Cerro Castillo

Villa Cerro Castillo is another tiny town along the Carretera Austral, the often gravel highway leading up through southern Chile. The name of the town comes from the surrounding hills, cerros, that resemble the battlements and turrets of a medieval castillo.


We hiked up into these beautiful mountains after saying a sad goodbye to Fay and Steffen and sending them off to points further north. We had such a good time traveling with them, basking in their constant good humor and hilarious takes on pretty much everything. I hope we see them again, whether in Partridge Green, Stuttgart, San Francisco, or DC.


Our trek was over four days, through farmland and forest and over a couple of steep scree-covered passes. We met a really nice Chilean couple, Diego and Ilana, as we were all setting up camp in the downpour we got our second night out. Fortunately this was the only rain we saw and it just meant that we downed some hot tea before dinner and got into our sleeping bags early that evening.


Much of the trail was beside beautiful clear rushing rivers, seemingly everywhere down here. We had a couple of rather difficult crossings and I managed not to fall in this time. At the top of the first pass we got some incredibly strong winds which made me a little nervous crossing the snowfield that is still up there. It was actually harder getting down the snow on the far side and I did a bit of tobogganing without the requisite vehicle. When we finally made it to the bottom of the seemingly endless slope of broken rock we had an amazing view back to a high rock wall festooned with slender waterfalls.




The day after the pass we hiked up a glacial valley to an icy blue lake, Laguna Castillo. It feeds one of the rivers we had been hiking along and is fed in turn by a glacier that hangs on the mountain above it. At the far side of the lake we hiked up another pass and then took at least a couple hours to make it down the boulders and scree on the other side. I fell at least 6 times but was grateful not to be hiking up it.





That night Mike found us a muy tranquilo riverside campsite, after we passed through The Land of the Caterpillars. We started noticing more and more of the furry creatures as we hiked down but only slowly realized the magnitude of the infestation. There were caterpillars everywhere, on every branch, on every stone, all over the trail, sometimes clustered in nauseating piles of 20 or more. In the woods, whole sections of trees had been defoliated as if it were winter. When we stopped to listen we could hear the munching. Fortunately we passed out of the zone before needing to find a campsite, though we still carried stowaways on our clothes and backpacks.


The next morning we hiked up to Campamento Neozelandés, so called for Kiwi mountaineers who made base camp there for some pioneering climbs in the '70s. Sadly we never saw any huemul, the shy Andean deer that live in these woods and parts further south. We hiked out, past our lepidopterous companions and back down to the beautiful sunny farmlands and Villa Cerro Castillo in the valley below. I stained my lips purple with calafate berries that are finally ripe, though we have been sampling them since December.