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Published: April 11th 2008
one of the river crossings
FREEZING water and slippery rocks makse for an interesting combination. Later in the week we met a hiker who had lost his shoes in one of these river crossings (at the start of a five day walk) and could not get them back again. Luckily there were a pair of boots left behind at the refugio in his size, cause the walk back out with bare feet would not be much fun.Getting out to Cochamo valley was a multi stage process. Organising the horses was just the first part. Then there was finding and catching the bus, finding somewhere to camp and walking out there.
Catching the bus to Cochamo from Puerto Varas was not such a mission as getting the bus from Bariloche, although there were still moments of confusion. I was waiting at the bus stop minding our bags while Jono went back to the hostel to get our other bags. (We had four in total.) The locals there were all being very friendly. One older man asked me in Spanish where I was going and I answered in bad Spanish that I was going to Cochamo. He said that he was aswell, and while Jono was away, a Cochamo destined bus came along and the man was trying really hard to get me on it. He even went to the extent of telling the bus driver to wait while he came running down and grabbed me by the arm gesturing frantically. He seemed very concerned, and I did not have the language to tell him I was waiting for my partner. He eventually gave up on me, but
I was concerned because we thought there were only two buses a day going out, and that we would now have to wait until tonight. I had been told that buses in Argentina and Chile can come half an hour either side of their due time and if they are early they do not wait, so maybe that had happened. When Jono got back we gladly made the decision to wait a while and see what happened, and luckily another one came around. There must be a new company operating that we did not know about. Phew.
We camped that night in the place that Rodrigo had suggested, on someone´s farm, ¨Los Aryanes¨ just outside of Cochamo town. It was such a pretty farm! Lush green, with a big river running through it and surrounded by mountains. We shared the campground with a horse, so I enjoyed breathing in the familiar scent of horse and manure while sleeping. I do actually really like the smell of horse manure. I am strange.
We met the man with the horse the following morning (they call them gauchos around here, people that work on famrs and ride horses). He took most
of our climbing gear and food, leaving us with feather light packs. This was to enable us to dance up the 18 km track, which was lucky cause the walk in involved quite a bit of dancing - hopping over boulders, skipping over muddy sections and walking along logs over rivers. When we got there, it was overwhelming. I have never been under a 1000 meter cliff before let alone surrounded by them. It was awesome. Trinidad, the dominant face is over twice as high as the Chief, and then there were cliffs just as high every where you turned. It made me dizzy with awe. I felt like I should bow down and start praying to them or something. And that is just the rock. Even a non climber would be overwhelmed by the place. It is amazingly beautiful. A few farms lie in the valley up to a point, but most of the valleys branching off are completely covered in thick lush rainforest which is home to the fuchsia. (This was one of my favourite flowers when I was a kid. I used to think they looked like little ballerinas, and when I learnt that they were from
South America, I decided I wanted to go there one day. Then there was the flamingo, and the peppercorn tree, all, I learnt from this South America place...) The area is also home to the worlds smallest hummingbird, which is about the size of a butterfly. Once, one came right up infront of my face, about 15 cm away, paused in mid air, stared at me for a few seconds, then zipped away. If rock, birds and forest do not impress on their own, there are also stunning water holes, swimming pools, waterfalls and natural waterslides. Oh, and Daniel and Silvina who own the refugio and main campground are so super friendly, and their son, Zenon is super cute. They made us feel like family, which is so nice when you are travelling. I know I am gushing. I sound like a badly written brochure, but... I can´t help it.
We were in Cochamo for 21 days, and we did not actually spend very many of those days climbing, but I am still glad we went. On the first day, we walked up to the only Sports climbing area, just to check it out, and I got stung by
a bee. As I am semi allergic to bees, we took it easy for the rest of that day, while my arm swelled up and went my hand went numb. The bees there are something else. Apparently they were intentionally introduced from Africa as some form of biological control against some so called pest, but they have gotten out of control. Surprise surprise. Not only are these creatures now in plague proportion, but they are evil. They nest in the ground, so that when you walk over them, they all swarm up and attack you, before you even know what is happening. Not only do these bees sting, they can also BITE you. That is, they take CHUNKS out of your flesh for dinner. They are meat eating bees! Silvina said that if you leave a piece of steak out for a day, it will be nearly gone by the evening, just from the bees eating it.
The next day we went and climbed a 350 meter climb called Camp Farm. The first pitch was an Australian 23 slab climb, so a stiff warm up, but after that it was mellow and fun. Quality cracks and flakes all the
way. It was a great introduction to the area and ended in us being totally psyched to climb our fingertips off the next day. This excitement dwindled for me over night as I was up all night with spasms of stomach pain. It was perfect weather for the next three days. In Cochamo, especially at this time of year, three or four days of perfect sunny weather in a row are rare. And I was sick. For the first night we were convincing each other that it must be indigestion. We came back from climbing hungry and I ate too quickly. But after the second day and second night, I was having my doubts. By the third day I was wondering whether I needed to go to a doctor. Then came the diarrhea. My first south American stomach bug, and I am told probably not my last. The next day, I was better, and... it was raining. Some gaucho´s (sheep herders) were camping in the paddock with us that night, waiting for the rain to stop and the rivers to drop so they could herd their sheep in to the markets in town. A bunch of us bored and hungry
climbers pitched in and bought a sheep off them. We payed them to cut it up for us and cook it on a skewer over the fire, all of which I found somewhat confronting as a recent vegetarian. I had never before eaten anything that I had seen grazing on the same day, but it was definitely a cultural experience. It broke up the monotony of dinner choice decisions: pasta or rice, rice or pasta.
Even though the next day was sunny, the rock was all wet, so a group of us - Amile, Matt, Matt, Marinka and us - went for a walk up to the summit of Arco iris (which means Rainbow). It was the best day hike I have ever done. Actually, probably the best hike I have ever done. It even involved a bit of technical solo climbing, which was exciting. Throughout the walk, Jono and I kept looking over at Trinidad, that big beautiful imposing face, which hosts the 20 pitch climb we want to do: Bienvenido a mi insomnia, welcome to my insomnia. It was almost giving me insomnia thinking about it all the time. I was nervous about it, as the longest
climb I had ever done was around 400 meters, and I felt trashed after that. But I was also excited. We don´t have big walls in Australia, and that is part of why we came here. And the line just looked so good. And it was always visible from everywhere we went, calling out to us. Tomorrow.
But tomorrow had other plans. We woke up, packed all our stuff up and left in the afternoon for the two to three hour hike, just taking a tarp to sleep under so that we could leave our tent set up with stuff in it that we did not need. We got to the camp as it was starting to get dark. Jono set up the tarp and I hastily cooked dinner while watching the meanest bank of clouds I have ever seen rolling in towards us. Just as dinner was ready and the tarp was set up the first fat drops of rain started to fall, so we ate under the tarp. The Spanish word for storm in Tormenta. And that is what it was. I have never been outside in such a ferocious storm. The wind was something else. When
it came, it would flatten the tarp over our faces, and usually knock over one or more of our support poles or piles of rocks. Neither of us really slept for the whole night, in an effort to keep the tarp up and ourselves relatively dry. We lay there, bracing ourselves as we heard the next wind gust tearing and roaring up the valley on its way for us, then it would come and torment us and leave our tarp in need of repairs. So we would fix whatever needed fixing, in time to hear the next gust, and so it continued all night long. The rock face became a series of water falls and the meter or so between us and the cliff became a river. As soon as it got light we headed back to the comfort of the refugio, along with everyone else who had also ventured up to various climbing walls the day before. (Most of the bigger climbing areas are at least a three hour walk from the refugio). Once we got back I realised that we had gotten off easy. The two Matts were camping without even a tent or a tarp, and were
close to hypothermic by the time they woke up. We spent the whole day talking to everyone about the storm and it was not a wasted day. I discovered that I could now do 9 chin ups in a row and we learnt two new card games.
Next day we were headed back up to the same place to try Insomnio again (with our tent this time), but Matt and Thomas beat us to it the next morning. They were just one pitch in formt of us and not moving very quickly, not to say that we would necessarily have been quicker, but we realised that we were not going to get to the summit if we had to wait at the bottom of each pitch, and overtaking is not really our style, especially when we did not know how much faster we would be. Plus, being the perfectionists that we are, we want to do it in its entirety rather than only do part of it. So, we will be back... Zenon's birthday was also a persuading factor, as Daniel and Silvina were putting on a big asada (a bbq), so we headed down for that, then back
up to the rock the next day.
We still got to do some quality climbing in. Played around on the Gorilla Face. One climb we did, Mr M gave us four long 60 meter pitches of solid crack climbing, even though it was only 17 or 18, it was constant, and great rock. The decent was harder than the actual climb though, cause we got lost, and ended up down climbing vertical scrub for a while before rapping off some trees. It took almost three times as long to get down as it did to get up. Everything is an adventure in Cochamo. Definitely a world away from consumer climbing. We also did some on The Italian Route on the same face which was very cool to second. Scary leading though, with cracks that are really seams or flares that you can not really protect. Lucky I have a brave boyfriend! On about the third or fourth pitch we saw a condor which was amazing. One of the highlights even. Its wings made such a loud swooping noise and its head looked like the head of a lamb, about the same size too. Our last days also included climbing
with Daniel and Silvina, who had become friends of ours over the weeks. That was fun. We climbed a new climb that Daniel had only put up the day before. First time I had climbed anything with so much dirt and moss. The whole wall is relatively new, so a lot of the climbs were still quite dirty, but still great climbing. The feeling of climbing something that not many other people have been on is pretty cool. If we had more time, and if I had a few more skills I would love to put up some new routes. There is limited potential to do that at home as well, and unlimited potential in Cochamo. Next time...
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Tot: 0.054s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 8; qc: 30; dbt: 0.029s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Heather
non-member comment
eeeeee
man what awesome fun! what an amazing place... can we come next time too... those flakes, makes Booroomba look like micky mouse land. glad to hear such happiness' xx