Cambios

When continuing on the gravel road, several signs tell you that it's private property, and finally you get to a big gate next to a house. Maybe the guard's? No one was around when we came, though, and we climbed across the gate. From there we took the optional route along the gravel road, as you had to climb yet another gate to get to the regular route. When the gravel road split up, we picked the one closest to the river. It was nice and clear all the way, whereas the other one seemed very muddy. They met again, our route was behind a little gate that could easily be opened. From there, the optional route followed a very small trail, pretty overgrown, but still definitely doable. It seemed that someone had recently been through with a machete, we didn't need one. At one point we came to a barbed wire fence, and the trail seemed to continue along it. That was wrong, you have to cross the fence immediately, and the trail continues on the other side.

We met the regular route by the river at two and decided to continue to the next spot marked as camp. That gave us a long day, the trail was still overgrown, though better than the previous, and it was slow going. When we came through it wasn't muddy though. There was nowhere to camp before the bridge. Right after, there is an abandoned field to the right of the route, the grass is quite long, but it's an okay camping site.

From there, the rest of the way is on an abandoned 4x4 track, it's never difficult to see, but a little overgrown in places. It climbs above the treeline where the view is very nice, but we were attacked by hordes of flies that went away as we walked back into the forest. We camped on the lake shore, it's a great place to swim.

Puerto Pirihueico has several restaurants, we had empanadas at Donde Mané, they were great.