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... ;-)