My six-day trek, which extended to nine days for the riders who met their new guides and horses at the border and continued into Argentina, followed a general Northeast course away from Pucon toward the border town of Icalma. But the truth is that we frequently traveled away from Icalma and wound every direction around the mountains, into the forests and out, tracing a rather squiggly path on the map. Our route varied in condition and geography as we rose high and dipped low, entered the dense bamboo stands and emerged onto wide dirt roads, and eventually left the rainforests completely and encountered the Argentine pampas. The views surpassed all others I’ve seen in Chile, and everything reached an exciting pinnacle on the last day when we found ourselves high on the pampas, without a tree in sight, looking out over the lake district and the snow-tinged mountains beyond.
Here, I’ll try to give a rough outline of the first half of the trip, and the rest will follow in Part III.
DAY I: Antilco to Geoppinger
Our trek got off to a chaotic start as two of the riders missed their bus from Santiago and arrived two hours late to Pucón this morning. By noon we’d finally rounded up all four riders, Laura, Anna, Johanna and Nora, and fed them breakfast. By one o’clock they’d met their horses, put on chaps, gotten in the saddle and we were out the driveway to test the horses and riders. Tornado is one of our crazier horses; he prances and twirls, tosses his head and froths at the mouth with anxiety and excitement. He’s usually only used to guide but Laura was a very experienced rider so we decided to give her Tornado (after a switch with Anna). His presence agitated my horse Moro and together the two of them worked themselves into a sweaty frenzy, trying to compete for top guide horse status. When I stayed behind the others to close gates Moro pawed the ground and snorted, charged forward when I slackened the reins even slightly, and side stepped feverishly trying to break free. After three hours of fighting with Moro in the broiling sun, I was covered in his and my sweat and was frustrated and exhausted enough to give up on him forever.
While the girls lunched with Mathias, I led all the horses to the truck and rode with the driver, Don Hernan to Laguna Geoppinger where we spent the first night before heading out the next morning. The horses ride side by side, perpendicular to the road, in the bed of the huge truck and most are not happy about it. They struggle as the truck jostles along the pot-holed dirt roads and our ride through the peaceful, rural countryside was accompanied by the deafening growl and chug of the trucks straining motor and the gunshot thud of horse hooves kicking the side of the truck. After an hour and a half, we reached the final mile and a half ascent to Laguna Geoppinger. It’s a steep, steep road that the truck can’t handle with seven or more horses. But we only had six, so Hernan shifted down to first and began to climb. We drove up and up, slower and slower until 100 feet into the ascent, the truck stopped. So we inched our way back down, hanging onto the side of the crumbling mountain road with the whole Huife valley spreading out in magnificent clarity beneath us, and tried again. We had no luck so we backed down again and took the last two horses out of the truck. The horses traveled with their saddles on, so I jumped on one (Rebelde) using only his halter and a rope as reins, led the other (Pepe), and followed the truck’s smoke as it roared and rolled its way successfully up to our campsite. It was a short moment, but I was stunned to find myself alone in the Chilean countryside, on the side of a nondescript hill, looking out over a sprawling valley and the rippled forests on all sides.
We had a hot but enjoyable evening at the lake. Aldo, our other guide, lives nearby so he met us there and was ready to help me roast chicken legs in a disc over the fire. They came out oily but delicious and the four girls, still wet from a dip in the lake, marveled over the quantity of food and what a beautiful start to the trip it was. Aldo rode home to spend the night in his own bed, and we five stayed up late watching heavy gray clouds creep across the sky. At twilight rain looked certain, but then an eerie, diabolical red glow began to spread across the bottom of the clouds and it seemed to be a promising sign. Soon thunder tumbled through our valley and lightening fringed the sky but, aside from a few momentary drops, the rain never came. It was an intriguing night, of dry thunder, lightning over the water and scarlet rain clouds. And, at 2:00 a.m. I unzipped my tent to go to the bathroom and was literally knocked back by the brilliance of the stars which had emerged into a black, cloudless sky.
Day 2: Geoppinger to Isolde
I rose early and made a fire before Aldo made it back from his house, then packed away my tent, prepared breakfast, and collected bread from the local farmer’s wife. The first day is always slow because the riders haven’t established a morning cleanup routine. Still, with me doing all the organizing and Aldo saddling the horses, we were cleaned up and off by 11:00. The first half of the day followed relatively flat easy trails down a dirt road further into Huife and the girls were excited and bubbling with energy and self-confidence. We passed Aldo’s house where he stopped to give his wife and daughter a kiss before rejoining us, and then stopped for lunch in a shady area of a field before legitimately heading into the mountains.
The next three hours carried us through dripping, green rainforest with Araucaria, manio, and arrayan trees so tall you had to tilt your head all the way backwards to see the canopy. Between snow melt and rain the mountain paths are persistently boggy and the horses plunge and slip their way up the paths, straining with every step. The last time I rode through, we went torturously slowly with the highly nervous English woman. I was surprised and relieved to find that we practically sped through the same sections with these four riders. None of them had been trekking before, and two had hardly ever been on a horse before, but besides a few wide-eyed “wows!” they never flinched. They kept their balance as the horse jumped two foot high tree trunks and rocked side to side in the mud, they dodged snapping bamboo and low-hanging branches and called for help only when they needed bathroom breaks. In this manner we moved quickly for four hours through rainforest and bamboo until we reached our campsite for the night, a clearing in the woods near Isolde lake.
After Aldo and Anna whooped and hollered and galloped around to chase a herd of cows from the clearing, we set up tents and put the horses within the small pasture made of mammoth, five feet in diameter tree trunks. The girls, who in the course of twenty-four hours had become comfortable, close friends, went off to explore the forest on foot while Aldo cut and cleaned bamboo to make a spit for the asado, and I prepared mashed potatoes and asparagus soup. With another cloudless night, we lay out counting shooting stars (I saw two ferociously bright ones) and listened to Aldo’s real life ghost stories from his solo ventures through these mountains.
Day 3: Isolde to Flor de Valle
After a granola and milk breakfast, we headed out of our clearing, back into the bamboo and toward Laguna Isolde where we stopped for a ten-minute walk along the beach before continuing our trek. The purity of the colors and the stillness of the water make mountain lakes an arresting sight. Only the green forests divide the light, crystal blue of lake and sky, and at Isolde, the view northward provides the first snowy glimpse of the volcano Sollipulli.
One more hour of downhill bamboo crashing brought us out of the mountain to the road. Instead of turning left toward Rio Blanco, we went right toward an area called Flor de Valle and from that moment, every inch of the way was new to me. The rest of the day’s ride was easy in that we followed the dirt road for four hours all the way to our campsite. But the few passing cars stirred up clouds of dust and I’ve never ridden in such heat. My shoulders and the back of my neck broiled and I could sense the four girls wilting behind me with each passing mile. I often had to ask Aldo to slow down, because his horse kept a fast walking pace that forced the girls to miserably trot in his wake to keep up. We wound up and down and around on the dirt road, past farms, local schools, and a cement mine. For most of the afternoon we rode alongside the length of Sollipulli and I listened to Aldo recount just how romantic it was to go off in search of a trail and find it, and how stunning it was to be on top.
Towards 4:00 we crossed a full river and the horses strained towards it, relieved to cool their legs and drink deeply. When we arrived to our campsite in the pasture of a local farmer shortly after, we were all dehydrated and exhausted from the heat. In spite of it, we quickly unloaded and put up our tents, then mounted again and headed off on a three-hour side trip to another pristine hidden mountain lake. The granddaughter and grandniece of the farmer decided to come with us to the lake and they rode together on the same horses, barely speaking but smiling sweetly throughout the ride. It was a painful hour’s climb for me- I struggled to find a comfortable position in the saddle and was sore and sticky. The lake did wonders to revive us all- although only Johanna braved the thick weeds and swam far out to the middle of the lake. I’m from the ocean- still water and lake plants freak me out so I just dunked my head and watched the dirt run off my body in black rivulets before going back to the shore and letting them enjoy their swim.
We returned to camp with newfound energy and I made soup, pasta and salsa for dinner. Aldo left us to drink mate with the farmer and his family we girls talked about the traveling we’d each done and exchanged suggestions and tips. The horses nickered and grazed, trotting around inches from our tents as we finished our wine and pisco and then finally, crawled into our tents and slept.
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