Day 9 - Huerquehue National Park.

Early start. By 8.30, I’m on the bus to Huerquehue National Park – one of the smaller ones in the region, but also one of the loveliest. It’s well-signposted and has excellent day hiking. From the CONAF ranger hut, I take a short trail – Los Ñirriños – to the start of the main hike. It’s an easy ramble through tunnels of ñirre – Chilean bamboo.

It’s great to be here out of season, since the place is deserted, apart from a few gringo hikers whom I leave behind. Following the Los Lagos trail up through the native lenga forest, I periodically stop to gawp at these massive trees; it would take several people to get their arms around the entire trunks. I feel dwarfed by them, and while some wits amongst my friends would say that it wouldn’t take much, these trees would make any human look puny by comparison.

This is my favourite part of the job. There are few things I like more than a solitary ramble through sunlit ancient forest. It’s still work – because I’m here to check on the trail conditions, but it’s also a way for me to unwind and recharge my batteries. Perhaps I never got over leaving my hometown in Russia, having spent my childhood roaming the great forest that surrounded it. In Cambridge, nature is something I really miss, which is why the complete silence and stillness of the Huerquehue forest is greatly appreciated by someone who has very little of both in her daily life.

It takes me exactly two hours of hiking past turnoffs to waterfalls and a couple of stunning lookout points to reach the first of the bigger lakes – Lago Chico. The first time I came to the park with Mike in 2005, I remember him standing on this very bridge across the stream, knocking on wood to try and attract woodpeckers. Unsuccessfully. I toy with the idea of spending the whole day here, but I’ve still got a lot to do back in Pucón, and since there are only two Buses Caburgua in the afternoon, I have to catch the 2pm one, meaning that there’s no time to linger. I do the loop that takes me from Lago Chico to Lago Verde to Lago Toro and back. Lago Verde is particularly lovely, surrounded by strands of the araucaria tree. I think we call it the monkey puzzle tree and you know you’re in a South American forest when you’re surrounded by them. Chile in general is very popular with continental Europeans because even though they may have mountains and forests, but the ones in Chile are on a much bigger, grander scale.

As I pause to rest here, I keep a watchful eye on my surroundings; the last time I stopped to have lunch here on a previous trip, I saw something large scuttling towards me out of the corner of my eye. I idly wondered how on earth crabs would get to a mountain lake before my brain kicked in and I realised that it was, in fact, a large tarantula. I let it have my lunch spot without a fight. During my hike, I see numerous spider webs, the likes of which I’ve never seen anywhere else: they are large, electric blue in colour and lack the geometric pattern of a normal spider web: these ones look as if they’ve been made by spiders on acid. I’m not in a hurry to encounter their owners.

The lake loop, at a brisk pace, takes an hour, leaving me with an hour and a half to get back to the bus. I run downhill, leaping madly over tree roots, and just when I start to marvel at how my bad knee hasn’t given way, it does. I walk gingerly the rest of the way. The major hiking is yet to come and I can’t afford an injury.

Use the bus journey back as an opportunity to snooze. As the joke goes, you know you’re getting old when happy hour means a nap. I’ve perfected the art of sleeping anywhere, at any time; it’s an invaluable skill for a travel writer, since sleep is often in short supply. Once I even slept while standing up during an all-night music gig in Jamaica.

Try out Rincón del Lago for lunch; Cristian’s recommended it as a good place to solid Chilean food and that it is. Massive portions of trout and potatoes. When I came to Chile in 2008, I asked a vegetarian Australian exchange student: “How on earth do you survive in this land of carnivores?” “Chileans eat shitloads of bread,” was her response. That they do. It comes with every meal – be it the standard pockmarked white bread or the really good homemade stuff. I’m trying to lay off the bread because I need to get in shape for the later part of the trip, but the problem is, I have as much self-control as horses and dogs when I’m hungry (i.e. none) and by the time I get around to eating on an average day, I’m famished. I make deals with myself: okay - just one bit of bread but no butter, just pebre (tasty spicy tomato salsa), or – just half a slice, but with this interesting herbal butter. Eventually I need to whittle it down to no bread at all if I’m to keep my svelte girlish figure.

Siesta. Then hours and hours of writing up. The goal is to leave myself very little work to do at the end of the trip.