Hello everyone,
After our amazing week in the Cochamó valley, we had to realign our expectations for the next couple of days since everyday can’t involve breathtaking hikes. After leaving Cochamó, we made our way to the big city of Osorno to get our truck serviced. With all of our driving, we had hit the 15,000-mile mark and just needed the routine maintenance done. Luckily there was a Toyota dealership in Osorno that happily serviced our foreign car. Due to not being able to make an appointment beforehand, we were forced to wait all day in Osorno but they were able to fit our car in at the end of the day and then we were off to our next destination, Huilo Huilo biological reserve.
We had heard many things about the Huilo Huilo biological reserve and not all of them were the most positive. Some people told us how magical of a place it was and it was such a unique experience while others told us it is like a kitschy roadside attraction that wasn’t worth the drive to. We weighed all these opinions and decided to give Huilo Huilo a shot since it was on our way north. The website for Huilo Huilo is something else in itself. It is a beautiful website that shows the very unique architecture of the hotels amongst beautiful forests and waterfalls. On their site, we found 4-5 hikes to waterfalls that looked to be worth doing; from this, we budgeted 3 days there. We knew it would be a little more built-up than we were used to but once we got there we just had to laugh.
Huilo Huilo is a privately-owned reserve and it showed right away. All the hikes we wanted to do were only about a mile to two miles each and were situated right off the main road into the town. The waterfalls at the ends of the hikes were very pretty but they were more of viewpoints than hikes. We ended up doing 3 of the hikes on the first day we arrived since they were so short. On the following day, we walked around the famous hotels and these hotels were really cool! They had very unique architecture that made them blend into the natural forest. The main hotel was even built in the shape of a beehive with a waterfall trickling down from the top and plants growing all over it. We really enjoyed this part of Huilo Huilo but since the hikes were so short, we finished all that we wanted to do in about a day, so on our second day there, we decided to keep moving on to Conguillio National Park. Huilo Huilo will be a very memorable part of our trip because of how unique it was. It wasn’t our favorite hiking destination, but we just had to laugh at how different it was from the other natural places we visited.
After our kitschy day in Huilo Huilo, we were very excited to get back into a national park. Conguillio National Park initially didn’t make our list of places to visit, but after doing more in-depth research, I learned this park is considered a hidden gem and we agree! This park is known well by locals but not by international tourists. The park is mainly centered around a huge volcano with most of the park being composed of the various lava fields from this volcano. The landscapes felt very moonlike, and as a lover of geology, I was in heaven! While Nikki enjoys geology for my sake, the real draw for her was one of the best short hikes in Chile, the Sierra Nevada Trail. This short 7 km trail took us to three separate overlooks of stunning lakes and magnificent views of the volcano. The hike was spectacular and made our list of our favorite hikes on the trip so far!
Another reason we loved this park was because we got to camp on shore of a lake we could swim in! Nikki absolutely loved hiking all day then being able to come back to the truck for a swim and a beer on the sand. On our second day we did a much different style hike that started on the lava fields and just went straight up the side of the volcano to the top of a parasite cone. This was a hot and hard hike. We had no shade all day and the trail was very steep on loose volcanic rock but the view at the top was great! We could see 5 separate volcanos and amazing views of the volcanic valleys. We loved our 2 days in Conguillio National Park, but we had to continue on to Mendoza.
It was right about this time that the coronavirus was picking up steam around the world and we were starting to wonder how it would affect us. We contemplated not going back into Argentina due to the fear of getting stuck there. Mendoza was our last planned destination in Argentina and therefore we would have much preferred to get stuck in Chile if it came to that. Eventually we decided to risk it and cross the border for 3 days in Mendoza with the thought that if the borders would close, we would be given a 24 hour notice beforehand and therefore could make it back to Chile. At the border was the first time we saw any impact of Covid-19. The day before, Argentina stopped all flights from the US and when immigration saw our passports, he didn’t know what to do. In Spanish I explained to him that we had been in Argentina and Chile for 4 months and showed him all our stamps. Once he knew that, he was much more relaxed, but he still had to make a phone call to let us in. Once in Argentina we continued to drive north toward Mendoza, but we had one stop on the way.
Our iOverlander app told us about a place called the witches caves and we thought that could be a cool stop. We were lucky enough to arrive at the caves and get the last two spots on the last tour of the day. It was a 2-hour caving tour through this huge cave system that involved crawling through small gaps and climbing ladders into different chambers. The inside of the cave was beautiful due to the numerous stalactites and stalagmites. The cave gets its name from a very creepy rock feature that resembles the face of a witch. We really enjoyed our small caving experience and it was a great stop on our way to Mendoza.
The next day we continued north but when we stopped at a gas station and used the Wi-Fi, our whole plans changed. We had gotten the warning that Argentina and Chile were closing their borders to everyone except for residence in the next 24 hours. We immediately knew we had to try and get back into Chile as fast as we could. The nearest border crossing was still 6 hours to the north, just west of Mendoza. In that gas station we made the decision that we would have to skip Mendoza for now. We were so bummed because we didn’t even get to try any wine in Mendoza, but we knew we did not want to be stuck there. For the next 6 hours we drove straight to the border, but we at least got to drive through all the wineries in southern Mendoza on our way. We crossed the border at 8 pm and we just made it since the border closed at 10 pm. When we finally drove onto the Chilean side, we could finally breathe a sigh of relief that we made it and didn’t get stuck. At this point we still had the intention of staying in Chile and waiting out the virus in some small beach town. We even had a plan the next day to hike to a glacier, but when we woke the next day more bad news hit.
We woke up to news from the State Department telling all US citizens to come home now if they don’t want to be stuck in another country indefinitely. This scared us, so instead of hiking we drove to a town an hour north of Santiago to get some Wi-Fi. We saw all the news of the virus spreading in the US and the news that every country in South America was closing its borders in the next couple of days. We also talked with both our families about our options and the risks of staying in Chile. Eventually everyone agreed that it was best for us to come home. Nikki and I knew this was the correct decision but neither one of us wanted to say it out loud. We had spent so much time and effort on planning this trip that we felt absolutely sick thinking that it could be done. But the risk of being stuck in Chile indefinitely was too much and we chose to come home. We booked a flight home for the next day and found an overlanding company that could watch our truck. We both cried when we finally left our truck and made our way to the airport. It was a very sad day for us, but we still have hope we can return to Chile and at least finish a little more of the trip before we have to send the truck home and officially end the trip. So, for now, Nikki and I are safely back in Colorado and waiting out all this craziness, but every day we think about getting back to our truck and continuing the trip.
So now the date is May 22, 2020 and we have been back in Colorado for about 2 months. I was waiting to post this last blog until we had good news that we were heading back to Chile, but due to the circumstances of COVID-19 Nikki and I made the hard decision that our trip is officially done. With Brazil being a huge hotspot now, many countries in South America are being very conservative and keeping their borders closed. We just don’t think it will be feasible to travel in South America for the next couple of months. So now we are working to get our truck shipped back to us and we are settling into life in Fort Collins. We are extremely sad we had to make this decision, but we do have some other fun news. Since we have these 3 months at home and we had already decided we wanted to get a dog sometime in the next 3 years, we have decided to try and adopt a dog! We ran through all of the scenarios and we believe having these 3 full months to train a puppy seems like a great opportunity that we will never have again. I am hoping our next blog will be about a new puppy, but we will have to wait and see!
Nikki and Colter's South American Travel Blog 