After enduring the 45-minute ride on a gravel road riding in the back seat of our 2x4 truck, we finally saw a sign directing us towards our end-destination for the day: Baños Morales and El Morado Natural Monument. Visit either of these websites and you will be given the impression that this area is bursting at the seams with tourist and well-established services. This is not the case. I do imagine this place sees a steady stream of visitors on the weekends, but it still falls well within the definition of a "rustic" destination. And on the particular Tuesday we arrived, we seemed to be one of only a handful of visitors to make the climb up the steep gravel road to this little mountain hamlet.
The condition of the road deteriorated significantly for the last few kilometers up to Baños Morales. And judging from the rudimentary constructed concrete tire tracks that had been built into the steepest part of the road, it didn't seem unlikely that this stretch of road would become completely impassable after a heavy rain. Sadly, I don't have any pictures of this impressive road construction - likely due to the fact that myself and everyone else in the car was fairly focused on the ability of our sturdy, manual-shift vehicle to make it to the top of the hill. Somewhat impressively, we made it up the steep passage without incident.
Once at the top, we encountered a collection of family homes halfway converted to guests houses, which we took to signify that we had arrived at Baños Morales. But it still wasn't entirely clear where the entrance to the National Park was; surely it would be obvious, being that it is a National Park and all. No, not at all. My only guess is that there must be an excess of computer nerds designing websites in Chile, because I have never before encountered so many really nice websites designed for the most back-woods, out-of-the-way, hole-in-the-wall destinations.
After driving through "town" without sighting anything that looked like a ranger station, we asked one of the "locals" for directions (upon further inspection, they turned out to be city folk from Santiago, up for a visit to their mountain property). We were instructed that the entrance El Monumento El Morado was actually smack-dab in the middle of "town", so we headed back down the main dirt road and spotted a hand-written sign pointing the way up to the parking area.
There was little activity to be found in Baños Morales that day; only a few hard-core Chilean hiker-types and a few drunken vaqueros (cowboys). One guy had even ridden in on his horse, which was tied up outside the establishment where he was drinking wine with his other vaquero buddies. Due to the higher elevation (1,800 meters or 5900 feet above sea level), it was quite a bit cooler than it had been back in Santiago (January is the middle of the southern hemisphere's summer after all). I had foolishly anticipated it to be much warmer and decided to wear shorts that day, and the light windbreaker I brought along wasn't really cutting it.
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