Vamos a la Playa (O Wohohoho)

Now I didn´t want to put that stupid song inside your head of course :-D But it is done now ...

Señor Hans has just returned from his first solo-carry-everything-else trekking on the Mysterious Island of Chiloé, which is a wooden-house-on-stilts kind of place. I expected to be trekking through the forests of the national park on the pacific coast of the island, but fate had something different in store.

I was all ready, having left some stuff in a hotel down the road, with my camping gear and food for three days when I presented myself to the park entrance ...

"No, we only have short routes through the park. And we don´t have a map. Follow the main road for z%d# km (I couldn´t understand the woman here) for the beach and Cole Cole".

"Ew ?"

What the heck, I´ll just go and see. And she didn´t ask me for any money. So I went, and saw (amongst others):
* Amazing sandy beaches
* A stray penguin, being harrassed by a Chilean family
* Falcons fighting in mid-air
* Annoyingly buzzing horseflies
* Mysterious rock labyrinths
* Cows swimming in the ocean - well almost
* Enormous strands of seaweed
* Lagunas and foresty hills
* Local tough-looking people on horseback (going a tad bit faster than I)
* Seagulls dropping clams from the sky
* Mists coming from the sea

I was walking with close to 15 kilos on my back, which is a different kind of trekking (in Peru, most of the stuff was carried by donkeys), but I have to get used to it anyway if I want to do the grand Torres del Paine trekking-of-trekkings later on (that one is 7 days or so).
I needed to remain close to fresh water though, because all the food I was carrying was of the powdery variety (including milk, hoho !!), but that was no problem. There was a little river/laguna running the length of the beach with the rocks, hills and forests of the park on the other side. It looked surreal, especially when the mists got blown in from the ocean.

The first night I found myself a secluded spot in sheltered dune area along the seemingly endless beach line, with views of the setting sun. The second day I happened upon my own private little bay, where I studied the extremely entertaining behaviour of the local bird life, together with the works of humanity´s finest minds - our friends, the ancient Greek philosophers - and where I chanced a dip into the ocean ... bbbbrrrfrreeezingly cold !!!

I never reached the fabled Cole Cole, I guess it was where some of the other trekkers were heading (so I was glad I didn´t go there), but I did get mighty sore legs. Let´s see how I fare on my next solo trip. I guess I will do one just a bit longer before I do that Torres-thingy ...