By Park Cawley, Colby College
It’s been a few days since I last saw everyone at the Santiago airport. I’ve more or less settled back into my routine at home, but it doesn’t feel right. I still expect to wake up, roll out of my tent to see the sun rising over the hill right next to our camp, walk down to the river to fill up my water bottle, and find everyone already inside cooking breakfast. To have to leave the people you spent nearly every second with for the past three months is hard. I did my best not to say the word “goodbye” to any of them; that word has finality to me. Instead, I tried to say that we would see each other again and I know I will keep that promise as best as I can.
Team Puma and Puerto Edén school kids after finishing an art project about our experiences with marine animals. (Photo credit: Fernando Iglesias)
Returning from Valle Chacabuco, we had the glorious opportunity of relaxing, showering, and even washing clothes, which I had slacked on. The next few days were packed with three finals over two days and finishing up the semester projects before packing everything up for our final fun trip. But we made sure that the fun wasn’t exclusive to the last trip; for our Humans and the Environment course final, we went to the Río Salto where we found a beautiful and powerful waterfall. Its source was the San Lorenzo glacier to the northwest and was a sight to behold being only able to see the bottom quarter of the entire waterfall. Along its banks, we wrote about how our perspectives of conservation biology and wilderness have changed over the course of the semester through our classes and experiences in Patagonia.
The waterfall at the Río Salto. (Photo credit: Park Cawley)
After finishing up the schoolwork, we planned our final trip going to the Jeinimeni National Reserve for three days. By visiting the Jeinimeni, we would have gone backpacking in all three places that will be part of the future Patagonia National Park created by Conservación Patagónica: Tamango National Reserve, the Valle Chacabuco, and now Jeinimeni National Reserve. The plan was to camp at Lago Jeinimeni, backpack across braided channels to a CONAF refugio, do a day hike to a glacier above a lake, then come back out and head to Coyhaique. Little did we know what we had in store over the next few days.
We left Cochrane around 10, sad to leave the place that was our beloved basecamp; a location that we gladly returned to after trips involving many days of rain and knowing that Cochrane was a warm and sunny place for some R&R. We drove for hours, passing through the border town of Chile Chico before turning south to get to Jeinimeni. The site was nice and sheltered, but at the cost of having hordes of mosquitos and horse flies attacking us. But it was just for one night and we would be going away from them soon. The hike to the refugio was as described: very flat over braided channels until we hit a sharp pass overlooking Lago Verde, then flat until the refugio. Having learned our lessons about crossing rivers, we all brought river-crossing shoes and even hiked in them for a decent amount of the trip. One memorable river crossing had us linked together in groups of four and we all made it across. We spent the night at the refugio, excited to have a chill hike the next day and see another glacier.
Entering the flow of the river crossing (Photo credit: Iván Langesfield)
Reaching the top of the pass – who can’t jump for joy at a sight like that? (Photo credit: Eli Brunner)
We decided on a late breakfast, being a fun hike, and headed off to see this glacier. We crossed a few more rivers and our bodies below the waist became immune to the effects of chilly glacial runoff. This made it much easier when we got to the glacier to run into the lake for a quick lunch swim, something that has become a bit of a tradition for the newly branded Team Playa (beach in Spanish). We wandered back for dinner and also to celebrate the first night of Hanukkah. It was my first time celebrating the holiday and I learned about the history of the holiday, we lit a menorah made out of sticks we found nearby, and played Dreidel with everything from chocolate to twigs to dirty socks. The next day, we returned back to our camp crossing those rivers once again. The biggest river crossing proved to be the obstacle of the day, but it came with some sweet Puma (Puma concolor) prints in the sand so I felt it was a fair trade. We returned to the edge of Lago Jeinimeni, left early the next day to get a ferry, and drove back to Coyhaique where we shopped and went out for a final dinner with our instructors before leaving the next day from Balmaceda to Santiago where we would go our own ways.
Sitting next to our fire playing Driedel during our Hanukkah celebration (Photo credit: Eli Brunner)
The Puma prints we found right on the banks of the river. It’s always good to see signs of a fellow Puma. (Photo credit: Iván Langesfield)
Over our three months together, we visited the fjords, a long valley, a dry valley, and a wet valley. We summited Mount Tamanguito, walked many kilometers of fence line, sang songs while cooking in a tangerine-colored hostel, put on soaked socks and boots for many days straight, lived the bog life, swam in some incredible lakes, and walked to the plaza at all hours of the day to get that precious Wi-Fi. When we arrived, we were eight people trying to make small talk and get to know each other; when we left, we were a family. We laughed, argued, supported each other, struggled through challenges, but in the end, knew that we had each others’ backs when it came down to it. Not being able to see the rest of the group every single day anymore dampens the mood, but knowing that we can easily connect via social media or start planning trips to visit brings a smile to my face. We are Team Puma/Playa and that will always connect us so we are never truly apart. So thank you to everyone who has made our time in Patagonia possible, from schools helping with financial aid to the administrators at Round River putting the program together to all the locals we met for showing us how proud they are to be Patagones to the guides for navigating us around the landscape to our instructors for showing us the beauty of Patagonia and to Lluvia, Annita, Sarita, Messi, Shan, Ivan the Decent, and someone with too little hair to be Zeke; I love you all and know the world is in good hands.
Team Puma and our first group of instructors celebrating reaching Pio XI during our first trip together to Puerto Edén. (Photo credit: Shalynn Pack)
Team Puma with our gaucho guide Lorenzo about to complete the first thru-hike of Valle Largo after a week of constant rain that did nothing to dampen our spirits (Photo credit: Eli Brunner)