more putre

Putre is located in the Lauca National Park, which according to my guidebook is a “don’t miss”, most spectacular national park in Chile, blah blah. We have one day.

At the tourist office they give us a tip for a 5 hour walk where we can see some ancient, pre-Incan cave paintings. It sounds interesting, but I am still a bit sick, my voice is still gone (I have been croaking for days) and not sure about the whole thing. We go anyway, figuring we can always turn around. She tells us it is easy to get lost as there are several forks in the road, and gives us an extremely poor black-and-white satellite map.

Of course, we get lost. At each fork in the path we are unsure…the map is no big help. We walk directly into a military training exercise and sort of stand in the middle of it, discussing which way to go. (There is a military base in Putre - you know, close to the Bolivian border and all).

The whole area is sandy, with a few bushes, and the military has driven all over in their jeeps, meaning it all looks like it could be a “road” like the one on our map.

We are asked to move because we are in the way of some pictures a military dude is taking. He keeps shouting numbers, and one group of soldiers is setting up a tent, but most of them don’t seem to be doing anything.

We ask one group if they have heard of the “Sendero de las Pinturas” (trail of the paintings), but they just look at each other and laugh. One in-command guy (I can tell that he must be an officer because he is nonchalantly yet authoritatively chewing on a piece of straw) has a look at our “map” and tells us where we are….much further than we thought. He says to go back to the big eucalyptus tree and behind it is the road we are looking for.

When we arrive at the eucalyptus tree, there is a road passing in front of it, and one behind it, so we take the one behind it, since that’s what he told us. However, we still have our doubts, and when we run into a lady on a horse she says we are going the wrong way. “Do you see that eucalyptus tree? Next to it is the path you want.”

We cut across fields of oregano (?!?!) instead of doubling back, and manage to intersect the correct path. At first the scenery continues in the same vein: boring, sandy, rocky, oregano... But then we walk right along a spectacular ravine, cross it, and continue along the other side on a very narrow path with great views and an excitingly dangerous drop-off.

We almost miss the paintings, even though they are on a gigantic rock. They have been vandalized by generations of idiots.

 

On our way back, we keep running into soldiers, they are everywhere. They shout things like “I love you” at us as soon as we get far away from them. Cowards. Back in Putre, we chill in the sun and knock off our clothes, causing a mini dust cloud…from the knees down I am the chalky color of the trail.

Putre fotos: http://chile.marahtyler.com/#26.0