A day and a half of riding out of Coyhaique along the Carretera brought us to Villa Cerro Castillo. This small village sits in the shadow of, you guessed it, Cerro Castillo, a series of rocky spires that dominate the skyline to the North of town. Hiking in the national park here had long been on our minds, but the supposed 30,000CLP fee per person (about £25) for the 4 day trek had us questioning whether it was really worth it. In the end, Quentin’s (the French hiker we’d met on our Lago Verde – Tapiera crossing) glowing review swayed us and dividing the fee by the three nights’ “free” camping that would be included, it didn’t feel like such a piss take…
Boy, are we glad that we went ahead with it. We lucked out with 4 days of clear and relatively calm weather, allowing us to experience this spectacular national park in its’ best light. And while it’s far from a wilderness experience, the trail never felt crowded and the well organised campsites (some even had flushing loos!) at least made it feel like our money was getting spent on something useful.
Best of all, for a stingy Scottish/Yorshireman such as myself, the park entrance fee turned out to be just 16,000CLP per person. If you’re in any doubt about whether to take the time to tackle this hike, then our advice would be unequivocal – do it! At the bottom of this post, you can find a gallery of pictures from our walk. You can click on each image to open them up full screen in a lightbox and better read the captions.
Below, I’ve included a few bits of info that might be useful when planning you’re own visit to the park. This information is valid as of February 2024.
Useful Info
- We completed the “Las Horquetas” walk, starting at trailhead on the Carretera and finishing in town (East to West). We took 4 days to do this, including hiking up to Laguna Duff from our last camp (highly recommended). It could be done in less time, but the campsites are all fairly evenly spread out so you’d essentially have to double up the time/distance on at least one day. Doing the trail in this direction is easier, both physically (net downhill and an easy 1st day to get in to the rhythm) and logistically (get the transport over and done with at the start of the walk), in our opinion.
- From what we heard from other campers, the day hike up to the Lago Cerro Castillo costs about the same as the 4 day hike and is much harder to get to the famous viewpoint (meaning you’ll get there later and probably not be the only ones there).
- We stayed at Nordic Patagonia campsite in town which has all the amenities a bike tourer could want (covered area, wifi, hot showers, gas cooker) and let us store our bikes free of charge for the days we were walking. Recommended.
- We caught the yellow bus from outside our campsite to the Las Horquetas trailhead, costing 6000CLP per person. The contact details for the driver can be found in the tourist information centre. You need to WhatsApp him so he knows to pick you up. The bus runs Monday, Wednesday and Friday. There are other buses, but they don’t seem to run as early so might not work with the trailhead opening times. Otherwise, we saw at least one couple manage to hitch a ride at about 8am.
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Fun fun. Danny