Pargua to Puerto Fonck - Our way to a little paradise on the shore of lake Llanquihue

Once we reached Pargua with the ferry, we had a really good street with almost no traffic and it was pretty flat, so that we made it pretty quickly to Puerto Montt, where we stayed at a small, familiar hospedaje with a very friendly owner.

Even if the Panamericana is now a real highway, there still is almost no traffic...

The next morning we first had an extensive breakfast and a long talk with the hostel owner Perla, and then we went to the center of Puerto Montt to get some stuff done which cost us most of the day, so that we only left the city by 4 pm. But luckily Puerto Varas is really close, so we got there in no time and could still walk along the lake for a while before it got dark. But unfortunately it was terribly cloudy so that we couldn't see much of the lake and we couldn't even guess that there should be huge volcanoes around...

After a good nights sleep we started with a lot of fog again... We still decided to cycle the small, partly unpaved street along the lake instead of taking the bigger road further from the shore in the hope of the weather clearing up during the day. However, we really couldn't see a lot until we got close to Puerto Octay, from there we at least got a nice view over the bay and the village...

View over Puerto Octay on our way to Puerto Fonck

View over the Centinela Peninsula on our way to Puerto Fonck

After Puerto Octay we still had 13 km of ripio, but finally the sky cleared up a bit and we could at least see the top of Volcán Osorno :-)

Our first view of Volcán Osorno on the way from Puerto Octay to Puerto Fonck

Short before reaching Puerto Fonck we
got a nice view of Volcán Osorno...

And of course we had to take pictures... :-)

After a long day of cycling we finally arrived at the Fundo los Guindos in Puerto Fonck, where Gloria, the mother of a friend of mine, received us very warmly! The first time in over 2 months I completely felt at home which honestly is an incredible feeling!! We spent most of the night talking with Gloria, while Susi, one of her dogs, warmed my feet... The next day we absolutely wanted to explore the place a little bit, so in spite of the rain we took the kayak and went paddling a bit on the lake, we got absolutely soaked, but as we knew that we'd have a warm shower afterwards and tons of space to dry our stuff, we really didn't care :-). In the evening we then drove together with Gloria and a friend of hers to Frutillar (we already passed there on our way to Puerto Fonck) in order to go to the theatre. They have a huge theatre in that little city, directly next to the lake and we went to see "The legend of 1900", which was played really well, the music was also great, I was absolutely fascinated! All in all, it was a great first day at the Fundo los Guindos!!
The next day Gloria took us to the eastern part of lake Llanquihue, where we visited the Saltos del Petrohue, gorgeous waterfalls where we could observe hundreds of salmons on their way upstreams.

Saltos del Petrohue

After leaving the waterfall, we drove up the volcano to the local ski resort, but unfortunately it was all foggy and started to rain when we got there, so we really didn't see a lot. However, it was still a beautiful day getting to know the surroundings of Puerto Fonck and to be told so much about the places by a local!

And then, finally, on our third day and the place of Gloria, we had absolutely great weather, blue sky, lots of sun and it was warm! So that was the time to take pictures...

Fundo los Guindos - a real paradise! :-)

Are you jealous yet??

View from the veranda - It's just amazing!

And the view over the lake from the house it pretty ok as well ;-)

We also made a short bike trip towards the east in order to get a good view of the volcano and this one time we cycled without luggage Stefan had a puncture, so he had to push his bike back in order to fix it...

On a short bike ride towards the east we got a nice view
of the Volcán and Stefan had his first puncture

Once back at the Fundo we again went down to the beach (joined by all the dogs...), Stefan even went swimming, we went kayaking again for a while and well, we simply enjoyed this gorgeous day...

Susi enjoyed the beach together with us

The next day was gorgeous again, unbelievable :-) So Gloria took us to Puerto Varas to her sisters and on the way there we just had to take another picture of the bay of Puerto Octay, that's what it looks like with a clear sky, it's still a hundred times more beautiful than what we saw when we passed this place by bike...

And that's the view from above Puerto Octay with blue sky...

On our way back from Puerto Varas we drove down to the peninsula Centinela in Puerto Octay where the three of us enjoyed the sun for quite a while...

Enjoying the sun together with Gloria on the Peninsula Centinela

Playa en la Peninsula Centinela

The evening we spent playing Canasta and the next day we had pouring rain all day long, so we really just did a lot of nothing, talking, and cooking (it's so nice to be "at home" when there's pouring rain outside...). And after 5 fantastic days at the Fundo los Guindos it was eventually time to say goodbye and continue our way north... Thanks again Gloria for everything, we really spent some unforgettable days at your place!!

Chiloé - One of the wettest islands of the world

After about 18 hours on the ferry with a lot of rain and a long night (we only had normal seats and just behind me an old man snored terribly), we finally arrived in Quellón and surprisingly it wasn't raining for once... As it was already in the afternoon, we decided not to go on that same day, but to look for a hospedaje, which we found easily and there we met another Swiss couple, Ramona and Mirko, that we already knew from the ferry... We spent a wonderful evening with them, eating local salmon prepared by our host and chatting a lot. The next morning we prepared for another day of rain, but an extremely nice surprise awaited us, it kept dry all day long! So we started to cycle north on the Panamericana, that down here isn't really a highway yet... Even though most of the street was paved, it wasn't an easy nor very beautiful ride, almost the whole stretch between Quellón and Castro is under construction, so tons of construction trucks passed us... But we made it to Castro the same day, and coming down to the city we had a beautiful view over the bay that looks more like a lake than like the sea!

What looks like a lake actually is the sea...

Castro itself is a very nice little city with its famous purple and yellow wooden church at the plaza and its also very famous palafitos at the coast. We only stayed there for a night, but we went out for some traditional seafood dinner...

In one of these palafitos we spent the night we stayed in Castro...

The famous palafitos of Castro at low tide

The next day we continued our way to the north shore of the island. In the morning it was terribly foggy (but dry!) so we didn't see anything. After a while it started to become more hilly which made it harder to advance, but as the weather got better it didn't bother us too much. It again stayed dry all day long, we even caught a glimpse of the sun, which was amazing! On our way we passed two more of the very typical wooden churches, unfortunately they were both closed, so we only saw them from outside...

One of the many wooden churches of Chiloé

Once we got to Ancud, the city at the north shore of the island, we cycled to the Hostal Nuevo Mundo that is located at the Costanera and where we could see the sea from our beds :-) The weather got really good for a while, we enjoyed the sunlight on the playground just outside the hostel for a while before we went to the city center to visit the local church (this one was open, so we saw at least one of these nice churches from inside) and to buy something for dinner... 

Our hostel in Ancud, located right at the coast :-)

We even saw the sun when we got to the hostel in Ancud!!

The bay of Ancud - this was the view we had from the hostel
One wouldn't believe that half an hour later it was so foggy we didn't see anything anymore...

The wooden church of Ancud

Luckily we enjoyed the sun for a while before we went to the city, as very soon it was all foggy again and we saw nothing anymore... So we spent a nice evening at the hostel chatting with the other guest before we went to bed early. The next morning we enjoyed a delicious breakfast at the hostel before we took off into the fog... We hardly saw a thing and soon it started drizzling, so cycling wasn't too funny that morning. Soon we reached Chacao, a small village at the north shore of Chiloé, where Stefan went to get us something to eat before we left this for us very foggy island on the ferry to Pargua...

Coyhaique to Puerto Cisnes - The wet part of the Carretera Austral

Well, unfortunately this part of our trip is summarized very easily: We had pouring rain non-stop... :P However, except for the last 16 km to Puerto Cisnes, the streets were paved again, so we got wet but not too dirty and it was easier to advance. And it's quite interesting, once we were completely wet we didn't care too much about the rain anymore and actually started to enjoy the landscape, which was still beautiful: We found ourselves in the middle of an incredibly green rainforest. However, in all the rain we didn't stop for lunch anymore, as it's not very comfy stopping in the rain and it gets cold very quickly, so the day we left Coyhaique we cycled 90 km more or less non-stop until we reached Mañihuales, the next village along the Carretera Austral where we knew there was a casa de ciclista. It wasn't difficult to find the casa, however no one was there to open us the door. From another cyclist we knew that we should just push hard on the door in order to open it, which we tried, but somehow it didn't open... So while Stefan went to look for a hostel, I tried again, and finally I managed to open the door, but I really felt like a burglar... But soon a French cyclist joined us and when Jorge, the owner of the casa de ciclista finally arrived in the evening, it seemed the most normal thing that we were there, he even sad that he hoped we dared braking in instead of waiting outside in the cold rain... Equipped with dried clothes we prepared to get wet again the next morning, as there was no sign of the rain stopping soon. Our goal for the day was to reach the next village in order to have a dry place to sleep again, which we absolutely needed, as again we were completely soaked once we got there. We found a nice hospedaje where we could hang up all our cloths above the oven, so it dried fast. 

The landscape was extremely green, no wonder with all this rain...

The next morning, we were already used to it, it rained again, however, for once there were times it rained a little less and from time to time we could even guess where the sun was, to we started optimistically... But well, we hoped too much, soon the rain was pretty strong again and we got soaked once more. So once we got to the intersection of the Carretera Austral with the street leading to Puerto Cisnes, we definitely decided not to follow the Carretera all the way to Chaitén, but to cycle to Puerto Cisnes and take the ferry over to the Chiloé island from there. The landscape on the last 30 km to Puerto Cisnes was once more spectacular, there were tons of waterfalls everywhere (once I counted 13 waterfalls that I saw at the same time!!) and from time to time there was even a little bit of sun, so that we saw a lot of rainbows!

For once we even saw a little bit of the snowed mountains in the background

Once in Puerto Cisnes we first tried to get our tickets for the ferry that was supposed to leave the same evening, but obviously the office of the ferry company was closed, so we asked at the bakery where they told us that the ferry had a delay of about a day (this was later confirmed by the police...). Well, it seemed we had no chance but to look for a hospedaje, but we were lucky, the owner was very helpful and phoned around until we knew for sure (well, as sure as you can ever be in South America) that the ferry should leave the next evening and until the office of the ferry company opened so we could purchase our tickets... So we had the whole next day to spend in Puerto Cisnes, and luckily it finally stopped raining, so we hiked up to a little viewpoint above the village and just relaxed a little bit. In the evening the ferry then arrived pretty exactly at the time we where told the day before and so we started an 18 hour ferry trip towards Quellón, the southernmost city on Chiloé (one of the wettest islands of the world...), the southern end of the Panamericana...

View over Puerto Cisnes once it stopped raining... ;-)

Villa O´Higgins to Coyhaique - The southern part of the Carretera Austral

After a day of rest in Villa O´Higgins, we finally started to cycle north along the Carretera Austral, the supply street of the Chilean part of northern Patagonia, which mostly is in a worse condition than most farm tracks in Switzerland... So the wind we had in southern Patagonia was now replaced by bad and hilly roads, but honestly, absolutely ANYTHING is better than the winds we had experienced in the south!! The first two days the ripio was still in a pretty good condition and the road led us along lots of rivers and lakes (but instead of following the river the road always climbed up every hill, just to then lead back down to the water...) with great views onto lots of waterfalls, glaciers and snowed mountains towards the Pacific ocean. It didn´t take long for us to fall in love with the landscape, especially as we had it almost for ourselves, there were hardly a handfull cars passing us every day. The first night after leaving Villa O´Higgins we stayed at a refugio (a little house in the nowhere originally built for the local gauchos if they had to pass a night in the wilderness) that was even equipped with an oven together with Beat and Luzia, two Swiss cyclist we already met in Villa O´Higgins.

That´s what we found outside the Refugio between Villa O´Higgins and Río Bravo :-)

 

The next day a pick-up with two kayaks passed us and I got extremely jealous, at it would have been much easier to float down the river (ok, there might have been some parts that I wouldn´t have paddled either...) than to cycle the hilly road... But after beeing attacked by an agressive dog (he bit into both Stefan´s and my bike bags!) we reached the ferry slot at Río Bravo and crossed over to Puerto Yungay, where an extremely friendly military officer offered us water and a warm shower in his house before we went back to the waiting house of the ferry, where we passed the night. After a good nights sleep we started cycling with gorgeous weather and still pretty good ripio, which definitely helped us getting over the next few hills (it felt like a thousand hills) where the uphill part was often short but so steep that Beat, Luzia, and me pushed our bikes up, while Stefan always managed to cycle up...

On one of the flatter sections of our way from Puerto Yungay to Caleta Tortel...

The valley of dead trees looked almost like in a Harry Potter movie... ;-)

Once we reached the highest point we had an incredible view onto the wide valley of RíoBaker and after a nice descent we took the terrible road to Caleta Tortel, while Beat & Luzia continued towards Cochrane. For about 22 km we cycled over terrible washboard ripio to the remote village of Caleta Tortel, a beautiful place surrounded by amazing fjords where all houses are connected by wooden walkways only! That night there was a tsunami alarm because of the earthquake in northern Chile and the whole lowar aprt of the village was evacuated, luckily we stayed in a hostel in the upper part and could therefore sleep quitely...


Mysthic Caleta Tortel

On our way back from Caleta Tortel to the Carretera

The next day we had to cycle the 22 km of bad ripio back towards the Carretera Austral where for once a pretty flat stretch along RíoBaker awaited us. At a smaller river we found a good camping spot, but it was a pretty cold night, for the first time we had frost on the tent and on all our bags in the morning and lots of water condensation in the tent! In again beautiful and warm weather we continued our way towards Cochrane and after climbing up a pretty steep pass, the descent was much longer and gave us amazing views onto several lagunas.

On our way up the pass leading to Cochrane

On steadily deteriorating ripio we finally reached Cochrane, where once more we met Beat and Luzia. After a day of rest in Cochrane we decided not to follow the Carretera Austral all the way to Coyhaique, but to bike to Chile Chico (where it´s supposed to be a lot warmer than on the Carretera) and cross over to Puerto Ingeniero Ibañez by ferry. However, the day we left Cochrane we still biked along the Carretera Austral, it was once again hilly with amaying views and at the end of the day we reached the sleepy but beautiful village Puerto Bertrand, where the Río Baker begins its journey towards the Pacific Ocean... There we rented a cabin together (the street up to the cabin was probably the steepest street I ever saw, according to Beat´s Ipod it had an inclination of 15° which equals 33%!) with Beat & Luzia and spent a relaxing evening over a good meal and some wine :-)

The Río Baker on our way to Puerto Bertrand

Just gorgeous!!

How true!! Please don´t destroy this amazing region!!

Puerto Bertrand

Leaving Puerto Bertrand we had an easy day in front of us, as our goal was to reach Puerto Guadal, only 30 km ahead, on the shore of Lago General Carrera, the second largest lake in South America! Again we had amazing weather and warm temperatures, so that we could finally use our sponsered bike shirts, thanks again to Radwerk Winterthur Töss!!


I guess you at the latest here you can imagine why we fell in love with this region...

Gorgeous view over Lago General Carrera onto the mountains

:-) :-) :-)

Once we reached Puerto Guadal we looked for an eco-hostel that another cyclist recommended us, it wasn´t too difficult to find, but it was located about 2 km uphill from town and the road there was bad, really bad... But finally we got there and spent 2 days of rest just relaxing together with Beat & Luzia. The 9th of April we definitely separated from Beat and Luzia, as we went on to Chile Chico, while they stayed some more days in Guadal... Cycling along Lago General Carrera, we again had gorgeous views onto snowed mountains and glaciers on the other side of the lake, but the street got worse and worse and we had to cross the Paso de las Llaves which had some quite steep parts...

On our way along the coast of the Lago General Carrera

This sign is actually pretty accurate, unfortunately we came the other way,
meaning that for us it was uphil... :S

After having wild camped close to Fachinal, we continued to Chile Chico, where the road continued as usual to be very hilly... But the view onto the islands in the lake and later on over the Laguna Verde high above Lago General Carrera were well worth all the effort of climbing all the uncountable ascents!


On our way to Chile Chico



Laguna Verde

From Chile Chico we took the ferry across Lago General Carrera to Puerto Ingeniero Ibañez, where we met Wladi, a Chilean cyclist. Together with him we camped on the other side of the lake and decided to bike together to Coyhaique. Now between Puerto Ingeniero Ibañez and Coyhaique we had to cross the highest pass on the Carretera Austral, it´s only 1120 m above sea level, but coming from about 200 m altitude it´s still pretty high... So the first about 35 km we basically spent working ourselfs uphill, with some minor downhills in between, just so we could climb some more meters of altitude... ;-) But the landscape again was gorgeous, there were tons of lenga trees whos leaves are amazingly colorful at the moment, so traveling in the fall has still its advantages...

On our way up to Portezuelo Ibañez, with Cerro Castillo in the background

I love the colors of the lenga

Cuesta del Diablo: part of the ascent to the Portezuelo Ibañez

Short before reaching the top of the Portezuelo Ibañez, we reached the snow for the first time on our bikes...

Yes, it´s getting colder...

And now we´re definitely in the snow!

We hoped that the camping we planned to stay at would be far enough down in order to get out of the snow again, but obviously it wasn´t... It was closed as all the pipes were frozen, but the park rangers were very friendly and still let us camp there, as we were literally out in the nowhere and there was just this one closed national reserve campground... As the campground was located in the woods, there was even more snow, so we spent the night in about 15 cm deep snow, at least we didn´t have to worry about water, as we had plenty of snow to melt ;-) The next day we could enjoy the descent from the mountains into the pampa again, but it meant that soon there was wind again, and obviously it was headwind. But it was definitely not as bad as the wind we knew from southern Patagonia, so we reached Coyhaique in the late afternoon, the first real city after Punta Arenas, and with real city I mean that there are more than about 10´000 permanent inhabitants and that it´s not just a tourist town like Puerto Natales or El Calafate. So we spent the last two days here enjoying all the amenities of a city and tomorrow we´ll continue our way north...