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Published: April 12th 2006
The Nahuel Huapi Traverse for some reason wasn´t something I wanted to do by myself. The Universe must have heard me: The afternoon before I was going to start the track I bumped into Ingo, whom I had met in Torres Del Paine. I knew he was going to do the traverse and so it was easy enough to convince him to get his shopping done PRONTO! The next day we hit the mountains!
And, hard to believe but true, the weather was (almost) perfect ONCE AGAIN. Lazy as we are we took the gondola up to the first pass from where it was going to be rocky up and down along the ridge for a few hours to another pass called "Mancha de futbol" and from there another 2 or 3 hours down again to some Lago (forgot the name). As always we were carrying our tents plus all the other camping gear only to find out that there were HUTS along the entire track! When we arrived at the first Hut a Spanish group of middle aged guys were just being served a huge PIZZA!! Oh my god, I couldn't believe it!! Trekking in the wild and here
we go watching these chaps eating pizza up here in the middle of nowhere!! BUT we didn't give in to our yearning and ate the stuff we'd dragged up and down the mountains (to heavy to carry and then waste it).
The campsite right by the lake was absolutely beautiful, especially when I got up the next morning and caught the sunrise JUST IN TIME. I peeled out of my tiny tent and stumbeled down the water to sit there in complete awe admiring the colours that the light of the rising sun cast against the rugged wall of rock formations in the shape of a cathedral (hence the name "Cerro Cathedral"). That must have been one of the most beautiful moments in my traveller's life!
The next day we had to cross 2 passes, which were quite steep indeed but gave way incredible views each time. After a long day I started feeling my knees a tad too much, guess all the downhill wasn't the greatest pleasure for those poor things (I'd had minor knee problems for a few days prior to this). From Campamento Jakob we were going to take a route only, which was not
marked at all. The hut warden showed us pictures of landmarks and warned us that we could only go if the weather was absolutely perfect. Quite a few people had died here he told us. Okay.....well then....
The bad news is that we didn't make it along that route, the good news is that we didn't even try!
The next morning my knee was hurting a little bit too much for me to take my chances so I decided to take the easy way out (of the park). Not sure if Ingo didn't want to join the other 3 that took the route or if he simply wanted to stick with me, he followed. After another long day we got back to the main road, from which we got a lift to the next town. Here we found exactly ONE place that could offer us accomodation (there was no campground) and NO Restaurant that was open that night (it must have been late in the season), so once again we ended up cooking ourself.
From there we climbed up to another hut the next day (which would have been our last camp, had we chosen do follow
the route), to discover that the site was another little highlight on this track; it offered amazing views to the myriad of lakes that lay below us. After that 2 hour climb I decided to descent and make may way back into town together with an American couple and a German bloke. While Ingo pushed on to climb another mountain (well, I had a good excuse, didn't I?), we had a wonderful afternoon at a local fair in Colonia Swiza where we were staying and were pretty much completely pissed by the time Ingo got back.
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