El Chaltén to Villa O´Higgins - A hiking path with a bike..

After a day of rest in El Chaltén, we left only around noon, as we still had some things to do in the village and as I had to help Christian, a German cyclist, to repair the zipper of his tent... At the beginning the headwind was quite strong and the street bad, so it wasn't too much fun... But soon we left the big valley and got into a smaller one with lots of trees, so the wind didn't bother us anymore, yippee!!! And we were lucky again, as not only the wind wasn't bad anymore, but also the road suddenly got a lot better, so that we advanced quite fast and could really enjoy the beautiful landscape with all its mountains, rivers, and waterfalls!

On our way to Lago del Desierto

However, once we reached the Lago del Desierto, we were disappointed, as there they told us that the ferry that was scheduled to run that evening would not run (supposedly because of the weather, but we guess that they just didn't want to cross the lake for 2 persons only) and that MAYBE they would take us over the next day before noon or probably the next evening... Welcome to South America, they just do whatever they want!! :-) So as we didn't have a choice, we stayed at the local campground. At least we got a hot shower, and a special one, as it was heated with wood... The following night was pretty stormy, so maybe it wasn't that bad that they didn't take us across the lake the day before... The next morning we woke up in the rain, we packed our stuff, and went to the harbour. Once we got there we waited quite a while as obviously there was no one there from the boat company. The only people we found were two policemen who told us that they will eventually show up... This then happened short before noon and surprisingly they really took us to the other side of the lake. There we got our stamp that we left Argentina and then the fun started... We were told by many cyclists that the path from the Argentinian customs to the actual frontier with Chile was just terrible, so the good thing was that we expected it to be worse than it actually was. But this doesn´t mean it wasn´t bad, we still had had to push our bikes for hours up a sometimes very steep, narrow trench (yeah, it really was sometimes just a trench!)...

A perfect road to cross a pass by bike... ;-)

After a few hours the path got a little better, so that at least we had a bit of space next to the bike in order to push it uphill. However, the path was then interrupted by creeks several times, and we had some pretty interesting creek crossings, be it balancing our bikes over a trunk or having to take off our front bags in order to push the bike through the creek...

Interesting creek crossing #1



Interesting creek crossing #2



But luckily we got lots of great views onto the valley, the Lago del Desierto, and Mount Fitz Roy (this time from the other side, which isn´t as famous as the view from El Chaltén, but it´s not less beautiful!) which compensated us for all the heavy work!



View onto Lago del Desierto from the path we pushed our bikes uphill...



That felt almost comfortable, at least there was space to push the bike... :-)

At the north shore of Laguna Larga we decided to put up our tent, as the site was too beautiful to continue: Surrounded by a forest there was this sandy beach, the laguna, and a beautiful view onto Mount Fitz Roy, and nothing that could remind you of civilization!

Probably the best wild campsite we had so far! :-)

And even though the adventure of pushing our bikes up a hiking trail was pretty interesting, we hoped the rest of our way to Candelario Mancilla (where the boat to Villa O´Higgins leaves) would be a little bit easier. And we weren´t disappointed: the next morning there was only about 1 km of hiking trail to be done, then we reached the frontier where two signs were placed in the middle of nowhere, one welcoming you to Argentina and the other welcoming you to Chile. So we entered Chile and there actually was a path that an off-road vehicle (as for example our bikes! :-)) could pass. There was only one problem with this path: Soon it started to lead downhill very steeply and well, the path was composed of mostly very loose gravel... So I saw myself obliged to learn how to mountain bike, and better sooner than later... :P

My first mountain-biking experience: I had the perfect bike for it... :P

But the view was just great! :-)

My heart missed a beat every once in a while, but eventually we made it to the Chilean customs where miraculously no one was interested in the food we carried with us (usually the Chilean customs inspect everything you bring into their country very exactly...). Once we reached Candelario Mancilla we directly went to the campground as we expected the ferry to leave the day after, but as we saw people at the harbour we went to ask them if there was a boat crossing that day and they told us that there will be one. So after about 3 h waiting at the harbour a boat appeared and actually took us over to Villa O´Higgins, the southern end of the Carretera Austral :-)

Waiting for the boat at Candelario Mancilla

Beautiful untouched wilderness on our way to Villa O´Higgins

On the boat we met Andrej and Brittani, a Slovakian cyclist and an American hitchhiker, with whom we spent the evening and the next day just relaxing and doing whatever had to be done in the village. After a delicious Estofado (a typical Chilean stew) that we cooked together with Andrej we hope to be ready to start our way along the Carretera Austral, where the wind will be replaced by a lot of bad ripio and hilly roads... ;-)