Tricahue, Amarillo, Maule, Chile

A small town on the Rio Maule 70km upstream of Talca. Excellent hiking through the Tricahue private park back up into the Altos de Lircay national park. I connected back up with some of the trails I had reached from Vilches Alto. It had snowed down to about 2200m, so Cerro Peine had a nice sugar coating, and Volcan Descabezado was cloaked in white. It´s pretty steep country and the higher reaches require a bit of compass work and bushbashing in places, so you´d have to be very keen to trek with your full pack from one town to the other as I had planned. It´s a lot more pleasant doing day walks.

Refugio Tricahue is a beautiful cabin and a superb base for daywalks and enjoying the forest. It´s very quiet and peaceful. There´s a small shop which sells the basics, including cold beer and sometimes milk and bread. The Refugio has a well-equipped kitchen including fridge, and the bus stops at the front door, so it´s ideal to bring fresh stocks from San Clemente or Talca. The owner, Dimitri, a Belgian, is a lovely chap and has good mud maps of all the trails - he blazed and marked most of them!