South America Part 2 – CHILE

Having left my friend in Bolivia I set off for Chile. After a few too many hours on buses and a relatively uneventful border crossing, I arrived at the beach town of La Serena. Reading about Chile I had seen this place described as the ‘bouldering mecca of Chile’ so it seemed a good place to start.

Searching around I met Faisal at Talinay adventures (www.talinaychile.com) who knew all about the local climbing. I rented his boulder pad and ended up bouldering with a bunch of his friends who turned out to be local wads. We went to Pampilla which is on the outskirts of Coquimbo, the next town along the coast.

                         

 

Pampilla

Pampilla is one of the largest bouldering areas in this part of Chile and offers plenty of problems and room for development too. It’s right on the coast with perfect views only spoilt by the fact that many locals use it as a rubbish dumping ground but luckily this doesn’t affect the bouldering. It’s next to a bit of a rough area of town and when a bunch of (perfectly friendly) local lads came past with dogs and sling-shots I was pretty happy to be with a group of Chileans.

When we were climbing the weather was cool but quite humid which apparently is pretty typical of winter. Summer is not as humid but too hot to climb in the heat of the day. There was a great selection of granite boulders, not too rough on the skin and a good variety of angles. It felt amazing to be bouldering again.

                                    

Pampilla bouldering

The next day even trying to eat breakfast hurt my forearms and as I was still struggling to get over some sort of chest infection a day bouldering had wiped me out. So I decided bouldering plans were unrealistic and instead I just headed over to one of the other main areas to check it out. Los Monster at Fuerte Coquimbo is another main area on the coast around Coquimbo with bolted routes (about 10-15 m) and boulders. There are also lots more areas being developed in this area of Chile at the minute. Annoyingly, torrential rain meant I couldn’t fit any more bouldering in before I had to head South. 

For more info on climbing in Chile see escalandochile.cl

Fuerte Coquimbo

                                   

Since my flight home was from Peru, it wasn’t very logical to go right down South into Chile but I was going to meet an old friend in Santiago which was well worth the detour. We chatted away lots of happy hours and travelled around the north of Chile. Tourist highlights include Valpariso, amazing desert and mountain scenery, penguin packed boat trips and a  mind-blowing sky observatory tour. After an emotional goodbye I set off on a mammoth journey into Peru including 3 night buses in a row, all in aid of getting a last bit of climbing in before heading back home.

South America part one – BOLIVIA

The next few blogs are dedicated to a trip in South America. There is an unbelievable amount to see and do in South America and in 2 months I could barely scratch the surface.

Salt flats in Boliva (spot the horizon)

My trip began in Bolivia. A country with mountains, deserts, rainforests and if you haven’t already heard, some pretty impressive boulder fields. Unfortunately, I was under doctors orders not to climb for the first part of my trip which meant despite coming tantalisingly close to what appeared to be amazing bouldering I didn’t properly get to do any! Gutted. But I do have some info on it.

The main area of bouldering that I heard about was Valle de las rocas in South Bolivia. Uyuni is the nearest town to this area. Uyuni is a pretty bland town packed full of tourists waiting to do tours of the salt flats. It’s just over an hours drive from Valle de las rocas. The nearest village to the bouldering is about 15 mins drive away. There was one self-catered place to stay here with limited facilities but could be a good option. Bouldering is fairly new to Bolivia and there was no mention of it anywhere and no equipment rental to be seen, so I would recommend bringing your own, or maybe looking into renting it in La Paz.

When I arrived at Valle de las rocas it did look amazing, endless boulder fields for as far as I could see. At this point I had actually not hung off my arms since leaving the UK (weeks earlier) so just seeing boulders was pretty emotional and I was bursting with psyche. I rushed around clambering on anything I could until I was getting light-headed from the altitude. We had just escaped an unexpected blizzard leaving the salt flats so our driver was keen to leave and we could only stop for a few minutes. I was convinced I would return but sadly getting ill and lack of time meant I couldn’t go back.

To help distract myself from the lack of climbing in my life I kept myself very busy doing a medical placement in a Bolivian hospital, learning Spanish as fast as possible and enjoying some of the natural wonders Bolivia has to offer including the Salt flats and horse-riding through canyons in Tupiza. I’m not sure I can really comment on the climbing in Bolivia but as a country I would definitely recommend visiting and I am definitely going back one day.

Some useful info can be found at: www.stonedance.com

Horse-riding in Tupiza