The first steps of the Carretera Austral

I´m now in a small town named Cochrane, which being the first settlement of any size after more than 500km of road/track/path/riverbed I had built up to be some sort of Shangri-la. But on arriving here there was no welcoming party and everything was closed for a long siesta.

From El Calafate to the Chilean border the landscape continued with the flat desert windy patagonian landscape that I had become used to. On nearing the border and cycling higher into the Andes though, lush rainforest started and has continued. So, half of the last week or so was spent cycling to the Chilean border and the second half has been spent on the Carretera Austral (a gravel track that winds through rainforest).

Back Into Chile

The border crossing into Chile was by two boats with a days walk in between. The second of these boats runs pretty infrequently but I´d been told that there was a crossing on Saturday. So I´d planned to leave El Calafate on Tuesday and cycle the 270km to the border in 3 days, take the first boat and then walk for a day over the border to catch the Saturday boat. Although, from Monday night to Tuesday evening it poured down. I managed to get away around 6 though and cycled through the night with the most amazing comet in the sky (which was there for the next three days as well).

At lunchtime two days later I arrived in a village called El Chalten, 40km short of the first boat. I even found some apple pie and so was feeling pretty smug. But, after an hours cycling from El Chalten my back wheel locked up and I realised that the bolt attaching my rear pannier rack to the forks had sheared off. Unlike the front pannier rack, the bolt had snapped inside the frame so there was no way of removing it and reattaching the rack. After a while of swearing I managed to hitch a lift back into the village and found ´the mechanic´. He drilled through the bolt and continued to drill a new hole through the frame. I´m sure the frames been weakened a fair bit with a huge new hole in it, but there wasn´t another way of attaching the rack. I also managed to get the crack in the front pannier rack patched up.

Anyhow, I arrived at the first lake (Lago Del Desierto) that evening and caught the first boat the following morning. The footpath that then crossed into Chile was hard going as I had to push my bike for 20km over a mountain pass through deep ruts up to my waist, through rivers and over fallen trees. It was strangely good to have a days walking for a change though. I arrived at the harbour for the second boat that evening and camped in a meadow above an elderly couples self sufficient farm. The boat crossing the following day took three hours and arrived in Villa o Higgins at the start of the Carretera Austral that evening.

Carretera Austral

The Carretera Austral is a gravel track that was built under Pinochet to link the remote south of Chile with the rest of the country. It runs through rainforest in deep ravines and then climbs up over passes and below glaciers. The rivers and lakes that it follows are so clear and turquoise and the area is totally untouched with so much biodiversity. There are inquisitive hummingbirds, parrots and some ´interesting´ noises through the night. The road itself though in places is not much better than a river bed and nearly impossible to cycle on. Other parts aren´t quite as bad, but it´s still slow going.

From here the road continues northwards for another 1000km or so through a similar landscape, so I´ve spent today stocking up with food and getting ready for another couple of weeks of wilderness.