Chaitén Reborn

Almost every year, when I head to South America for the summer, I look forward to revisiting the Chilean port of Chaitén – in reality, a modest ferry terminal that connects the major port of Puerto Montt with the Carretera Austral, the southern highway that winds through an area as wild as the Alaska Panhandle.

I first saw Chaitén in 1992, while updating a guidebook, and the view of the Andes rising steeply behind the shoreline was unforgettable. At that time, the town and its surroundings had only about 3,600 inhabitants, but it would soon become one of the access points to Parque Pumalín, the audacious forest conservation project of the late environmental philanthropist Douglas Tompkins. I revisited regularly, but there was a hiatus in 2008, when a surprise eruption of the town’s namesake volcano forced its evacuation.

For a time, Chaitén was a Chilean Pompeii – the volcano did not set the town on fire, but waterlogged ash flowed down the Río Blanco to bury many of its wooden houses under two meters or more of cement-hard debris. The Chilean government tried to move the settlement north, to a more protected area but, while visiting Futaleufú a year later, I drove to Chaitén for the day and found, to my surprise, that a quite a few residents had decided to return. The mountain was still smoking, and many houses and vehicles barely showed beneath the ash, but several residents had cleaned up their properties – including a couple waterfront hotels – and forced the government to provide tanks of potable water.

I’ve had my doubts about Chaitén – and probably wouldn’t invest in local real estate – but seven years later I’m impressed by the effort to rebuild. Last January, I saw a new regional airport, new ferry installations, a new park and playground along the river, and private initiatives including a sparkling new hostel, restaurants, and even an appealing food truck (not so long ago, its espresso would have been unthinkable here). There’s a trail to the top of the volcano now and, while Chaitén is no luxury destination, it’s a rewarding one. I look forward to returning again in November.

Chile's Climbing Philanthropist

Recently, Nepal’s Mount Everest made international headlines when several climbers descending from the summit died from various causes. Obviously, successful expeditions draw less attention than unsuccessful ones, but it’s still worth noting that, just a few days earlier, ten Chileans under the leadership of Rodrigo Jordán reached the world’s highest summit and descended successfully. This was the fifth Chilean expedition to stand atop the world’s highest summit; in 1992, Jordán headed the first.

I met Jordán, who has a PhD from Oxford, on an expedition cruise with the Chilean operator Antarctica XXI in 2004. Over the course of a week sailing the waters of the South Shetland Islands and the Antarctic Peninsula, with plenty of time to chat on board, I learned about his consulting company Vertical, and about their leadership courses for the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School.

Startlingly, to me at least, Jordán told me that Vertical took urbane business students from around the world for a week trekking and snowshoeing on King George Island – although its airfield (pictured above) makes it the gateway to the area, ice and snow cover 90 percent of the island. As a Wharton official told me, “Instead of being in a hot and safe classroom, the student has to make decisions under harsh conditions, and ambiguous and constantly changing situations.”

Of course, Vertical does team-building courses in less extreme environments that appeal to businesses such as banks and mining companies. While researching an article on the company for Latin Trade magazine, I found out that Jordán was also a philanthropist whose non-profit Fundación Vertical does many of the same things for underprivileged children, focusing on outdoor education. It’s worth noting that he earned his Oxford doctorate with a thesis on innovation and urban poverty and, while teaching at Santiago’s Universidad Católica, he’s also president of the Fundación Nacional para la Superación de la Pobreza (Foundation to Overcome Poverty).

Despite the magnitude of his achievements, I found Jordán to be a modest individual unconcerned with bragging about his recreational, commercial, intellectual and philanthropic activities; in reality, he appears to have managed an admirable balance among them. Still, in a country that lacks a strong philanthropic tradition, with huge disparities between haves and have-nots, his stature among Chileans – if not quite equal to that of Everest among the world’s great summits - deserves greater recognition. Chilean defense minister Andrés Allamand’s recent statement that “Jordán has become without a doubt one of the greatest sportsmen in Chile” tells just a fraction of the story.

Torres del Paine: The Final Word for 2012?

Given the scale of the recent wildfire disaster at Parque Nacional Torres del Paine, and the fire's strategic location, it’s reassuring that things in the park are returning to relative stability, if not quite normality. Those still intending to visit this season may not get to see everything they’d like and do everything they’d hoped, but there’ll still be plenty to occupy their time.

According to a note I received from Werner Ruf, the co-owner of Puerto Natales’s Casa Cecilia guesthouse, Refugio Grey (on the west side of its namesake lake) will soon reopen. Unfortunately, the Paine Grande Mountain Lodge – a key stop on both the “W” (pictured above) and Paine Circuit trekking routes – will apparently be closed for the season, despite its operators’ optimism.

That means that neither route will be feasible in its entirety for the rest of the season, but the greater part of these routes will still be open from Guardería Laguna Amarga, the main entrance on the east side of the park. From there, a road leads to Hotel Las Torres (pictured above), where the “W’ begins; according to Werner, the route is open to Refugio Los Cuernos (pictured below) and even to the Valle Francés, but not from the rustic Campamento Italiano to Paine Grande. This means that trekkers will have to turn around and go back to Las Torres, but that’s still a rewarding three-day excursion.

From Laguna Amarga or Las Torres (which also has hostel accommodations, pictured below, for those who prefer day hikes; some private rooms are available), the section of the Paine Circuit is also open along the Río Paine to Campamento Serón (about four hours on the trail). It continues from Serón to Refugio Dickson (about six hours), and from Dickson to Campamento Los Perros (another five hours or so). Again, however, this means backtracking to Las Torres or Laguna Amarga, rather than completing the circuit by continuing over the north side of the Paine range to Lago Grey and beyond. That’s not likely until the end of the year.

Argentina Travel Adventures: a Reminder

So that nobody forgets, I'll repeat that my new Sutro Media iPhone app, Argentina Travel Adventures, is now on sale at the iTunes Store for just $2.99. Also designed for the iPad and iPod Touch, it’s an ideal resource for researching your trip to the buoyant capital city of Buenos Aires, the thundering Cataratas of Iguazú, the wine country of Mendoza, Patagonia’s groaning Glaciar Moreno, and many other destinations. In the near future, there will be a comparable app for Chile.

Paine Catches Fire

It won’t be a Happy New Year in Torres del Paine. Four days ago, a careless camper – tentatively identified as a 23-year-old Israeli - apparently started a fire that, in dry and windy conditions, has burned some 11,000 hectares in and around Lago Grey. Flaming in the vicinity of Cerro Paine Grande (pictured below), a 3,050-meter peak in the heart of both the week-long Paine Circuit and the shorter “W” route, the fire has not yet reached the size of the 2005 event set off by an equally careless Czech, which scorched 15,470 hectares.

At the same time, the present fire is in an even less accessible area and, unless cooler, wetter weather intervenes, it could get worse. As of yesterday, according to a note from my friend Hernán Jofré, a partner in an adventure travel company in the gateway city of Puerto Natales (pictured below), “all the trekking circuits are closed, the winds are blowing more than 70 km per hour, and there’s no sign of rain.” Structures in danger include Estancia Lazo, Hotel Grey, and the Conaf’s park administration offices.

Crews from Chile and Argentina are fighting the fire but, according to Hernán, the only thing that can really stop it is lots of rain for many hours. It’s encouraging that today’s forecast suggests cooler temperatures, higher humidity, and lighter winds, but tomorrow the weather’s due to clear and the winds may pick up again.

Meanwhile, all tourists have been evacuated from the park and, in Hernán’s words, it’s getting crowded in town: “Natales’s hotel capacity is at its maximum, and the tourists are changing their itineraries to go to El Calafate and El Chaltén,” across the border in Argentina.

While the fire is an environmental disaster, it’s also likely to be an economic disaster for Natales and the entire Magallanes region, despite the current 100 percent hotel occupancy. In all likelihood, may visitors will cancel their reservations or move to the Argentine side, where recreational resources are similar but, even then, this will put pressure on accommodations and other services in Parque Nacional Los Glaciares and vicinity.

Despite the fire’s size, it has only burned about six percent of the park’s surface. That leaves a lot more than hasn’t burned and, until things shake out, it might be wise not to cancel reservations too soon. There’s a great deal to see and do even outside the park boundaries, in one of the world’s wildest and most beautiful regions. Consider, for instance, a catamaran excursion from Natales to the glaciar-filled Fiordo de la Montaña (pictured above).

Meanwhile, Where There’s Smoke…

It won’t be in Buenos Aires bars and restaurants. As of the new year, city legislation will close a loophole that allowed restaurants and bars above a certain size to establish presumably well-ventilated areas in which nicotine junkies could indulge their habit. The sensible rationale is that such areas expose employees to toxic substances, but it will be interesting to see if the legislation includes patio spaces, where smokers have habitually lit up with impunity. Unfortunately, surrounding Buenos Aires province, the largest political entity in the country, lags behind the city in its tobacco-control legislation.

Argentina App Update!

As I wrote earlier, my new Sutro Media iPhone app, Argentina Travel Adventures, is now on sale at the iTunes Store for just $2.99. Also suitable for the iPad and iPod Touch, it’s a suitable post-season gift for someone you may have overlooked – at the same time, keep your eye on this space for a possible special announcement.

Meanwhile, I continue to work on a separate app for Chile, which I hope to finish by February.

Return of the "Mercado Paralelo"

When I visited and lived in Buenos Aires in the early to mid-1980s, changing money was a nightmare, as out-of-control inflation – sometimes exceeding 50 percent per month - undercut the peso ley and its successors, the peso argentino (pictured above) and the austral (pictured below). With their currency depreciating rapidly, Argentines fueled the fire by spending their paychecks immediately on durable goods like automobiles that held their value, and by purchasing dollars.

That lasted until President Carlos Menem’s “convertibility” policy, implemented by Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo, fixed the new peso at par with the dollar in 1991. In the interim, it was a “Wild West” for currency traders who respected official exchange rates in public but made their profits in a behind-the-scenes mercado paralelo, the most common euphemism for the black market.

For Argentines and foreigners, purchasing or selling dollars at the official rate would have been economic suicide, but changing on the black market had its own risks. In the days before ATMs, I carried a relatively small amount of US cash and a larger amount of travelers’ checks (which were a bureaucratic nightmare to cash even at official rates) for safety.

Just about everybody in Buenos Aires knew somebody who knew somebody who had a connection to a backroom moneychanger, but it was hard for foreigners who had few or no Argentine friends. The way it worked, that person gave you a phone number and, when you called, an anonymous voice would ask how much you wanted to change. That person would then give you an address and a time to meet.

At that address, at the time indicated, you would ring the bell and enter an office furnished with nothing more than a table and chair. The meeting was perfunctory – hand over the dollars, sign the travelers’ checks, and take your australes. Obviously, such a situation could have been a setup, and we never felt totally comfortable. In our case at least, we were never even cheated (though they paid less for travelers’ checks than for cash dollars).

The mercado paralelo reappeared after the economic meltdown of 2001, when arbolitos (street changers, so called because they were planted in one spot like a street tree) made their appearance in La City, as the Buenos Aires financial district is known. Despite a massive devaluation, that peso has survived, but the mercado paralelo has once again reappeared, fueled by the exchange controls imposed by the government of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

I probably won’t be back in Buenos Aires until early next year, but my friend Nicolás Kugler has provided an on-the-ground update: “Apparently arbolitos vanished once the government set more strict controls, and a sort of tax police started to wander around the banking district. I guess the mercado paralelo now is physically less obvious than the 80s one, but their rates are shown by some newspapers (not the pro-Kirchner ones) occasionally. I can imagine in the near future a government ban on reporting exchange rates, as they did with inflation.”

“Anyway,” he adds, “this city was built on contraband, so happily the people's will will prevail. As I understand it, for the ordinary citizen (including tourists) there is no other way to exchange dollars other than the official market with all its regulations, unless one knows someone who does that in a cueva (not necessarily a dark room, it could also be a travel agency).”

I had never heard the term cueva (cave) used to describe a place where clandestine exchanges take place, but I find it very evocative. It is not, he says, a traditional lunfardo (local slang) term, but it "has traditionally been referred to as any place for hiding, and with such meaning it adapted very well to the local financial world."

For what it's worth, the official rate stands at 4.29 pesos to the dollar, while the parallel rate recently dropped from five-pesos-plus to 4.75, pleasing the government in its "day to day fight against their axis of evil."

Paine in Winter

I have never visited Torres del Paine in winter – though I once experienced a whiteout snowstorm in mid-summer. Recently, though, I received a message from reader Steve Behaegel, of Merelbeke, Belgium, with a link to his blog detailing his own winter hiking trip on the “W” route. The photographs accompanying the entry are stunning, and his advice to winter hikers is well worth reading.

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The Huella Andina: Northern Patagonia's New Trekking Trail

Begun over a decade ago, the Sendero de Chile is an ambitious project to create a foot, bicycle and horseback trail that runs the length of one of the world’s longest countries. Argentina hasn’t yet attempted anything quite so ambitious but, soon enough, a 560-km Huella Andina (Andean Trail) through five northern Patagonian national parks should unite Lago Aluminé, in Neuquén province, with the Baguilt area near Trevelin, in Chubut province.

Like the Sendero de Chile, the Huella Andina will integrate a series of existing forest footpaths to provide a long-distance hiking alternative that could become a major trekking attraction – perhaps comparable to California’s 211-mile (340 km) John Muir Trail through the Sierra Nevada. From north to south, it will pass through Parque Nacional Lanín, Parque Nacional Nahuel Huapi, Parque Nacional Los Arrayanes, Parque Nacional Lago Puelo and Parque Nacional Los Alerces. It will also pass through equally scenic areas such as El Bolsón, which are not (yet, at least) part of any national park.

Another way of considering the trail may be “From the Araucarias to the Alerces.” On the Argentine side of the Andes, as in Chile, the monkey puzzle tree and the false larch (also known as Patagonian cypress) are both endemic species with a small geographical range. Araucaria araucana (pictured above, it bears the name pewen in the indigenous Mapudungun language) starts just north of Lago Aluminé and ends around the latitude of San Martín de los Andes, though some may have been introduced into Nahuel Huapi. The alerce (Fitzroya cupressoides) has an even smaller range, nearly limited to its namesake national park (the photograph below displays one of the finest specimens).

About midway, the Huella Andina will visit another arboreal attraction – just south of Villa La Angostura, hikers will pass through the myrtle forests of Los Arrayanes (pictured below). While it has a far greater range than either the Araucaria or the alerce, the finest specimens of this red-barked, glossy-leave species are found on this narrow peninsula that juts into Lago Nahuel Huapi).


Moon Handbooks Buenos Aires in Atherton (San Mateo County)
Next Saturday, August 20, will mark the second of several digital slide presentations on the fourth edition of Moon Handbooks Buenos Aires, at various branches of the San Mateo County Library. The event starts at 2 p.m. at the Atherton Library (2 Dinkelspiel Station Lane, Atherton, CA 94027, tel. 650/328-2422). There will be ample time for questions and answers, and books will be on sale.

Atherton, one of the Bay Area’s wealthiest communities, has strong South American connections – Massachusetts-born Faxon Atherton, for whom the city is named, spent 27 years as a merchant in the Chile's World Heritage port of Valparaíso, married a Chilean woman who gave him seven children, and lived in California from 1860 until his death in 1877. He also owned large tracts of present-day Hayward and Watsonville.

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Ash Across the Andes: Chile's Volcán Puyehue Erupts

In 1979, when I first visited Chile, one of my most memorable excursions was an overnight trek to the slopes of Volcán Puyehue, a stratovolcano that, as part of the Puyehue-Cordón Caulle Volcanic Complex, produced a massive 1960 eruption shortly after the historic Valdivia earthquake (at 9.5 on the Richter scale, the most powerful ever recorded). Continuing for two months, that eruption (depicted in the NOAA photograph above) left a landscape that, despite a marine west coast climate comparable to Seattle or Portland, was no less barren than the Atacama Desert.

At a time when Chile received few foreign visitors, I saw nobody else even along the trail's wooded lower slopes, slept in a comfortable national park shelter, and soaked in rustic thermal baths, all the while photographing sights such as the geometric fumaroles and massive lava flows left by the eruption nearly two decades earlier. Since I did it, the Puyehue trek has acquired a certain popularity for its scenic grandeur and its easy accessibility on the international highway from Osorno to the Argentine lakes district resorts of Villa La Angostura and San Carlos de Bariloche.

At the moment, though, this route is closed, and not just because of early winter snowstorms. On Saturday, the Córdon Caulle erupted with pumice and ashfalls that forced the evacuation of some 3,500 people, and closed the highway between Chile and Argentina (some footage on Chilean TV showed policemen hefting stones of lightweight pumice now scattered along the road over the Andes). Guests at the historic Hotel Termas de Puyehue, a classic hot springs resort within Parque Nacional Puyehue, were among the evacuees.

According to MercoPress, the ashfall has also left Bariloche beneath a film of gray; city residents were advised to stockpile water and wear surgical masks if they needed to go out, to avoid breathing the ash. Parts of Argentina’s Ruta 40 were 30 centimeters (about 12 inches) deep in ash, making driving inadvisable. It also obliged Argentine authorities to suspend flights and close airports at Bariloche, San Martín de los Andes, Neuquén, Esquel and even the Atlantic coast city of Trelew.

Originally, the column of steam and ash reached an altitude of ten kilometers (roughly 30,000 feet) but, as of Sunday, it had subsided. Presuming it continues to subside, the economic disruption should be minimal but, if it continues, it could have a high cost. After the Libertadores pass between Santiago and Mendoza, the Cardenal Samoré pass is the second-busiest border crossing between the two countries, both for commercial and tourist traffic.

Many Chileans spend the weekend across the border but, more importantly for Bariloche, Villa La Angostura, San Martín de los Andes and Esquel, ski season is about to begin. If flights from Buenos Aires and Brazil can’t land anywhere in northern Argentine Patagonia, it won’t matter how much snow falls at Cerro Catedral, Cerro Bayo, Chapelco and La Hoya.

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A New Antarctic Gateway?

For more than two decades, the Argentine port of Ushuaia has been the gateway for tourist travel to Antarctica, and for good reason. Not only is it the closest city to the Antarctic, but it also has an excellent international airport, good cruise ship facilities (pictured below), and other infrastructure, including accommodations, restaurants and shops. In fact, according to the municipal Secretaría de Turismo, Ushuaia has 144 separate accommodations, ranging from hostels to B&Bs to five-star hotels and everything in between, with over 2000 rooms and 5000 beds.

The nearest city with the infrastructure to compete with Ushuaia is the Chilean port of Punta Arenas, but it has one fatal disadvantage - sailing from Punta Arenas adds at least one costly day in each direction to any Antarctic voyage. Acknowledging that Punta is not a suitable gateway to the Antarctic, Chilean authorities have decided to expand the pier at tiny Puerto Williams - across the Beagle Channel, on Isla Navarino just 25 nautical miles southeast of Ushuaia - in hopes of attracting Antarctic cruise vessels there.

The problem, as I see it, is that without massive additional investment in Puerto Williams (pictured above, population about 2,000), including an airport expansion and major hotel construction, Ushuaia (population 56,500) has a head start that will be impossible to overcome in the lifetime of anyone reading this article. At present, Williams has only a handful of accommodations, and only one of those, the 24-room Hotel Lakutaia, is up to international standards. In total, there are probably fewer than 100 rooms on the entire island, in an area of nearly 2,500 square kilometers (about 1,000 square miles).

Navarino has plenty of attractions, to be sure, but they’re not the sorts of attractions likely to grab cruise ship visitors - a trek through Williams’s wild southern beech forests to the tops of its barren crags - the Dientes de Navarino - is likelier to pull in rugged backpackers prepared for several days of the worst that this wet, windy capricious climate can offer. Providing the services that cruise ships visitors need will mean not just extending the pier by 70 meters (presumably to handle ships larger than the imposing Chilean naval vessel pictured below) and expanding the airport. It would also mean providing services, such as hotels and restaurants, that cruise ship passengers demand while waiting for their ship to sail. That would also mean large-scale immigration, at least seasonally, housing all the necessary workers, and providing supplies in a food-deficit area.

It’s worth noting that Puerto Williams is no longer even on a stop on the Cruceros Australis voyages from Punta Arenas to Ushuaia and back, as passengers on these cruises (which now go ashore at Cape Horn) clear customs and immigration at Puerto Navarino (far tinier than Puerto Williams), without even disembarking in Chilean territory. The crew simply carries the passports ashore at Navarino as the passengers are sleeping soundly on board.

Watching Waterfalls: Solitude of the Upper Maule

Nearly 30 years ago, when I first trekked Chilean Patagonia’s now famous Paine Circuit, I saw three other hikers in ten days. In many sections, the trail was barely wide enough for both my boots to fit within it side-by-side, and it was often difficult to follow.

Today, of course, Torres del Paine is Chile’s most famous national park, and it’s hard to find the solitude there that I and my fellow hikers enjoyed that February - the mid-summer high season for Chilean vacationers. Today, it’s one of the country’s most visited parks: last month alone, it received some 29,000 visitors, 16,000 of them foreigners, many of them day hikers and long distance trekkers. It’s still stunning, but is not the Torres del Paine whose incomparable solitude I experienced in the early 1980s.

So where can someone go to seek wild high country in Chile without encountering hordes of hikers? Ironically enough, it’s the Andean backcountry of Talca, a city only three hours south of Santiago by bus - about the same distance as San Francisco is from California’s Sierra Nevada, a comparable hikers’ paradise. Talca itself enjoys a Mediterranean climate, not so hot or humid as Sacramento (the gateway to the Sierra Nevada), and it’s even closer to the cordillera than Sacramento is to the Sierras.

Last Wednesday, for instance, three other hikers and I joined German guide Frank Holl, of Costa y Cumbre Tours, on a walk to the scenic but previously unnamed waterfall he calls Salto Arcoiris (pictured at top). On the upper Río Maule, it’s reached from a suspension bridge trailhead at Baños Campanario, a rustic hot springs only 126 km (about 78 miles) east of Talca via a smooth paved highway that, most years, crosses the Andes to Argentina. This season, as the final segments are being paved, the 2,553-meter Paso Pehuenche is closed, but it will reopen for the next austral summer.

On a trail that climbs gradually from 1,500 meters, with only a few steep segments, we passed an odd sandstone outcrop known as Los Monjes (The Monks), but much of the landscape consists of columnar basalt that resembles California’s Devil’s Postpile. About two hours and five km in, at 1,800 meters elevation, after sighting several ribbon waterfalls across the Maule, we came in view of Arcoiris, plunging vertically into the river canyon.

This is not a signed trail, and not even part of a protected area. In fact, it’s a stock trail used by local herders who take their cattle into the highland summer pastures. Frank, who walks it frequently, tells me he’s never seen another recreational hiker here even though, most of the time, the guardrails of the international highway are within our sight. We didn’t even see any of Chilean huasos, the local counterpart of the Argentine gauchos, with their flat-brimmed and flat-topped sombreros; we did see a few of their cattle.

Returning to the vehicle, Frank drove us a few miles farther where, after a short hike, we saw the same falls - one of which had a small but swimmable pool, from directly above. At one point, as we stood on a precipice overlooking the valley, an Andean condor glided past us only 20 or 30 meters away, close enough that its white head and its wingtips, separated like the fingers of a human hand, were clearly visible.

The final treat, though, was the 60-meter Salto del Maule (pictured above), not visible from either the highway or the trail across the canyon that we had so recently walked. Even given that the falls can vary in their flow because of upstream releases to fill the Lago Colbún reservoir below, it’s remarkable that such sights are so close to a major metropolitan but still almost undiscovered.

That’s only a sample of what the Talca backcountry, which also features protected areas such as Parque Nacional Rada Siete Tazas and Reserva Nacional Altos del Lircay, has to offer. The five-day Circuito Cóndor, for instance, offers a scenic solitude that approaches what Torres del Paine offered three decades ago.