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...