Survival of the not so Fittest; cerro la campana

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You may have heard that Charles Darwin sailed on a boat called the HMS Beagle and wound up writing a somewhat controversial book called On the Origin of Species. I once tried reading it and would not recommend it unless you yourself are stuck on a very slow boat sailing across the Atlantic, through the Straits of Magellan, up the coast of South America and then across the Pacific. What is perhaps less well known is that before getting to the celebrated Galapagos, Mr Darwin did a fair amount of putzing around Chile and wondering why there were fossils of ocean critters in the mountains.

A few blocks from our house, there is a little hill called Cerro Santa Lucia. Here, Pedro de Valdivia founded the city in the 1500s. The natives would later thank him for his conquistadoring by pouring molten gold down his throat. That is the story at least. A few hundred years later, an unknown English naturalist named Darwin visited. Regarding cerro Santa Lucia, he wrote: “A never-failing source of pleasure was to ascend the little hillock of rock which projects in the middle of the city. The scenery certainly is most striking. . .”. Some time after the naturalist became capital ‘D’ Darwin, the locals renamed one of the ‘gardens’ on the hill and put up a commemorative plaque. The Darwin Garden is pretty unspectacular, but ironically noteworthy as in the middle of it, there is a very large statue of some papal authority. These days, the striking scenery from the top is often shrouded in smog, but occasionally it recedes and the mountainous Santiago postcard skyline reveals itself.

An hour or so northwest of the capital, there is a bigger hillock that Mr Darwin also allegedly ascended, Cerro La Campana. Though not really very high, 1880 meters, the climb to the summit is ridiculous. The trail’s “1,507-meter elevation gain means an average grade of almost 22 percent” (Moon Handbook). That is average. On the way up, the sun dappled trail pleasantly switch backs up through shady forest towards a recently abandoned mine. However, from the mine, the ‘trail’ becomes decidedly less pleasant. After an hour climbing, you reach a sheer rock face where a iron plaque has been affixed to commemorate Darwin’s thoughts on the cerro, which are about the same as his thoughts were back in Santiago. However, at this point in the afternoon, it would be hard to say that all parties were amiable to positive assessment. From the plaque to the summit, the grade ratchets up to about 50% and is mostly about clawing your way up through the boulders and dust while the sun beats down on you mercilessly. Fox and electric koolaid colored lizards watch bemusedly and the condors start keeping a much keener eye on you. The last bit is hysterically terrible, but on a clear day, it is promised that from the summit, one can see the jagged teeth of the Andes to the east and the Pacific to the west. We did not have such a day, or maybe we did but were just too tired to notice when we finally dragged ourselves to the summit around 5 pm. We did have a very good view of the literally hundreds of names and dates painted on every single rock face on the summit. Though Mr Darwin apparently forgot his paint, I assume the Scientific Society of Valparaiso’s commemorative plaque in 1939 was meant to compensate for this oversight.

Around 8:45, as the last bit of sun bled from the edges of the sky, we finally arrived in the parking lot. Any euphoria at being done was quickly washed away by a tidal wave of exhaustion. It seems that not all parties had envisioned a day hike lasting 8 hours. Two days later, cw’s colorful description over the phone was peppered with words like ‘death march’, ‘survival mode’, ‘complete shock’, ‘nausea’, ‘gimp’ and ‘hobble’. Putting our day in the context, one might conclude that luckily the unfit occasionally survive.

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Photos

Darwin Garden
with Catholic bishop statue. perhaps uneasy bedfellows.

cerro santa lucia
seen through nearby building. its a hill with trees and winding paths and little plazas and benches and gardens of geraniums and succulents

electric koolaid acid test lizard
how exactly is that coloring supposed to aid in camouflaging. very different from the dust colored lizards everywhere else in the country

the plaque
"We spent the whole day on the summit, & I never enjoyed one more thoroughly. Chili & its boundaries the Andes & the Pacific were seen as in a Map."
Charles Darwin
My Voyage Around the World
August 17th, 1834

at or close enough to cumbre
nastiness on knee related to frisbee rather than the hill.

Comments

[Ben Witte]

priceless
Nice one Colin, although we actually could see both the Pacific and the Andes. The few times I've gone up El Roble I've never been able to see the ocean, so the water sighting was extra special.

[Mark]

awesome
I freaking love Darwin. So glad he at least got a mountain plaque.