....In the lodge the food was delicious. Our breakfast for example was four different sorts of bread, fruit salad, yogurt, muesli, cake, complete choice of things to put on our bread, pancakes and an omelet. And they had a shower!!!!! With WARM water!!! What a great contrast????

On Day 2 we went horseback riding to the higher level of LaJunta, a valley reachable by means of a small path high in the mountains. This is an old smuggling route through the Andes to Argentina, a route formerly used by the famous Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

We rode on Chilian horses with authentic handmake wooden stirrups. That WE feeling came here because the things (stirrups) were a bit like wooden shoes, but they were very comfortable and above all very handy to protect the toes against things on the path that were in the way.

Horseback riding therefore: "Oh", I thought, "that can be done, it surely can't be worse than the paddling from yesterday...". Well now, it wasn't much difference :) It is a good spectacular ride though rivers, over small steep mountain paths dotted with large and not so large pebbles, wooden bridges and tree trunks, meters deep mud and small hollow roads, worn down through the years (barely wider than the horse itself). Unfortunately no photos, it is because of the thick growth being too dark to make decent photos.

The house in La Juna where we stayed for two nights. photo

The third day we made a walking hike through the woods. On our route we came across many bridges and obstacles: photo

And still more obstacles: photo

This is really shaky and moreover it has several missing steps: photo

We conquer all the obstacles:

And at the end we went into the ice cold water (Aqualibi is not nearby!!)

The fourth day we rode (read this to mean sliding and stumbling) back down with the horses and we came exhausted back to our temporary lodging in Puerto Varas, from which point we took a bus to the city of Pucon. There we want to climb a volcano, couch surf (NOTE: we'll have to find out later what that is.) and go rafting, and if that all comes out good you will read later...

Placed by Irma on 16 February 2010
Labels: Aqualibi, kayak, wooden shoes, smugglers