Cochamó

My first trip to Patagonia.

I just got back from four days in Valle de Cochamo, a glacier carved valley some three hours Southeast of Puerto Montt, in the Northern extreme of Patagonia. We woke up at 3:00 am to walk to the bus terminal because our bus to Puerto Montt left at 3:50. The sky was mottled with clouds, and as dawn broke we had a good view from the bus of two impressive volcanoes: Osorno and Calbuco. Puerto Montt is similar in appearance to Valdivia except that it is larger and has an ocean instead of a river beside it. We spent an hour waiting in the bus port there for the rural bus to the town of Cochamo. Jessie fell asleep on the bus, but I had a good time admiring the views of Lago Llanquihue, which is enormous, and Llanquihue national park. After a couple of hours the bus started traveling alongside the Reloncavi estuary, a very scenic fjord with snow capped mountains on both sides. We passed through Cochamo, a tiny town most noted for its

wood-shingled chapel, and got off the bus at the bridge over the Rio Cochamo, a few kilometers to the South. From there we hiked six kilometers East along a small, gravel road into the valley itself. There were a few houses along the road and a couple of people harvesting firewood. We saw two vehicles, and one of them stopped to offer us a ride, but we declined.

We stopped for lunch along the road. Across the valley, we had a good view of a double waterfall. Jessie commented that in Maine, people would build trails and found state parks for a waterfall like that, but here it's more or less ordinary.

At the end of the road, we found the trailhead starting with a horse bridge over a small river.

The first couple of kilometers had fences on both sides to keep cows in and hikers out. There was some mud, a few more waterfalls, and no other hikers. Then the fences stopped, and we had to ford a larger river full of glass-clear water running over a white granite bed. After that we started entering into more mature forest.

Cochamo is home to one of the few remaining examples of temperate rainforest. There is water everywhere, and everything is green. The trees were enormous and every available surface was covered in plantlife: vines, moss, lichen, ferns, and the like. Each large tree was like its own mini-forest with all sorts of plants, including other trees, growing out of the cracks and crevices in its bark.

Every now and then a break in the canopy would reveal multi-level waterfalls coursing down the sides of the valley. We walked slowly, partly to admire the constantly astonishing scenery and partly because of the rough nature of the trail. The path was often steep and was composed of never-ending puddles of mud and trenches worn up to two meters deep by the passing of countless horses.

About four kilometers into the trail we started seeing areas where the path was paved with alerce and coihue logs, a reminder of the times in which the trail was used to drive cattle from Argentina to the fjord with access to the Pacific.

Sometimes the trail would run though deep forest. Sometimes it ran alongside the river. The river was rough, at one point we passed about two kilometers of continuous, big rapids. The water is very clear up close and from father away has a sort of electric blue-green color. We climbed down from the path to explore part of the river.

Eight kilometers into the hike, we arrived at a clearing with our first good view of the interior of the valley. Bald granite peaks on both sides were covered with rainforest below, snow on top, and countless waterfalls in between.

We had to stop for about half an hour to take it all it (and eat GORP). After another hour of slogging through mud and enjoying the views we arrived at the campground, La Junta. We set up our cheap, Wal-Mart tent and decided to take a nap. The campground manager came by while we were getting settled in we chatted a while. His name was Daniel, and he turned out to be a North American transplant who lightly poked fun at us for speaking with him in Spanish. He recommended a trail for us for the next day, collected our camping fee, and invited us to stop by the Refugio (lodge) later to look at maps and get descriptions of other trails. We decided to visit the Refugio after a nap (it was about 7:30pm, and we started this trip at 3:00 that morning). Unfortunately we didn't set an alarm and instead of taking a nap we ended up sleeping through the night.

The next morning we climbed Cerro Arco Iris, following the directions Daniel had given us the day before. The trail was steep and muddy, and it had started to rain before we left the tent (I was very happy to have an opportunity to use my brand new--and very expensive-- raingear). We took a slight detour to look for water and filled up right below an incredible waterfall that Daniel had neglected to mention.

The trail up the mountain was steep and muddy and passed through more incredible, old-growth rainforest. After gaining a considerable amount of elevation, we passed into alerce forest. Even though neither of us had seen an alerce before, we instantly recognized it when we saw it. They're often called the Sequoias of South America and with good reason. The trees are enormous in girth (though they don't nearly rival sequoias in height), and some of the trees we saw were well over a thousand years old. The canopy opened up too, affording intermittent views of the craggy domes of Cochamo, looming out of the fog and clouds.

We couldn't see as much of the mountains as on a clear day, but the mist lent an atmosphere of mystery to the landscape that was equally impressive. The combination of giant trees, swirling fog, and soaring granite cliffs was like an image struck directly from my conception of an exotic, wild South America.

About three hours into the climb, we came to a section of the trail where the path went from steep, to almost vertical, and we had to progress by scaling exposed roots and scrambling up cracks in the boulders. Jessie said it reminded her of the movie Avatar; I concurred. At one point the trail dead-ended with a cliff on one side, and a very, very long drop on the other. Someone had installed fixed ropes up the cliff, and the only way to keep going was to hand over hand climb more or less directly up.

(What you don't see in this picture is the 1,000+ ft drop on the other side of the camera.)

After the climbing section, we passed through more alerce forest. Over a certain altitude, we started hiking through a cloud, and the view was all the more restricted until the world beyond the mountainside was a pure sheet of white. Before we reached the summit, we met with the snowline and had to turn around.

By the time we made it back to camp, we were both thoroughly soaked. We met some climbers from Osorno in the fogon, a communal shelter with a firepit, and they shared some soup with us while we tried to dry out our gear a bit. We also met a couple from Belgium who had also climbed Cerro Arco Iris. They were even wetter than we were. Later than evening we went to the Refugio to get directions for our next hike.

The next morning, we were planning on climbing the other side of the valley, but when we woke it was raining as steadily as ever, so things looked sketchy. Our tent, by some miracle, never failed us, and we were dry and warm both nights. With two full days of rain, hiking uphill was a slippery proposition, and descending was more like skating than walking. With this in mind, and considering all our gear was soaked from the day before, we opted to explore around the base of the valley in the morning, and spend the afternoon relaxing in the Refugio. The plus of all that rain was the spectacular condition of the waterfalls. The waterfall we had filled our bottles from the day before (pictured above) had at least twice the volume, a thundering torrent that had to be seen to be believed. In addition, hundreds of new falls appeared down the sides of the granite domes.

The Refugio was located on the other side of the river, and to get there you have to cross in a cable car.

The lodge itself is a charming wood building with a wrap-around porch affording a wonderful view of the valley. We had reserved a private room there for our last night in Cochamo. We arrived shortly after noon, and I spent the afternoon playing guitar, reading Garcia Marquez with Jessie, and chatting with the hosts. The staff consisted of Moni, an older Argentinian lady, Jupi, a girl a few years older than me (also from Argentina), and Daniel, the US expat. It was very pleasant to pass the day in the kitchen, next to the woodfired stove, drinking tea and talking with Jupi and Moni as they prepared dinner (really excellent pizza).

The next morning we woke up early to follow a "you can't leave without trying this" recommendation from Daniel: the Toboggan. To get there, we ran to the Rio Cochamo and cabled across. Then we had to ford another, smaller river on foot, which turned out to be quite a challenge. It was above my knees and moving very fast. Another ten minutes of following the smaller river (Rio la Junta) through the rainforest found us at the Toboggan, a waterfall over a smooth, granite slope. We didn't bring the camera because we didn't want to risk losing it while fording the river, so we didn't take any pictures, but here's one of the Toboggan in the summer that I stole from the Refugio's website:

Due to the heavy rainfall, it was much less like a waterslide and much more like a waterfall when we got there (imagine a lot more water than you see in the picture). It's a snowmelt fed river, so it was pretty darned cold too. We had borrowed a 5mm wetsuit for Jessie, but they didn't have any in my size, so I opted for just swearing loudly to deal with the temperature. The first time I tried to cross to get to the falls, I slipped, fell in, and got swept about 30m downstream before I could escape from the current. We eventually found a safer way across, and jumped down the waterfall two or three times before I felt like I was dying from the cold.

We hiked back to the Refugio, dried off, warmed up, packed up, and started down. We thought the bus for Puerto Varas would pass at 4:00pm, and we left at 11:30 am, so we were trucking it to make it out in time. It turned out that the bus didn't come until 5:00, so we had time to eat most of our leftover food at the side of the highway.

Fell asleep on the bus. Found a little Peruvian restaurant in Puerto Varas, ran into the Belgians from Cochamo in the busport, and slept again on the bus to Valdivia. It was raining in Valdivia when we arrived at midnight, so we splurged on a taxi ($3) instead of hoofing it back to Isla Teja.