What a wonderful and chaotic trip!!! Lily and Lydia are here to talk about our most recent trip to Cerro Castillo National Park. his trip was by far the one with the best views, but it also had the most unplanned adventures including a spa day, persistent precipitation, sunrise hikes, rerouting, snowball fights, wet gear, and many pairs of socks. We started the trip with a 10-mile hiking day to get to our first campsite, Campamento Rio Turbio. We arrived in the dark and the first thing we noticed when we stopped moving was that it was COLD. Everyone was in so many puffy layers! The spot was along a beautiful river nestled between ginormous mountains. We unexpectedly spent three nights here, but no complaints because we hiked through a glacial moraine and had a spa day. Spa day felt luxurious in the backcountry. We washed our faces with hot water and soap. We painted our nails. We groomed our eyebrows. We gave and got massages. We gave haircuts and beard trims. Backcountry Pampering at its finest.
The next morning we woke up before the sun, so we could hike over a mountain pass. We had to leave early because leaving later could result in us being unable to hike due to fierce wind. It was stunning. We walked past glaciers with waterfalls cascading from them. That night we stayed at the Bosque Campground. At around 8 o’clock a park ranger stopped by our campsite and informed us that we will not be able to hike anywhere the next day because of inclement weather. It rained and rained and rained that next day. In an effort to stay dry, we all huddled like little penguins under an approximately 8 ft x 12 ft tarp for the majority of the day. We cooked, ate, and had a class under this tarp. To stay warm we also played a game called Kumcha and danced to Gwen Stefani. Overall it was a very cold day. Frozen fingers and toes all around.
The next day was our instructor Sydney’s birthday! We originally were going to do a peak ascent over Morro Negro, but due to the inclement weather, the hike would be too dangerous and we had to reroute to a campground on the outskirts of the town of Cerro Castillo. This was, by far, our craziest day. It ended up being a picturesque snow day! While hiking, it started to snow and didn’t stop for hours. We had snowball fights, made snow angels, played snow baseball, sang songs from Frozen, ate snow with Sprim (a drink flavoring powder), and did everything in between. It was a dream. We ended up descending the mountain and finally arrived at our camp where we were able to bake a birthday cake for the lovely Sydney.
We woke up to frost on our packs and hiked up to Campamento Porteadores, the spot we were supposed to be at a couple of nights previous. We did classic camp things; had Spanish class, cooked dinner, played games, and went to bed. Our second to last day was spent doing service work with Senderos Patagonia. Half of the group weed-whacked while the other half used rocks to build walls and fill in holes in the trail. It was good to do some work, but many of us wished we could have done 3 days of work and a bigger project like the original plan. Patagonia weather got us good again!
On our final day, some of the group got up early to do a sunrise hike to a campsite farther up the river valley. The campsite was named Neozelandés because its landscape is reminiscent of New Zealand. Mountains surrounded us on three sides. We got there before the sun was up and watched the sun slowly illuminate glaciers and rocky peaks. The beauty was reminiscent of the whole trip. When the sunrise hikers got back to the campsite, we started the walk back down to Cerro Castillo. We did this as a solo hike, where individual people left about 3 minutes apart, so we could have some alone time to appreciate the place we were in. We had amazing weather for the walk back and arrived in Cerro Castillo in the late afternoon.
It was truly a trek filled with beauty, love, and birthdays!
