Hi everyone!
We are still doing well and wanted to give people a quick update! After leaving Cerro Castillo, we continued north on a long drive day to restock our supplies in the local capital of Coyhaique before driving north to the Queluat National Park where we had planned one short day hike to the hanging glacier. During the Cerro Castillo hike, I had caught a mild cold that Nikki had a few days earlier, I guess that is to be expected when we live in such a small space together J, and Nikki was starting to feel a bit run down. We may have been pushing ourselves a little too hard over the past month hiking just about every day. We decided that maybe we should take a couple more down days in between our hikes to let our bodies rejuvenate. When we arrived at Quelaut National Park, I was run down from hiking with a cold so instead of going on our planned hike, we found a cute hot springs to relax for the day. The warm volcanic waters eased our aching muscles and it was a good change of pace from hiking every day. Feeling rejuvenated, we headed north to our next destination, Futaleufu, which ended up being more fun to say than to visit.
Unfortunately, when we arrived in Futaleufu it was evident that Nikki had caught our first real sickness of the trip. She had caught some bug that made her very nauseous and just not in a hiking mood. Seeing as I was still recovering from my cold and Nikki had this new bug, we did not feel like hiking, but the great thing about this trip is that we have total control over each day to do what we want! So instead of pushing ourselves again, we found a beautiful spot by the river to relax for a couple of days.
After two days, we were both feeling much better and wanted to get back in the mountains, so we continued north to Pumalin Park, another private park owned by the Tompson Conservation. Pumalin Park felt like a very different place to the normal Patagonian mountains we were used to. This area of Chile receives much more rain and therefore the park felt and looked much more like a traditional rainforest. Here we did some wonderful hikes through the thick and verdant forests to amazing waterfalls, black volcanic beaches and to the top of a still steaming volcanic crater. It was great to be back on the trail! Another interesting aspect of Pumalín Park was in order to continue heading north in Chile from here, we had to put our truck on a ferry and take a 5-hour ferry ride! Being on the water and able to see the huge expanse of forest was another excellent viewpoint of the park. Leaving Pumalin Park behind, we were both excited because our next adventure was to pick up Colter’s parents from the airport and head to Pucón, the adventure capital of southern Chile, for a wonderful week together!
Nikki and Colter's South American Travel Blog 