Banos De Caulle

Scotland is old. I mean, really old. Some of the oldest rocks in the world are in Scotland. You go for a walk in Scotland and you know that you are walking in a finely refined landscape that has gradually approached it’s current near-perfect beauty over the course of countless millenia: the rocks and mountains finely sculpted by brutal ice ages and delicate weathering, the rivers and streams coursing through hard-won gorges and valleys formed over aeons of relentless erosion by the force of the water. It’s a landscape comfortable with what it is, continuing to slowly change just to keep itself fresh, but ultimately secure in itself.

Not so the Lakes District in Chile, and certainly not the landscape I spent the last four days walking in. It’s so new it’s not even finished yet, and the processes of it’s creation are there laid out before you everywhere you look. That’s not to say that it’s not worth visiting, quite the opposite! I’ve got to admit that the four days I spent walking on the Banos De Caulle trail were some of the most interesting, beautiful days I’ve had since I got to South America – and that’s really saying something.

It a stark, and frankly sometimes even slightly surreal place to visit, particularly on your own. As you traverse around the upper slopes of Volcan Puyehue towards the Banos you are essentially crossing a desert. You might be walking across barren white sands and pumice in the blazing sunshine, but through the clouds beneath you there is a glorious view of the lakes and forests. It’s like it’s teasing you: water!

I have seen things over the last four days that I have only ever seen on the television before now: bubbling mud pools, steaming fumaroles, scorpions and almost as many lizards as there are stars in the sky. Oh, and a very confused walker trying to figure out why the large boulder he has just thrown in the river to use as a stepping stone is floating away downstream….

the stars in the sky

I’ve also decided that every trek should end at a hot spring!

As nice as that was though, I’ve got to admit that I found it quite a hard route. Perhaps it was the end of the cold taking it’s toll. Perhaps it was the simple fact that a Scotsman is not designed to traverse a desert environment at these temperatures. The third day in particular was hard work: With photo-taking time it was around a five hour round trip to the Geysers, then another four or so to get back to the area of the refugio. After over 9 hours carrying a load in the heat, walking on sand and loose rock, I was ready to quit for the night. I was reay to hang up my walking boots forever, come to that. I really, really didn’t want to have to go to visit the summit of the volcano.

But when else am I going to get the chance to peer in the crater of a volcano?

“Next week in Pucon.”

I’ll regret it if I don’t.

“No, I really won’t.”

You promised your sister a rock from the top of a volcano, and Villarica’s covered in snow.

“Ah, nuts” *

The 1.5 hour ascent of the last 550 meters of Volcan Puyehue, relentlessly upwards and exclusively through deep, loose sand and gravel was almost enough to break me both physically and mentally (though the 23 minute run back down was glorious!).

As I sat below the volcano this morning waiting for the bus back to town I opened a perfectly chilled Coke, looked up through the clouds to the volcano and thought to myself:

“up there somewhere, some poor sod is having the time of his life.”

*paraphrasing