This Adventure Called Life: Queñes to Las Peñas and through to Puente Alto, AKA Officially getting to Santiago by foot!

A reprieve from the heat

Leaving Queñes, we began a routine that would carry us through the rest of the investigatory sections of the Greater Patagonia Trail. The general pattern is: leave town on a road, go up a valley to a pass, over a pass or so, and back down a valley to a road that goes into our next town.

The trail isn't overgrown...yet.

From the road out of Queñes, we walked through a friendly gentleman's property, and then began following a stream uphill into the valley it had formed over the millenia. We were still in a fog of firesmoke during a heat wave, so the breathing was difficult, as the air was thick with smoke and humidity. We were happy to stop for lunch at a well-kept campsite where we were told by some locals about the swimming hole nearby. We jumped in the water, and it was such sweet relief from the heat! After a well-enjoyed break, we continued up the valley following horse paths. We camped near treeline that night and continued up the valley in the morning. As we neared the first pass, the horse paths faded into harder to follow animal paths. We were able to continue above tree line and find intermittent paths that took us along the ridge line and down to another campsite.

Looking from our first pass along the trail to our 2nd pass

The area was dry, being a ridge line, but we were able to find water as soon as we dropped down, so we camped for the night and went over the saddle in the morning, heading down another valley to a large river crossing. The river running along the base of the valley was swift moving and narrow with many rapids. We spent a good part of the morning walking along and deciding where to cross (The creator of the route had a couple of options marked on the route he shared with us). When I finally stepped into the water, I was grateful we had planned carefully and found a wider part of the river with smaller rapids. The water was still very strong where we crossed, and a coffee table-sized rock beneath the surface impeded my progress for a few moments. In the end, we were both able to get across safely and had lunch on the other side of the river in celebration.

Fidgit looking out on the firesmoke-filled valley

From the river crossing, we followed more horse/animal paths along a smaller river up another valley and were able to make it nearly to the last pass before town before setting up camp for the night. Waking up, the forest fire smoke that had been irritating our lung and mucus membranes for days seemed to have begun dissipating. Not altogether gone, but I could see more of the sky as we progressed the rest of the way up to the passes we would cross. Again nearing the passes, the horse trail faded at about treeline, though we had become accustomed to changes/disappearances in trail and found our way to the first pass, and then 200 meters down and up to the second pass. Following well-worn animal path, we made it to the third pass, up, over, and down to a beautiful valley and well-worn horse path that led us into the small community of Las Peñas.

Road walking to Aguas Buenas

One of the many human traces at the mouth of the valley

After a short town stay to resupply and use the internet to connect with people, we moved on, road walking through Puente Negro and Agua Buena to our next valley. There are times when we feel like we're in the middle of nowhere, and there are times we notice more human 'prints' through areas - this valley was one of the latter. As we walked further into the valley, the signs of humanity dissipated and we climbed up (you guessed it) to a pass. We were concerned about water as we ascended, so we were sure to fill up before the stream ended. Investigating these routes north of the 'official' GPT reminded us at least every day how nice it was to have a route that someone else had investigated for us while preparing us for the rest of this trip (route finding, mapping, not taking water for granted). We continued up and over the pass, bush-bashing our way through after the animal trail faded out.

Re-entering the forest

We descended the other side of the pass, and again walked for a few kilometers without trail before discovering an old campsite. We found horse trail from the campsite that we were able to follow the entire way (about a day's walk) down the valley. The horse trail took us along the mountainside and past a couple of well-worn camp sites before it spat us out onto the road which led us into the town of Coya. We caught a bus from Coya to meet some people in Santiago.

Making it into Santiago by bus, we met up with some friends of Fidgit's that had offered to bring some goodies down for us - thanks for the pole tips, new gadgets, and goodies, Matt, Mike, and Chris!! After hanging out with those guys and getting semi-cleaned up, we went to meet (in person finally!) Jan and Meylin, the creators/initial explorers of the GPT, who were only in Santiago for a short time. We were able to spend a full day and a half with all of these people in Santiago before bussing back down to Coya.

Fidgit knew what these were, I had never seen them before.

Found horse path along the way

Returning to the trail after our first day off since Talca (nearly a month before) was difficult, but we were still determined to make it to Santiago on foot before we allowed ourselves a proper rest. We knew a dry ridge walk was our next challenge so we made sure to fill up our waters. As we ascended and followed the ridge, we slowly got to see the extent of why we had to go to the ridge - one of Chile's largest copper mines was nestled in the valley below. We traversed the ridgeline all day, slowly draining our water before making the descent past a retaining pond to follow a road. This was right about the time we had both run out of water, so we were eyeing the pond, but its mass of deposits from the mine deterred us. We were able to walk a few more kilometers and find a small stream not coming out of the mine to fill our water containers with. After a night's rest, we followed the road the mine was building, up and up, to our highest pass yet. As we walked along the road, multiple trucks stopped; the workers inside the vehicles offered us water, fruit, and even their sandwiches from their lunch.

Fidgit, Meylin, Jan, and me in Santiago!

We made it up and over the 3,200 meter pass and worked our way down into Reserva Rio Clarillo, where we found an easy to follow horse path along the valley. As we neared the entry most people would be coming through, the main gate, we were stopped by a couple of young men. They worked for the reserve and asked us how we had come through. When we told them, they relayed that the park was closed because of the fires along the coast, so to leave ASAP because we were in the park illegally. As we were already on our way out, Fidgit and I had no trouble finding our way to the entry gate and walking down the road past two more groups of park workers who were re-routing people. They were all quite genial, and we made it to our road walk without incident.

Road walking into the city of Santiago was very different than it would have been in the states. The campo pretty much abuts the city with a small village in-between. There were no sprawling suburbs filled with McMansions and strip malls; there were no shady characters leering from the edges of shadows. Instead, there were people out walking their dogs, talking to their neighbors, and riding their horse into town. As soon as we crossed the bridge into Puente Alto, the city began. People were everywhere, selling wares, walking along the wide sidewalks, doing whatever it is city people do. Fidgit and I walked straight to the subway station and hopped on the subway towards where we would be staying. We had just walked from the southern tip of South America (near Ushuaia, Argentina) to Santiago, Chile!