November 10, 2019 – Boulder Colorado
My plan is to post some observations of our journey over the next 10 weeks as we wander in Peru and Chile. Maybe I’ll write a bit and maybe I’ll get a few photos posted, both here in this blog and on my photo website – tap on “Trip Photo Logs” then on “South America”. I’m not making any promises that I’ll be very consistent – maybe my enthusiasm will wane and often we’ll have no, or poor quality, internet access. We’ll just have to see how this goes …
As I go, my most recent posts will be on the top of this page. Scroll down if you want to read what we might have posted earlier.
Our backpacks are packed, we have places to stay, rental cars reserved and we’re ready to hit the road. Tuesday morning we’re heading to South America for the next 10 weeks – we’ll be in the Southern Hemisphere from November 12th through January 21st.
This started out because we thought it might be nice to get out of Colorado for at least part of the winter. That grew into the thought that we might as well go work on a foreign language and, since we recently spent time in France, why not work on our Spanish this time. So, we picked South America.
Our plan is that we’ll spend a month in Cusco Peru, 3 weeks in Spanish classes at Ecela. After that, we’re meeting up with our friends, Karen and Mike Bryant, to hike the Inca Trail and visit Manchu Picchu. Our hike on the Inca Trail will cover 4 days with 3 nights of camping along the trail. They require that we use a guide service so we booked with Llama Path to get us there. Below is an image of the route – not overly long or hard but we do cross a 13,500 foot pass. Since Cusco, where we’ll be living, is over 11,000 feet, we should be pretty well acclimated to the elevation by the time we hike.
Cusco is an old city and was once at the heart of the Inca empire. There is an abundance of historical sites, both Inca and Spanish, in and around the city. Since our Spanish classes are Monday through Friday in the mornings, we’ll have plenty time to explore the old city as well as take weekend hiking trips to Inca sites as well as geological sites. There’s some really cool stuff to see down there!
After Peru, we meet up with our friend Julie Morris and head to southern Chile together for a week. Julie’s main request is to see a Fitzroy cypress – the Chileans call it the Alerce. Alerce is kind of like a Patagonian redwood tree – they are very tall, very old and have largely been wiped out for their wood. We’ve rented a cabin near Parque Nacional Alerce Andino where the trees are protected and we plan to hike into the forest and enjoy the plants and wildlife of northern Patagonia.
Parque Nacional Alerce Andino is one of the parks along a more recently developed string of parks in Chile called “La Ruta de los Parques”. Follow this link if you want to see more about the parks.
Julie heads back to the States on December 20th, to spend Christmas with her family and, more importantly, to take care of our pup Leo.
At that point we’re heading down into the Chiloe archipelago until just after New Years. We’re going to slowly wander the area where, in addition to a lot of natural beauty, there are many old wooden churches that date to colonial times. These buildings are quite picturesque and a couple dozen of them have UNESCO world heritage designation. So, our Christmas and New Years are going to be spent on a remote, isolated string of windswept islands in north western Patagonia where finding English speakers should be harder than not. This area is somewhat off the beaten path and I’m assuming it’s not much of a destination for North Americans. I’m looking forward to having to work on our newly polished Spanish language skills!
Finally, from Chiloe we take a 5 hour ferry trip back over to the coast of Patagonia. We’ll leave from Quillón in Chiloe and land in Chaitén which is a small town along the Carretera Austral. From here we’re going to continue exploring and hiking in the national parks of Patagonia with a stay in Chaitén and another stay in Caleta Gonzalo at the entrance to Parque Nacional Pumalin. This park is interesting as it was developed largely through funding from Douglas Tompkins, the founder of the North Face sporting goods giant. Here’s a link to some information about Pumalin – www.parquepumalin.cl/en/ pumalin_park.htm
That get’s us out to the 10 of January and we’ll start working our way back up the Carretera Austral to Puerto Montt – it will take 3 or 4 ferry rides and some rough road to get there. We’re going to wrap up this trip with a few days in Puerto Montt unwinding before coming back home.
That’s it – I hope this isn’t the last post I get out there but who knows, I might be having too much fun to sit back and type into this silly iPad!
Jim & Susan
It's About the Journey 