Chile: Cochamo & Puerto Varas

I spent most of the next day getting ready for my next trekking. Ben left in the evening. I went a bit in the city which is actually very touristic but still nice. I went to a restaurant with great seafood in the evening and met Miguel Angel (we shared a table as both of us were alone), a spanish guy working and living in Amsterdam and who was traveling for 1 month. We spoke for more than 1.5 hours in the resto as well a bit with a couple of Argentinians behind us and with the waitresses. Great evening :)

January 17th, I took a bus in the morning with my trekkin bag (left some stuff at the hostel) and went to Cochamo valley. It's not a national park and therefor no entry fee. Lots of people go there for few days of holidays with friends or family. Mostly Chileans from santiago. The bus goes as far as the road can go at the beginin of the valley. Then there is a 3 hour hike (5 hours according to the information) to a campground called La Junta. It's in the middle of the valley with great mountains around which look a bit like Yosemite park for those who know it. It's very famos for climbers as well. I arrived at la Junta quite early so I decided to continue to he next campground as I wanted to explore a bit further the hike which goes all the way to Argentina. The second part of the hike was actually really boring: always in the trees without views, the path is destroid by he horses and full of mud; really no interest. He only cool thing was the cascade when arrivig at the camp El Arco.

The next day I went a bit further toward Argentina but leaving my bag at El Arco. Nce again not muh interest even if it was a bit better than between La Junta and El Arco. Once back at El Arco, I packed evry thi and left to go back to La Junta where I arrived in the evening.

January 19th I went on a hike to Cerro Arco Iris which is a summit next to the camping. It's only going up all the time and is pretty difficult some times with ropes and so on to be able to climb. The view from the mirrador is amazing. You can see the entire valley! I didn't go al the way to the laguna because I got an inflamation in my knee and even had to go back down to the campground walking backward because going down normaly was too painful. Just before raching the camping I went to a natural slide in the river really fu to do and with the water not too cold :)

January 20th I went back to Puerto Varas where I could finaly buy some cream for my knee which was really not getting better.

I stayed in Puerto Varas until today (27th of january) doing pretty much nothing to try to get my knee back to normal. I went to see the doctor which gave me some drugs to take for one week and told me to put ice on my knee. I'll stay in Puerto Varas until Friday at least...

January 28th I went by bus to Ensenada which is one hour away from Puerto Varas. It's a beach which is at the feet of the volacno Osorno. Super nice view and good to finaly do something!