Chile's Least-Visited National Park? (Revisited)

Laguna San Rafael has the world's lowest-latitude tidewater glacier

Nearly six years ago, I wrote that Parque Nacional Laguna San Rafael, where the ice meets the sea, was Chile’s least-visited national park. The reason, I argued, was that although many people see Laguna San Rafael, they usually do so from the sea, and never set foot in the actual park. This was always a bit of hyperbole, since some remote Chilean parks like Parque Nacional Corcovado—which does not appear in any statistical summary—rarely get any visitors at all. As I recently learned, though, Laguna San Rafael gets quite a few more visitors than I expected, for reasons I’ll explain in the succeeding paragraphs.

The road up the Valle Exploradores

Until the last few years, the only way to see the massive tidewater glacier has been via an expensive cruise or catamaran excursions, but now there’s an alternative. Recently, in the lakeside hamlet of Puerto Río Tranquilo, I made arrangements for a combination overland/sea excursion to the park that allows visitors to go ashore (and some to overnight in comfortable accommodations). Sadly, the next day’s weather forecast forced cancellation of the trip and, with a tight itinerary, I was unable to reschedule.

Hikes to the Ventisquero Grosse glacial overlook start from the reception area at El Puesto

The Ventisquero Grosse, as seen from El Puesto's overlook

However disappointed, I decided to drive up the Bahía Exploradores road the next morning, to the point where the Laguna San Rafael excursions sail. I had been up the road once before, but another twenty kilometers were now open in a stunningly verdant area where glaciers approached the road (though, on this cloudy day, they were not visible. I made a brief stop at the German-run Campo Alacaluf, an isolated roadside lodge where I had stayed once before, and the proceeded up the valley past the outpost of El Puesto, a trekking company that’s built a trail to a nearby glacial overlook.

A new sign marks the entrance to the national park

Thomas Poppitz, Alacaluf’s hospitable German owner, had surprised me with the news that Conaf, the agency in charge of Chile’s national parks, had built a ranger station along the road which, I had never quite realized, marked the park boundary. Thus, without knowing it, I had actually set foot in the park at least a decade earlier. I stopped to speak with the Conaf ranger on duty and he told me that, although Conaf does not collect a park access charge here, it does so indirectly from agencies like El Puesto because the glaciers and vicinity are part of the park.

Conaf's new ranger station along the Exploradores road

Thus, in a sense, the statistics on visitation to Laguna San Rafael (4,728 according to the 2015 survey) are still misleading, though it remains true that most people see the great tidewater glacier—still the park’s biggest attraction—from the sea. That said, I’m still waiting on the day that I can walk the trail alongside the intact ice, hopefully before it recedes too far.

Smaller and larger icebergs break off the receding glacier constantly

A Park To Oneself? At Laguna San Rafael

When southbound travelers head to Patagonia, a frequent motive is the opportunity to see something “off the beaten path.” One of their bucket-list sights might well be Chile’s glacier-studded Parque Nacional Laguna San Rafael, southwest of the regional capital of Coyhaique, which remains one of the region’s least visited parks – technically, at least.

Laguna San Rafael is one of Chile’s largest national parks, where the ice from the Campo de Hielo Norte, the Northern Patagonian Icefield, still reaches the sea. I have viewed the jagged seracs of the park’s namesake glacier (pictured above) - the world’s lowest-latitude tidewater glacier - on three separate trips, but I have never actually entered the park.

In fact, even though thousands of visitors view the glacier up close and personal every year, only a relative handful ever enter the park – as recently as 2009, only 158 persons (82 Chileans and 76 foreigners) actually set foot in it. That’s because the jurisdiction of the Corporación Nacional Forestal (Conaf), which manages the park, ends at water’s edge – where the Chilean navy exercises authority. Thus, almost everybody arrives on catamarans and cruise ships that spend a few hours before heading back to Puerto Chacabuco (pictured below), the port from which they sailed.

On my most recent visit, a few years ago, I took the catamaran Chaitén (pictured above), which sailed from Chacabuco at 8 a.m., arriving at the glacier around 1 p.m. after a couple brief stops to view sea lion colonies en route. Over the next couple hours, the crew shuttled the passengers on rigid inflatables along the glacier’s face - not too close, to avoid the crash of melting towers of ice and the waves they create - on a magnificent day that yielded the best views I’ve ever had of the advancing river of ice and its surrounding peaks.

In the course of my Chilean travels, I have also taken the Navimag ferry from Puerto Montt to Puerto Natales at least half a dozen times, and it still amazes me that, in a world of six billion people, such an enormous area could be almost unpopulated - human settlements, or any sign of population, are virtually absent in an area that resembles the Alaska Panhandle. Verdant forests rise from the sea to mountains bearing the last of the winter snow, among other peaks of perpetual snow and ice, but they remain largely nameless, to me at least.

In reality, except for the handful who earn their livelihood at sea, this is still the nearly trackless wilderness it was when John Byron - grandfather of the famous poet Lord Byron - was shipwrecked here in the 18th century, and when the Beagle, with Darwin and FitzRoy aboard, anchored at Laguna San Rafael in 1835. In one sense, the forested hillsides and islands of archipelagic Chile differ little from the barren wastes of the Atacama desert - there is a verdant monotony to them. Yet in the Atacama the evidence of human habitation and activity is present everywhere, while in the lush south it's simply overgrown, if indeed it ever existed. There is no simple way to orient yourself, other than by the cardinal directions - in general, you’re going north or south.

While seeing Laguna San Rafael other than by sea has been difficult, that’s starting to change. This past year, the total number of visitors rose to 4,728 – still only an average of 13 per day, though that’s misleading because almost everyone goes between mid-October and April. I had hoped to go last January with the operator Río Exploradores, which now takes hikers by road and sea to the park for day trips, and for one- and two-night packages with dome tent camping from the town of Puerto Río Tranquilo, 228 km south of Coyhaique by a mostly paved highway.

It’s not cheap, but prices compare favorably to the catamaran and cruise ship excursions; unfortunately, there was no space available on the one day I had to spend in Tranquilo (which, however, has its own brewpub (pictured above) and several other excursions, like the nearby Capilla de Mármol on Lago General Carrera, pictured below). I’ll give it another shot this upcoming season, though.

Stockholm of the South? The Santiago of Scandinavia?

A few years ago, taking the catamaran from Puerto Chacabuco to Laguna San Rafael, I found

myself seated among a group of Swedes whose tour guide was a Chilean who, exiled after the military coup of 1973, had lived in Sweden ever since. Given my own Scandinavian origins – I had three Swedish grandparents and one Norwegian – I was curious how a Latin American had adapted to the notoriously dour Scandinavian society.

Throughout the Southern Cone, Scandinavians have a history, such as the Norwegian polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen and Swedish explorer Otto Nordenskjöld, whose great-grandson I met a couple years ago in Argentina; Lago Nordenskjöld (pictured above), in Chile's Torres del Paine, honors his memory. Some settled in Argentina, where San Telmo’s Dansk Kirke is a Buenos Aires landmark, the city’s Club Sueco (Swedish Club) is famous for its smorgasbords, and the seaside community of Necochea has a strong Danish presence.

Recently, at home, we’ve been watching the Swedish police drama Arne Dahl, in which one of the main characters is Chilean detective Jorge Chávez, who suspects his Swedish partner Paul Hjelm of racism. Even though Sweden has welcomed many immigrants, that strain of xenophobia is a recurrent theme in many Nordic noir novels, films and TV series, such as Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and Henning Mankell’s Wallander, in recent years.

My Chilean acquaintance, though, said he had found it easy to adapt to Swedish life. In fact, he said, Swedes were not so different from Chileans, at least in their stoic public personae – both behave far differently in private. In public, Swedes’ default behavior is lagom – roughly translatable as “moderation” – but in private or in unusual circumstances, they can be more animated, and far more critical of employers and other authority figures.

In fact, in the aftermath of the 1973 coup, quite a few Chileans took refuge in Sweden and many have remained. I have been to Sweden only once, a day trip to Malmö from Copenhagen some 40 years ago, but I’m planning to go for a couple weeks next May and June, flying to Oslo and returning from Stockholm, where I’ll be curious to learn more about the Chilean presence – and perhaps even enjoy a pastel de choclo at Sabor Latino before returning to California.

The Great Patagonian Ice Theft

In Chilean Patagonia, several companies run catamaran excursions or cruises to destinations such as Laguna San Rafael and the fjords of Tierra del Fuego, famous for their tidewater glaciers. Normally, they put their patrons in rigid inflatables or other small boats to see ice more up close and personal, and in the case of Tierra del Fuego, the passengers even get to go ashore. Meanwhile, the crew chips a chunk off a passing iceberg and, when the excursion’s over, everyone – or at least everyone 18 and over – gets a whiskey on the glacial rocks.

A few days ago, in northern Chilean Patagonia, some unlikely "entrepreneurs" decided that, instead of bringing the people to Patagonia, they could bring the Patagonia to the people by hauling five tons of ice – valued at roughly US$6,200 - from the Jorge Montt glacier to Santiago. The idea was to sell custom ice cubes to Santiago bars but, unfortunately for the masterminds of this unusual project, Carabineros police in the town of Cochrane arrested the driver of the refrigerated truck for theft, and he may face additional charges under a law that protects national monuments. In the meantime, police are searching for his accomplices.

On the northern edge of the Southern Patagonian Icefield, just off the Carretera Austral, the Montt glacier is a rapidly receding victim of global warming. What’s surprising is how the ice-robbers thought they would get away with this in a country where the proposed removal of glaciers by a mining company in the northern Andes became a huge political issue nearly a decade ago. On one level, this ice-robbing incident was well below the radar, except that the Montt glacier lies in an uninhabited area where a vehicle of this sort is virtually unheard of (the nearest town, end-of-the-road Villa O’Higgins, is 100 km south and has only 550 residents).

Moreover, the truck would have been especially conspicuous on the Antonio Ronchi ferry (pictured above) from Puerto Yungay (pictured below, on Fiordo Mitchell) south to Río Bravo and back, which it had to take to reach the glacier. Apparently there was a tip from Conaf personnel but, on the way back north, any vehicle of this sort would have suspicion at the Carabineros police checkpoint at the approach to Cochrane. For my part, I’m anticipating the screenplay for what sounds like a great comic caper movie.

Win This Book, Get This App

Since I haven’t had a giveaway for a while, I’ve decided on a twin killing. In the first instance, I will give away copies of Moon Handbooks Patagonia (whose cover shot is Laguna San Rafael) to the first two readers who can identify the mining company that tried to remove the glaciers in northern Chile.

That will require a little research, but the second part of the giveaway will not: the first five readers who ask will receive a copy of the new Argentina Travel Adventures app for the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. Obviously, to read it, you’ll need to have one of those devices, but there are no other requirements.

Please send your responses to the following address: southern cone (at) mac.com.

Lemonade at Tantauco

A short time ago, I received the news that my photograph of Laguna San Rafael will grace the cover of the upcoming third edition of Moon Handbooks Patagonia, whose manuscript I am in the process of finishing up. I’m pleased partly for ego reasons - I’m proud of the photograph - and partly because it means an extra paycheck (most Moon authors, by contract, provide their own photographs for the books, but there is no additional payment unless the publisher chooses one of your shots for the cover).

I’m also disheartened, though, because most if not all of that paycheck will go to pay for the blown head gasket on my otherwise trusty Nissan Terrano, which I use to explore the Southern Cone countries as I update Patagonia and my other books. It happened, fortunately, within the city limits of Quellón, on the Isla Grande de Chiloé, and I was able to get a well-equipped mechanic to look at it immediately.

That said, it will take at least four and perhaps seven days to get me back on the road - part of the machine work has to be done in the city of Castro, an hour to the north, and the upcoming weekend means an unavoidable delay. I’m not particularly fond of Quellón as a city but, that said, I will use my lemons to make lemonade by boating out to Sebastián Piñera’s 118,000-hectare (456 square mile) Parque Tantauco, the Chilean president’s own Pumalín-ish conservation project on the southwestern shores of archipelago’s big island.

Thursday afternoon I met Tantauco’s Quellón-based administrator Alán Bannister (despite the name, he’s 100 percent Chilean, but with English and German grandparents) and arranged an excursion that will let me spend the weekend at Inío, the park headquarters in the most southwesterly part of the park. In mostly roadless Tantauco, it’s three to four hours away, depending on the speed of the launch used to get there. There are a guesthouse, campgrounds and hiking trails throughout the park, but limited access has kept the number of visitors down.

I spent about an hour in conversation with Bannister, talking about the park’s origins and legal status, its conservation and educational initiatives, its natural and cultural history, and its future as an eco-tourism destination. As with my interview with Kris McDivitt Tompkins, I won’t have time to transcribe and edit it until later this year, when I return to California. Still, I should have more to say about the park after my return on Monday (presuming the fine weather here on Chiloé continues - part of the route crosses the open Pacific, where rough seas can delay departures and returns.

Chile's Least Visited National Park?

Southwest of the regional capital of Coyhaique, Parque Nacional Laguna San Rafael is one of Chile’s largest national parks, where the ice from the Campo de Hielo Norte, the Northern Patagonian Icefield, reaches the sea. I have viewed the jagged seracs of the park’s namesake glacier - the world’s lowest-latitude tidewater glacier - on three separate trips, but I have never actually entered the park.

In fact, despite the fact that thousands of visitors view the glacier up close and personal every year, only a handful of them ever enter the park - in 2009, the last year for which complete statistics are available, only 158 persons (82 Chileans and 76 foreigners) actually set foot in it. That’s because the jurisdiction of the Corporación Nacional Forestal (Conaf), which manages the park, ends at water’s edge, and almost everybody arrives on catamarans, cruise ships and ferries that quickly turn around and head back to Puerto Chacabuco, the port from which they sailed.

That was my experience again on Wednesday, when Catamaranes del Sur’s high-speed Chaitén sailed from Chacabuco at 8 a.m., arriving at the glacier around 1 p.m. after a couple brief stops to view sea lion colonies en route. Over the next couple hours, the crew shuttled the passengers on Zodiacs along the glacier’s face - not too close, to avoid the crash of melting towers of ice and the waves they create - on a magnificent day that yielded the best views I’ve ever had of the advancing river of ice and its surrounding peaks.

In the course of my Chilean travels, I have also taken the Navimag ferry from Puerto Montt to Puerto Natales at least half a dozen times, and I never cease to marvel that, in a world of six billion people, such an enormous area could be almost unpopulated - human settlements, or any sign of population, are virtually absent in an area that resembles the Alaska Panhandle. Verdant forests rise from the sea to mountains bearing the last of the winter snow, among other peaks of perpetual snow and ice, but they remain largely nameless, to me at least.

In reality, except for the handful who earn their livelihood at sea, this is still the nearly trackless wilderness it was when British naval officer John Byron - grandfather of the famous poet Lord Byron - was shipwrecked here in the 18th century, and when the HMS Beagle, with Darwin and FitzRoy aboard, anchored at Laguna San Rafael in 1835. On one level, the forested hillsides and islands of archipelagic Chile differ little from the barren wastes of the Atacama desert - there is a verdant monotony to them. Yet in the Atacama the evidence of human habitation and activity is present everywhere, while in the lush south it's simply overgrown, if indeed it ever existed. There is no simple way to orient yourself, other than by the cardinal directions - in general, you’re going north or south.

While seeing Laguna San Rafael other than by sea has been difficult, that’s starting to change. A new operator, affiliated with Coyhaique’s Condor Explorer and Puerto Río Tranquilo’s El Puesto, is taking hikers by sea to the park for day trips, and for one- and two-night packages with tent camping. It’s not cheap - about US$180 for the day trip and US$300 for the overnight, not counting transportation to the end of the Río Exploradores valley road - but the price compares favorably to the catamaran and cruise ship excursions.