The Carreterra Austral starts in Puerto Montt and runs over 1000km south to Villa O´Higgins. A bit of it is paved, but it is generally a gravel road. Why on earth would anyone, let alone thousands of tourists and locals, including hundreds of cyclists, choose to travel this route every summer? Because it is the only road south in Chile, because it is the only road in the section of South America that isn´t horribly boring, and because it takes you through absolutely gorgeous scenery - mountains, glaciers, lakes, rivers, forests - and is largely uninhabited.
For all of these reasons, it is not an easy road to travel quickly down. It took us 1 week, 3 busses, 4 ferries, 10 rides, and lots of waiting. Our time was not wasted, though, with the highlight of our accomplishments being a dance choreographed to "Ice Ice Baby".
The people we met while hitchhiking were fantastic - locals driving firewood, books, medical supplies and such around, an American hippie couple rafting the rivers, Israelis driving fast and playing techno, workers on the mega dam project slated for construction, etc.
Our favourite was Fernando and Monica, a couple from Santiago that had a daughter our age - we stopped lots with them to take photos, then they invited us to accompany them on a boat ride out to see these "marmol" caves they´d heard about.
Many of the people who picked us up didn´t have quite enough room for two people and backpacks and the opposite for many people who didn´t pick us up. We decided that getting rides is not about space in people´s vehicles, but rather about room in their hearts.
Little known fact: Bryan Adams is HUGE in Chile, and several people put on his music for us when they found out we were from Canada.
We also met other hitchhikers who were wonderful. Jorge, also from Santiago, showed us how to collect mussels, and we had a delicious shellfish dinner while camped out one night waiting for a ferry.
We managed to get ourselves on two "full" boats, restoring my faith in possibilism. The final one, from Villa O´Higgins, was the one that would get us across a big lake to where we could hike over into Argentina.
The next boat was in two days but when they heard that we were on our way to get married, and already pretty behind schedule, they found room. Everybody loves love!
From where the boat dropped us, we hiked about half a kilometre, then checked out of Chile. 
They almost didn´t let us leave the country because we didn´t have some little paper they had given us when we came in our bikes from Mendoza. Details! It was a few stressful moments when we considered what we would have to do to get back to Santiago to find that piece of paper but they were kind, gave us the necessary stamp and waved us through.
We then hiked 22km to where we checked into Argentina. 
After spending the night there, we took another boat across the Lago del Desierto, which used to belong to Chile 20 years ago.
We then took a bus into El Chalten to find Ger and Nuria. It was SO wonderful to see them again, and we promptly went on another hike so that Nuria could show us her favourite places. 
1 comment:
sweet fanny pack!
Post a Comment