Peñaliri

(Gentle Readers: It has taken me 5 days to repeatedly publish this post. WIFI is minimal in rural Bolivia, so the rest of the posts may not be coming until I return)

October 14, 2024, from the Itinerary: The hike today is Peñaliri. It is a hike between two altitudinal zones to observe first hand how nature changes as a function of altitude. From Manchuca, a town surrounded by wildlife thanks to local wetlands, we will walk along ancient trails to the Rio Grande. We will cross Andean agricultural terraces and a canyon full of cacti. This is a full day hike of 10 miles with elevation increase of 895 feet and decrease of 3464 feet at a highest altitude of 13159 feet.

Stargazing at 9:45pm

Weather: Sunny and hot , ~80

Actual Stats: about 9.25 miles and about 255 feet elevation gain. Elevation decrease from 13,124 down to 10,684.

A few things I forgot to say in yesterday’s blog:

The hotel is full and there are 10+ kids (10+ too many) and they are of all ages - from 15 months up to teenagers.

We did meet a nice Australian couple from Perth - Natasha and Rob. They own a mining machinery repair company and are going a day before us to do the "traversa". Unfortunately, we will not meet them again. We will see them again tomorrow - more on the next blog.

Today was our first full day at Atacama for this trip.

Breakfast was a bit of a mix-up - Chris ordered an omelet which took 20 minutes we didn’t have, so he ended up having something small from the buffet.

We left for the drive to the trailhead at 8am and it was 16.5 miles (the green dot is our hotel) and took about 90 minutes. There was no morning briefing before leaving, but we discussed the hike the evening before.

Along the drive we saw discharges in two active volcanos (part of the local ring of fire) that last had an “event “ - meaning a lot of ash was released - in 2020. One was called Jorqencil (also known as the Whore Volcano) and the other (right side) Lascar.

We stopped at the wetland just before Machuca which was familiar from our last trip to Atacama. There were a number of flamingos - both Chilean and James - and they were getting ready for the mating season - walking in lines, flapping their wings and calling to each other.

We stopped at Manchuca for a last toilet break and saw the very old church (from afar). According to Adrien, this church is one of the oldest in Chile, but I can’t verify this online.

The hike started out well, great weather and we walked along the wet land, so there were a lot of flamingos, Andean Geese, and coots.

We had to wait a bit for Adrien to get his maté organized in its special cup and spoon and continued walking. Maybe these bones were a harbinger of things to come….

There was a beautiful path along a river with small waterfalls. They don’t show well in these photos- take my word for it.

The entire valley of our hike was home to an indigenous people who moved (or were moved) out in the 1980s. Life would have been hard because all the path areas were hand built.

As we were walking Adrian managed to drop his hiking poles and also told us that he was really affected by the altitude. Chris was able to anchor him while he leaned over to get the pole from where it fell. We started to get the impression that we were in better shape than he was.

At the briefing yesterday Adrian told us there would be one river crossing with rocks - it was really beautiful.

We came across an area with a whole flock of mountain parakeets and we were able to get some pretty good shots.

Unfortunately, things started to disintegrate. Adrian kept losing the trail. We assumed Adrian had walked this before, but he told us his colleagues told him the path was difficult to find, meaning he did not know this hike.

We didn’t have 1 river crossing, we had about 10. The path wasn’t clear at all and parts of the walk became rather technical as we had to maneuver on some rocky areas and in order to stay out of the river. Thankfully the river wasn’t wide or deep, but no one wanted to hike 10 miles in wet shoes/socks.

We did go via a building that had been used for llama dipping - the farmers would use this to clean the llama wool. It would have been a great place for a tea stop, but we didn’t stop.

The poor path meant the going was slow. By about 11:30 we were only 4 miles along and I figured we had at least another hour to lunch. We were pleasantly surprised when Adrian said we should reach the lunch stop in about 20 minutes. He did not know where he was and we finally made lunch at 12:50. This after he told us twice that lunch was just around the corner. I was tired at this point and losing energy to safely cross the river and walk up rocky areas to get back on the path.

Lunch was in an abandoned building. There wasn’t a lot of shade, but we managed to find small corners to eat. At this point Adrian told us his foot was killing him because his shoes didn’t fit, so he went off to the river to cool his foot off while we finished our lunch. Our experience with other hikes lead by Explora, like this, is that the guide would bring soup, a table cloth, hot water, tea/coffee, and desert, while we would carry our sandwiches/main meal. Adrian did bring soup, but nothing else. I’m not even sure if he had a first aid kit…I had clear images of my guide Sean and the Tour du Mont Blanc experience which wasn’t a good thing.

We had another 5 miles to go after lunch and we were told the path was much better. Well, it wasn’t exactly. Adrian got a bit lost getting out of the town and for the first half mile we were on very uneven ground, not on a path, trying to find a way through the agricultural terraces. The scenery was beautiful and there were lovely, big Suguaro-type cactus along the valley. The photo on the left is the terraces we walked down. Next is an example of the cacti. The photo on the far right is a viaduct used for the terraces.

We ended up way above the river, but the trail was visible and good.

Eventually, by mile 6, we got to a main road which took us steeply down.

We believe that Adrian took us this way because he didn’t know the river path. This was an uninteresting end to our hike, with nothing much to recommend it (it was like a training route) - with the exception of seeing our first viscachas.

Our driver met about half a mile earlier than was planned and had a nice spread for us of trout, fruit and beer. It was nice to sit down.

Back the 16 miles to the hotel for a shower and nap. There was no de-brief and we thought tomorrow would probably be better because we were going on our favorite hike. He offered to get the English names for several birds and plants, but I never got them. Here are the photos of the plants which I will look up at some point.

I tried a Paloma cocktail and it was so good I had two - this was a bit of a mistake as they were extremely strong.

Dinner was amazingly good with spinach soup, fried chicken breast and mushroom/quinoa. Desert was chocolate cake.

We were due to go star gazing at 21:45, but didn’t because a) we were tired and b)it was a waxing moon, like during our last trip, and we wouldn’t be able to see a thing.

The hike was amazing, except for the guide, so it was another good day.