But We Kept Going ...

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  Parque Nacional Chiloé, Chile
Tuesday, April 4, 2006

(Photos will be up tonight, around 10 p.m. EST)

I left my theology class this morning in a daze. Five hours earlier, at 7:15 a.m., I stumbled out of the bus I'd taken from Puerto Montt back to Santiago, a 12-hour trip. Walking back to the Metro, to head back to Mario and Alicia's-which feels more like home than ever before (think: soft bed)-I ran into two fellow CIEE students. They asked me what I'd done this weekend, and I proudly told them that I'd traveled way south to the big island of Chiloé. Only mildly surprised, though my three friends and I had gone further south than anyone in our trip thus far by a large margin, they asked me how Chiloé was. I told them it was the most beautiful place I'd ever seen.

Unimpressed, they jokingly brushed me off, asserting that no matter where one went in Chile, the same could be said. It's odd how callous beauty can make you.

Chiloé can only be reached by boat or by ferry, though it sits only a few miles offshore, near the growing industrial port city of Puerto Montt. And that inland sea leads offers stark separation. Chiloé is overwhelmingly rural, and home to an indigenous population that thrived off of the land gathering shellfish, growing corn and potatoes. The island was refuge to many Spaniards who fled the uprisings of Chile's famous Mapuche-the only South American tribe to successfully hold off the Spanish Empire's encroachment. Jesuit Missionaries built a presence on the island in the 16th century, encouraging the construction of small wooden churches across the island, of which over 50 still stand today, painted in vivid, but often tacky, colors.

So what was I doing down there? Fitz Restituyo, a CIEE kid from New York, planned a trip to Puerto Montt, inviting anyone willing to come. Ben, a friend who goes to GW, and I committed to go, but read that Puerto Montt had little to offer. When Ben's Chilean brother caught wind of our trip, however, he lit up, telling us exactly where to go: Chiloé, specifically the National Park (PN Chiloé) on the island's west coast. He called it "La Raja" (translated: "f---ing amazing" or "the shit"). Ben and I were sold, and we convinced Fitz on the basics of the idea. His only condition was that he eat salmon in Chiloé before leaving, because the island is well-known for the abundance of caged-in salmon farms along its coast.

The recommended hike at Parque Nacional Chiloé is a 24 km long, one-way (if you don't get lost), to a "reserve" named Cole-Cole. Round trip, that adds up to almost 30 miles, and we planned to do it in two days on meager rations and with minimal funding.

A friend named Josh, committed at 8 p.m. Thursday night to join us on the trip south, three hours before we left. All on different buses, we arrived in Puerto Montt within four hours of one another on Friday morning. I arrived last, on a bus that stopped at least 15 times on what became a 14-hour journey, vowing never again to scrimp for a what's called a "clasico" bus.

We bought bus tickets to Castro, Chiloé, the connection for buses to the pueblo of Cucao, gateway to the national park. There I got my first taste of a rural South American buses: the driver stopped for anyone waiting on the side of the road, often driving in one-kilometer spurts. By the time we arrived in Castro, it was early evening and every bus to Cucao had already left. On a whim, we asked a taxi for the price for the 50 km trip to Cucao-roughly $40 for four people, 10 bucks apiece. Chile had made us cheap, but we weren't cheap enough to pass that up and throw off our plan. By nightfall, we were camped on the outskirts of the park.

Burning wet wood in a campfire, we debated until darkness about how far we'd go the next day. Would we spend the night in Cole-Cole, or try and make it back for the early bus? Some of us had classes Monday. All of us had classes Tuesday. It was cold, and Fitz hadn't brought a sleeping bag, but we figured that we four, smashed into Ben's three-person tent, could produce enough body heat to keep him warm. As expected, we decided nothing and went to sleep.

Fitz was fine until the morning dew set in at 5. His slightest movement awoke everyone in the tent. Despite the fact that everyone was awake by sunrise, we didn't leave until 9 a.m., after asking a Park Ranger for directions. They were vague: "go up the road, cross a bridge, walk up the beach, cross a bridge-you might have to take your shoes off and wade at a few points". Our guidebooks made it out to be a walk up the beach: long, but flat and peaceful.

Off we went, each of us with 10 hot dogs, some bread, some chocolate and lots of water. Brilliant. A bus driver gave us a free lift to the trailhead. The beach was to our left, but we wandered into the hills trying to avoid the marshy tide pools, which we eventually had to wade through. Three quarters of the hike's distance is covered by walking up a vast beach, into which rows upon rows of waves crash into. The surf was at least 10 feet tall. We were convinced it was one of the most beautiful place's we'd seen. But there had to be a reason the trail continued.

At the end of the beach, we crossed a bridge onto the green, wet hillside facing the beach. The natural vegetation looked like a surrealistically sculpted Japanese garden. We looked at the mossy rock formations up the coast, our view framed by the wet, green trees. It was even more beautiful than the beach. Thinking we had to be close, I asked an indigenous man who passed us on a small horse how much further it was to Cole-Cole. He guessed two hours. The hike was only supposed to last four and a half. All that lied in front of us were large, steep hills.

We lunched atop one of the foothills near an indigenous community, and looked at a map of the park posted near some picnic tables. The refuge was just over the hills. It couldn't have been later than 1:30 in the afternoon. Easy. We could go see it, and even backtrack some to lessen the next day's hike, camping at sunset on the beach.

But the trail was steep and muddy through the mountains, often cut deep into what grew into a mountainside, the ruts pockmarked with the hoof-prints of horses and mules. We continued for another two hours, all uphill. Fitz's body language was not joyful. He wanted salmon, not 20 miles of hiking and plain, burnt hot dogs. Josh was hurrying up the mountain, restless and relentless. Ben and I were getting tired.

I should tell you now that Chiloé is known to be a rainy place, where the drizzle begins to fall and doesn't stop for days. The rains were supposed to have begun. Thus far, the weather had been immaculate-wispy clouds in the sky, the temperature hovering in the 60s. Through the clearings in the forest, the views from our now-higher perch were spectacular. Waves crashed into sheer rocky cliffs, trapping bunches of seaweed against the stony face. Back on the beach we'd covered, rows upon rows of waves crawled over one another into the shore. I decided that I'd never seen a more beautiful place in my life.

But we kept going, exhausted. The trail became steeper and steeper. And then, we came to a fence, and it was closed. The trail went no other way. It couldn't be.

Fitz and Josh stayed behind while Ben and I went through the gate, promising to walk five minutes to scout out the trail before coming back. After 50 yards, the brush disappeared, and the light opened into a verdant green hillside. There were three shacks set apart from one another, and smoke came from the chimney of one atop the hill. We were high up, but all of the views looked inland and were relatively unimpressivee. We went to the closest house to ask for directions. The yard was littered with debris and wood chippings. Two broken axes lied near the base of a slowly crumbling porch.

A woman came out, locking her three children inside the wood shack behind her, though they looked out through the windows of broken glass. This was the backwoods Appalachia of Chile. The woman's teeth were triangular and sharp, each with a black dot in its center. Slinking as against a rail as she spoke, she told us we'd made a wrong turn. Her body language and her posture was that of a 13-year old girl, though she could have been no less than 30. She told us there was nothing to see at Cole-Cole, and that the toughest part of the hike lied ahead-an hour and a half more of it. Of course, we could camp in her yard for the right price ...

Gracefully, Ben told her we needed to confer with our friends. Walking away, we gave one another a look to say: "No way we're staying here. That woman might hack us up in our tent and feed us to her children." Our minds were set on Cole-Cole. We'd spend the night there if we had to, since it was now closer than the beach behind us.

Going back to the fork in the road, we found that the trail to Cole-Cole was not marked, and that the route we'd wrongly taken was made to look more like the correct trail. It was as if we'd at once been tricked by the woman and let down by Conaf, Chile's forest service, for their poor trail markings. But within half an hour, we were at Cole-Cole, and the trail was all downhill, steeply downhill.

There was no confusion that it was the end of the hike. The trail led to a pasture overlooking a small cove with gentle surf and a curved, brown sandy beach, bookended by large stone monoliths standing tall against the surf. The campsites had tree cover, and by that time, the sun was soon to set. We'd made it, and we would camp there that Saturday night. The trail wound through those tough mountain kilometers for a reason-to lead us to the most exquisite view in the park.

The major hiking season ended perhaps a month ago. Only three other parties camped on the beach that night. We practically had it to ourselves. The water, however, was far too cold to swim in (though Ben decided to take a dip for the hell of it). Fitz, exhausted, wanted his salmon, but only then did he begin to complain, bless his soul. Ben pitched the tent in some trees. I set the fire with driftwood. We ate dinner (plain hot dogs roasted on sticks with water) and it began to drizzle. We told Fitz the anticipation would only make his fish better. He admitted the view was worth all of the pain, anyway.

A man came by to collect dues. He owned a house on the hill and rented horses to exhausted hikers. Fitz talked him into renting him a sleeping bag. His son brought it down from the house, riding on a small horse and speaking with a distance in his voice. We were officially set, and went to bed. It was Saturday night, and it drizzled for a time. The tent had no tarp, but miraculously, we never got wet.

We awoke stiff, only somewhat rested-four people in a three-person tent and two of them snored-and stretched as the sun rose. The sunlight slanted over the hills, turning the stone pillars in the ocean a burnt orange. We took our time packing. We stretched, watching the surf coming in. Stalling to savor the view, that's what we were doing. And then we set off.

Chances are, none of us will ever go back. Perhaps that makes it a paradise of the memory. Cole-Cole hides itself at the terminus of a long trail on an isolated, lightly populated island at the end of the world. It's the kind of place you tell your children about at bedtime, manifesting itself in their imaginations like a Neverland, almost fictitious in description.

The only notable thing about the return hike is that it became clear the weather was changing. Mists buffeted the coastline. From the mountaintop, the morning's deep blues and greens made the island's coastline a hazy stripe stretching south. We made it to our bus stop two hours before the last bus left, and sat on the beach, lazing on the dunes, talking about nothing.

The buses back were slow. We stopped at every house on the way to Castro to take the rural kids to their boarding schools in the "big town" for the week. When their was no standing room, they sat on top of the piles of luggage in the back, at the bottom of which were our bags. I'd already taken out my valuables for fear of having them crushed by other luggage, much less of the human form.

We spent the night and much of the next day in Castro. At this point, after so many sentences, a description of the town seems superfluous. After all, all I really wanted to write about was the hike, about what I saw there. Stop here if you like.

But Castro was quiet in the off-season, though the surfeit of hospedajes alluded to its vigor when the backpackers come to town. Everything was closed by 8 o'clock at night. We stayed in a hostel for $6 per person, and took hot showers. We ate hamburgers and fajitas at the only open restaurant. Fitz's promised Salmon would have to wait.

The next morning, I went to a market and bought a wool sweater and a wool hat spun and sewn by indigenous hands, products for which the island is famous. We made our way back to Puerto Montt to catch a bus to Santiago, stopping in the island's northern town of Ancud. It began to pour rain. As our last pair of dry clothes became soaked, we finally found our way to a seafood restaurant.

Fitz ordered his salmon. The rest of us ordered Curanto, a local shellfish specialty almost identical to a Cajun Boil-mussels, clams, chicken, sausage and pork heaped on a platter-served with broth and a spicy salsa. The perfect weather had finally broken; Fitz had finally gotten his salmon (though he ordered it fried, which was tasty, but seemed like a waste of perfectly good fish). It was time to leave. We'd already lucked out with the weather, our poor equipment and with the spectacular scenery.

We crossed the inland sea on a ferry and bussed it back to Puerto Montt, arriving by 4 in the afternoon. Ben and I bought tickets for 5:30 p.m. or so, Fitz and Josh for 7. We walked up the waterfront to pass the time, stopping at an atrociously ugly, but comical statue of two lovers facing the water. There, I did some foolish things of which there is photo evidence.

The bus back to Santiago was empty when it left the port town, and stayed empty until its fourth major stop-Tomcod, in a largely Mapuche area-and there every seat filled. Crying children broke the peace-something even the violent Jean-Claude Van Damme movies playing on the small TVs couldn't even do. But Ben and I were too tired to worry. We'd lost hope of each having a row to ourselves, but the seats on the "Semi-Cama" bus leaned way back. I didn't sleep perfectly peacefully, but it was enough to get me home for coffee and then to Catholic University for theology.

Chiloé may not indisputably be the most beautiful place in Chile, but it's now full of memories for me. When I find a better spot, I'll let all of you know.

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Out the Hostel Window, Castro	Riding Back to Puerto Montt	The Crew on the Ferry	The Garden Shore
The Group	The Seas Roughing Up the Cliffs	Tramping Up the Beach	View from the Mountaintop
Waves and the Mist Coming In   Comments!

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