Greater Patagonian Trail 3 Los Quenes-Rio Colorado

At 7:45 I catch the first Bus to Los Quenes, and an hour later, I am ready to hike again!

Behind a campground under shady pines I leave the village and walk on a dirt road up the valley of the Rio Claro de Teno. Soon the river disappears in a gorge and for some hours I won't see it again.

Greater Patagonian Trail 2 Coya- Los Quenes

After a good breakfast at the hotel I start rather late. To my surprise the sky is grey and some raindrops are falling. But soon enough it is warm and sunny again.

Greater Patagonian Trail 1 Santiago- Coya

The longest continous hiking route in South America, running across the chilean Andes from the capital Santiago all the way south into Patagonia, just these little facts made me dreaming when I first heard about the Greater Patagonian Trail from my friend Christine, a very experienced hiker, about 3 years ago.
And when I researched a bit about that trail, I found its story very interesting as well: 
The german Jan Dudeck did a multiday horse trip with his chilean wife Meylin and tracked the route by his GPS. When he transfered the track to Google Earth, he realized, that the tiny horse trails they followed were visible on the satellite pictures. That brought the idea, to create a long distance trail running the length of Patagonia, mainly by using Google Earth. He added stretches which are located in central Chile, outside of classical Patagonia, therefore he named the trail "Greater Patagonian Trail".
Since he began that great work, he spends every summer in Chile, to scout new segments of the trail and to verify what he saw on Google Earth. The fact that he mapped a lot of alternatives, often still not groundtruthed, make the Greater Patagonian Trail even more interesting.
Originally I had planned to start at the northern Terminus in Radal, but just a month before I started, Jan told me, that now the trail is even extended to the Capital, Santiago de Chile. The last metro station of that city, what an exciting starting point!

                                                       Map of my route