I decided that the day we hiked in to Cochamó Valley is going to be considered the first day of the trip even though technically we started traveling on the previous day. So now we have to start at Day 0 to talk about that travel day, like this is some computer program with zero-based indexing. (If you’re not a computer nerd just ignore that.)

Anyways, on what we are now calling Day 0, Will and I flew down to Puerto Montt from La Serena. Since we’re bougie and also had a LOT of luggage to deal with, we took the luxury of hiring a private driver to pick us up at the airport in Puerto Montt, take us to the grocery store and hang out while we shopped, and then drive us 2 hours to the town of Cochamó. We could have done the same trajectory via bus but I have to say that the private transfer felt very worth it because of how much stuff we were juggling.

In Cochamó, we stayed in a cute little cabaña that quickly exploded with all our stuff. We had originally packed everything for the plane to fit into three 23 kg checked bags plus some carryons. Then in Cochamó, we had to repack everything plus some additional groceries into the correct backpacks and duffels for the hike in. Food for two and a half weeks plus climbing and camping stuff for two people is heavy, so we planned for a horse (scheduled in advance) to bring in the majority of our stuff. The horse was allowed to carry a maximum load of 65 kg and much to that horse’s chagrin, we went all the way up to the limit with two giant bags weighing 32.5 kg each.

All of the stuff you see spread out on the cabaña floor eventually made it into four bags: two big bags for the horse and a backpack for each of us. So much packing and repacking and we haven’t even made it onto the trail yet.

The cabaña was along a river and from a bridge you can see up into the valley. The cover photo on this post was our first peek at our destination peaks. Exciting!

The full list of Cochamó posts can be found here.