Lauca National Park

The idea of no public transportation to a national park was hard to grasp considering what we have in Yosemite, with buses going around the entire park. But Yosemite gets the same number of visitors in a day that Lauca does in a year, so ok.

A few days ago, I packed my bag in Putre and walked up the road intent on catching a ride to Parinacota. The locals in town assured me this was the way to go, legal and safe. I took a dusty trail into a valley and crossed a river, climbing up on the other side. This cut off the 5km I would have walked on the road back to the international highway. At the crossroads, I walked up to the police and asked them when there were buses or anything going that way. One of the policemen waved down a truck and got me a ride. So I heaved myself and my pack 6ft up into the cab of the big-rig and we were on our way. The driver and I had lots of time to chat because we were going up the hill at 10mph. And we had to stop a few times to let the engine cool down. But I didn´t mind--with snowy conical volcanos slowly coming into view, I needed time to look around. We passed green bofedales and vicuñas grazing by a river. In Chucuyo, we stopped at a roadside restaurant for lunch... me and all the Chilean and Bolivian truckers. The lunch special was quinoa soup and alpaca steak with rice, typical Altiplano fare. Thus fortified, my driver dropped me off at the tiny whitewashed adobe town of Parinacota. I took a quick turn around town. There was little sign of life on the two streets in town and the CONAF (national park ranger office) office was closed despite a posted sign promising long hours every day of the week. A local Aymara family offered lodging for tourists. There used to be an official park service refugio but it was no longer available for tourists so as not to compete with local families. At such high altitudes--4,000m I think--my head hurt and I felt pretty tired, so I napped under my sleeping bag for a couple hours before venturing out into the village.

The CONAF office was still closed in the afternoon, but there was a well-marked trail that led out just beyond the village. The Parinacota interpretive trail had seen better days in terms of interpretation, but the wildlife was as stunning as ever. The big black ducks made funny noises while playing in the shallow water of the lake. I walked past spiky plants in the dry dirt and had a larger than life view of the volcano Parinacota, over 6,000m, and its twin volcano across the border in Bolivia. The bofedal stretched out in front of me--rounded patches of green with water flowing slowly all around. Alpacas and the fuzzier llamas grazed all around, uninterested in my progress through their feeding ground. A quick dinner with food I brought from Arica then I went outside again. The wind was stronger this time, but the colors were so vivid in the sunset that I had to keep snapping photos despite my numb fingers until the battery on my camera ran out (don´t worry... I had another one). The almost full moon rose just behind the twin volcanos. The sun lit up the snow in pink, then as the light fell, the color transfered to the sky behind them--a swirl of pink and blue. The moon grew a fuzzy ring of yellow. The orange stripes the sun left behind were reflected in the pond where the black taguas were still playing. Then my mom´s thoughts on how taking pictures interferes with the moment came into my head, and I put away my camera and tried just to be. The volcanos set off in pink, the ripple patterns of the water, and my hood crinkling in the wind. But enough of that--it was too cold to enjoy the moment for too long, so I went inside to my room--the pleasure of a mountain hut means being able to escape to somewhere warm.

I woke up late--the cold had kept me from sleeping late into the night. After a granola breakfast, I hung around the main square waiting for the CONAF ranger who had finally shown up to stop talking with the kiosko owner so that I could ask him about trails and huts. Ernesto told me about the trail to Cocacotani Lagunas and the Cerro GuaneGuane trail, but it was probably to late in the day to do them since there are often afternoon storms during the invierno boliviano. So I emptied my pack of everything except necessities... which ended up being quite a lot: clif bars and tuna as snacks, 3.5 liters of water, 2 jackets for the afternoon, and my first aid kit. I walked down the road in the direction of the lagunas, no really thinking I would make it the whole 11km. After only 20 minutes, I passed a house and a big sign that said propiedad privada, no pasar, multa (private property, do not pass, fine). The road split so I walked one way, thinking that maybe the sign referred only to the other part of the dirt road. But rocks all along the jeep trail were painted with the same words: propiedad privada. I realize why that struck me-not just because I don´t tend to trespass on land when there are signs warning against it, but because I was in a national park. How could this be private? Another thing to ask the rangers about. The road ended soon after that, a watery bofedal had swallowed it, so I turned around. Maybe the ranger meant that I should go the other way down the road.

Still feeling good, I passed Parinacota and the little lake as I followed the jeep trail in the other direction. I was just walking, my own slow pace, enjoying the vast empty landscape. In 1.5 hours, maybe 2 cars passed me. I had a snack sitting on the side of the road in the sand, watching the heat waves rise in the distance then be blown sideways by the wind so that the picture I saw was like a bad-quality VHS.

I kept walking up the road, watching the shape of Guane Guane peak change as I moved around it. I had thought of this day as a warm up, getting used to the altitude, before I attempted to climb GuaneGuane.

Coming up on my next entry... climbing into the back of a police truck, a 5,000 meter hill, and a serious grapple with national parks in Chile and how they are run.