Esquel and the Parque de Los Alerces

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Esquel and Parque Los Alerces

Four meters/12 feet of rain a year--yikes, that's a lot for a rain phobe like myself! Yet the storms and drizzle are what make the temperate Valdivian rainforest and the National Parque de Los Alerces so lush and green, and filled my visit with rainbows.

I'd come to the little-visited park to see the alerce, one of three millennium trees (those living longer than a thousand years), the other two of which are in California. The oldest being on earth is the bristle-cone pine, the second the alerce, and the third, the sequoia, a relative of the alerce. Some alerces have been dated to more than 4,000 years and measure 4 meters across. I signed up for the tour of the Circuito Lacustre to meet these old giants.

Here in March, the off-season, there was only one bus in and one out of the park daily, so at the god-awful hour of 8 am, I joined about 20 others on a old, bouncing bus that left Esquel, the closest town, through heavy fog, wound past fields and rivers and climbed up into the verdant Andes. Once inside the park, we traveled along the eastern bank of the long, forested Lake Futalaufquen.

The bus passed various campgrounds and expensive cabins and hosterias. For those with camping equipment or more money, they could stay longer in the park and enjoy lots of gorgeous trails and alerces without taking the tour. This would be the first of many times in Patagonia when I wished I were a camping backpacker. But then again, on the tour, we'd be taking a boat ride which I always love.

After an hour and a half, we were dropped off and walked a scenic trail that included a fun suspension bridge over the Rio Arrayanes to the boat landing at Puerto Chucao; there we boarded a catamaran for an hour and a half drizzly ride up Lago Mendez and its northern fiord.

The bilingual guide, Teresa, was wonderfully clear and knowledgeable. I'd listen first in Spanish, then flesh in what I'd not understood when she explained in English to me and my new friends, a couple of young backpacking Belgians, Pieter and Joke. On the return ride, my friends and I donned our ponchos to brave the rain, enjoy the ride out on the deck and see more clearly the passing islands, forests and glacier, this latter hanging from the top of one of the mountains.

The boat dropped us at the El Alerzal nature trail for a 2-hour drizzly walk through the forest and past creeks and waterfalls. At the end, we came to an impressive, towering giant, the "Grandfather Tree," 2600 years old. Curiously, it had been saved from earlier logging because it grew in a spiral rather than straight up.

While the alerces are now protected both here and in Chile, they were once heavily harvested, and almost the only old ones remaining are those with this spiraling defect that made them unsuitable for building. I love it when a negative turns out to be a benefit, reminding me not to judge a situation too hastily.
After we were boated back, we had another couple of hours for a fine hike before catching the bus back to Esquel. Pieter and Joke had camping equipment, so those lucky ducks were going to spend a few more days there, enjoying the gorgeous park.

I returned to the off-the-grid hostel I'd found the night before when I'd arrived. I'd cruised down from the bus station and followed a hand-printed sign down a side street. Margarita had remodeled her apartment into a hostel, renting out the two upstairs bedrooms and sleeping in the converted garage. Unlike in the summer high season, business was now really slow, and she lowered the price to favorite $10 when I promised to stay three nights. That first night, I shared with a young Argentine and the second night with a fun couple from France.

The next day, I took a sweet hike in the surrounding hills, then spent an inordinate amount of time finding the El Chalten travel company that runs a bus down the fabled Ruta 40. It's a rugged, two-day journey on a part-paved, part-gravel road through the vast emptiness of Patagonia to the hiking fields of the South. Those with more resources fly, but I was up for adventure.

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