We took the metro down to Estacion Central, one of the two major bus terminals in Santiago. We had to walk through a mall to get to the terminal, but man was it huge. It had a string of dozens of booths for different companies and destinations, and several lines of buses heading out or coming in. Within minutes, we found a suitable bus, threw our backpacks underneath, hopped on, and we were gone.
Turns out, these buses put Greyhound to shame. The regular bus was far more comfortable than a Greyhound: you had a little more room, you could recline the seats more, and they were pretty clean and nice. The views coming out of the city and heading into a town called Limache were absolutely beautiful.
The mountains coming out of Santiago, and a bright yellow house in Limache.
We hopped off the bus in Limache and caught a micro (small bus with a set route) to the smaller town of Olmué. This was actually a gorgeous little mountain town that I wouldn’t mind taking a day or two to relax in. Supposedly they do rural food really well there. However, it was not our main attraction for the day. We soon caught another micro that dropped us off at the bottom of the hill to one of the three park entrances for Parque Nacional La Campana.
A view of Cerro La Campana from within the park.
Here, I was greeted with the first realization that as a foreigner, I will get charged more for parks here whether I like it or not. It was 1,500 pesos apiece to enter the park, and another 6,000 pesos to camp overnight – a total of 9,000 pesos (roughly $18). I know that’s probably cheap, but it was at least a thousand or so pesos more than a Chilean would have to pay. Boo hiss.
I have to say, though, the cost was well worth it. Patrick and I had our pick among the campsites, and chose one under the trees by a stream set off a bit from the trail. We tossed down our packs and were then off to explore the trails. The park itself covers 8,000 hectares and was designated a World Biosphere Reserve in 1984 by UNESCO, mainly to protect an endangered palm species. The main draw of the park, though, is Cerro La Campana, a breathtaking mountain that Charles Darwin climbed in 1834. This was extremely exciting to the biology nerd buried inside me. Sadly, the trails to its summit were closed, and we could only make it about halfway up before I got frustrated with the tree cover and made the executive decision to find some decent views of the valley from an adjoining mountain that we saw through all the trees.
Panorama looking towards the mountain we were going to climb next.
So we took a different trail up to the adjoining mountain and found some things along the way. For one, the place must be used by ranchers because there were several signs of cows left behind (ahem, cow pies). Secondly, a couple abandoned mines had been fenced off and led to who-knows-where under the mountains. The first one wasn’t very deep, maybe fifty feet, but the second one stretched on for quite awhile.
An abandoned mine; they were probably exploring for minerals or copper.
We climbed a little higher up above the mines to watch the sun set and cast a reddish glow on Cerro La Campana up above us. It made me really want to come back and climb that peak, because on a good day, you can see clear to Santiago and the Andes in one direction, and possibly clear to the ocean on the other.
Panorama looking towards Cerro La Campana at sunset.
As it started getting dark, we scrambled down to camp. Patrick set up the tent while I started preparing dinner. He definitely pulled out all the stops for this one; no nasty camping food. We had sandwiches with avocado and tomato for an appetizer, followed by Mexican rice with sliced salami in it, then some chocolates for dessert.
After clean-up, we grabbed our flashlights and headed back up the trail to watch the stars. Sadly, the moon was a quarter to a half full, so it obscured about half of the night sky. The other half, though – I have never seen stars like this, not even in Peru (mostly because it was so cloudy and rainy, and when it wasn’t, we hit a week with a full moon in the rainforest). The stars were ridiculous. The Southern Cross, which I have never looked at closely before, was right overhead of us. We could also see the wispy strands of the Milky Way as the backdrop. There were several shooting stars, and some really fast moving plane – military? – but we didn’t see any satellites. Interesting. After a while watching stars, it started to get freezing cold and windy, so we packed it back down into the tree cover and took refuge in the tent.
The next morning, I managed to kick Patrick out of the tent early because I needed to make it back to my hostel for the visa process that morning (and I still want to strangle whoever scheduled that at the Ministry – 11 o’ clock meeting on a Sunday when we were supposed to have the entire weekend free!). We met a very interesting micro driver and chatted with him on his break. He spoke Spanish, German, and a little bit of English, and told us about how he was saving to take a trip down south to Patagonia next year. Definitely not your average micro driver. We shared our cookies and stories, and then off he took us to catch a bus back to Santiago. We got a nice view of Olmué in the morning, watching the sun come up over the mountains.
A bus stop in Olmué, and the mountains rolling into Santiago.
Our driver made an unscheduled stop to let us off for a bus heading back to Santiago. We climbed on, watched the mountains as we were coming into the valley of Santiago, and then passed out for the remainder of the ride. I then got back to my hostel about 20 minutes before my meeting – no problems! And then my orientation with the Ministry of Education started…
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