After a rest day in Futrono the GPT had another challenge waiting for me: I had to cross the private nature reserve of Huilo-Huilo. There are several private reserves of that kind in Chile with luxury accomodation and outdoor activities for sale. Huilo-Huilo is one of the biggest and acces to it is pretty unclear. The GPT follows an old road through the reserve that should have right of way but several former GPT hikers had been caught there and escorted out for various reasons. As there is no good alternate route around it I decided to hike this 4 km stretch of dirt road late on a Sunday evening hoping that no ranger would be on duty then.
My strategy worked out fine! There was no locked fence or "Entry prohibited"-signs, only signs saying "Hunting forbidden" because in this reserve Huemel, the world's smallest deer is raised. I encountered no one on the road, in fact no one at all the entire day. When I reached my turn-off from the road I sat down an an old log and sighed with relief. I was still in the reserve but the trail was so faint and overgrown here that I was very unlikely to meet a ranger here.
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| Inside Huilo-Huilo Reserve |
Just as I wanted to get up and look for a campsite I heard a shot in the near distance - then another one. My heart nearly stopped. Who was shooting around on a Sunday evening in a nature reserve with "No hunting" signs everywhere? I started to worry seriously about poachers. What would the hunters do if they detected me? Or maybe mistake me for an animal? Unfortunately the trail was now traversing a huge clearing where I would be an easy target ... It was very late already and I decided to play safe. I disappeared into the thick forest out of sight from the trail and set up my tent. Strangely enough I felt very safe here and slept very well. I did not see or anything else from the hunter neither in the evening nor in the next morning ....
This part of the reserve was formerly used by settlers and I passed some old wooden huts and plenty of meadows before the trail went up into the mountains. Although this is called a nature reserve there was plenty of logging going on - and therefore plenty of very steep old and new logging roads. Tree cover was so thick that my GPS didn't get an accurate position - and before I knew it, I was off route. I made the classic rookie mistake of continuing upwards in the hope of somehow reconnecting to the route - and had to turn back eventually. As this happened twice I lost almost two hours and did not even get close to my anticipated camp site. This was Christmas eve and I set up my tent being very frustrated ...
This delay had completely screwed up my schedule, so the next day I was flying down the trail (luckily downhill) to Lago Pirihueico in order to get the ferry. I arrived just five minutes late - the ferry had just left ... The times given on the internet had been wrong, but the good news was that there was a later ferry. Unfortunately it arrived well after sunset on the other side of the lake which made finding a campsite difficult. This was a popular holiday spot and I wanted to get away from drunk teenagers and/or park rangers ... When I set up my tent it was almost midnight and I only discovered next morning that I was camped at a beautiful beach. Of course I took a bath!
The rest of this section was (luckily) rather uneventful and brought me to the spa town of Liquine where there are literally hundreds of hot springs. Every hotel had its own spa and I collapsed into the first one. Timing was perfect as I had to kill some hours before the departure of my bus back into civilisation. It was heavenly to wash off all the dirt and relax in the hot water after a demanding trail section.
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