The day we left Chiloe a volcano erupted on the mainland around 100km from the island, in a twisted way we were actually quite disappointed to be leaving because the view from Chiloe of the eruption would have been amazing, oh well we were on a bus heading for the safety of Puerto Varas and we did get to see the volcano and its plume of ash fill the sky like a huge mushroom – it was still visible from about 200km away! We were heading back to Puerto Varas to do some more trekking in an area we missed the first time we were here, so having left our bags in a little hostal we strided off again armed with our tent for another little adventure. We made it out to a small village called Cochamo and trekked along the cloud shrouded Reloncavi fjord, which was stunning. From here we progressed around 40km with the help of a short lift from a very talkative local and plenty of walking to the town of Rio Puelo. Spent an hour or so just walking around trying to find somewhere to camp with no luck and it was starting to get dark! We were just starting to seriously consider the thought of camping on an old and hopefully disused airfield runway when we bumped into a guy who offered to help us. He phoned his friend who owned some land outside of town and asked him if we could camp there, he even gave us a lift there and some sweets…all those lessons you learnt as a child broken in one moment, yet we didn’t get mugged or beaten up! Set up our tent in a field with the horses and the owner even lit us a small fire in the barn to keep warm by and to cook dinner on, how cool! Unfortunately we woke up the next morning to rain, a big thick black cloud sat stuck over the fjord and it wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry so instead of getting drenched for the day we decided to cheat and caught a local, very slow and bumpy bus back to Puerto Varas. A short adventure but a rather fun one none the less!
Wanderlust for Life
Adventure travel around the world