Los Cipreses National Reserve

The route: Pichilemu - Rancagua - Los Cipreses NR - Rancagua - San Fernando - Pichilemu. (545 km).

While leaving Pichilemu on May 15 in the morning I had no intention of returning here soon . My intention was to visit two places of interest nearby Rancagua. The first place was El Teniente copper mine, as it is still the world's largest underground copper mine, and just nearby the deserted (and now restored) Sewell Mining Town is one of UNESCO World Heritage attractions.

And the second place was Río Los Cipreses National Reserve, about twenty kilometres away.








Rancagua graffiti.


A big road towards the mine. I had found different information about the place. Like – one can visit Sewell only belonging to an organized tourist group, and only 4 companies arrange this kind of visits. Then – cars – older than from the year of 2001 are not allowed to drive there in the mountains.

In short - it seemed the most appropriate thing to go there myself and then it is clear – can I go on or not. And as it was evening already I turned to a village road taking to the National Park hoping to sleep there peacefully. And so I did, nevertheless that everything was closed.


The Andes in the evening sunshine.






There was supposed to be a bigger colony of parrots at least – so it was advertised.


So much of photographing of parrots. The rest of them either flew very high or were very far away.




















There were several well-marked hiking trails in the park and the day was over sooner than expected.


And then I discovered that some oil had dripped again on the cover of the bottom protection of the car.

Consequently, the welding of the cardan had been poor and with an oil-dripping car one cannot move around either here in the park or anywhere else as well. The choice was – either to drive to Santiago and try to find some Mazda or Kia service or back to familiar Pichilemusse, although more than 200 away. Last choice seemed to be more reasonable. As Murphy says that if something is worth doing, then it is also worth redoing. And now on Thursday night it is necessary to start driving immediately - so as to reach the workshop back by Friday morning.

The next post is technical again.