Chile Chico, a Clean Little Tourist Town
We spent most of two days in Chile Chico because we were too tired to inquire about the timing of the ferry the first night we were there. It left at 8 the next morning, and since we missed it, had to wait until 4 the following afternoon.
We took a nice drive out of town along the General Carerra Lake. We could have driven around to the other side instead of taking the ferry. But this would have meant 300 miles of gravel road, alongside steep lake cliffs, instead of 2 hours on a ferry. No thanks, not after 3 days in SW Argentina.
On our drive, one mountain was literally BLUE. I have seen streaks of blue rock near Moab, but never an entire mountain! At many places across Chile, we saw things made from this beautiful rock — entrance signs to towns and the most interesting, chips of blue in red bricks for a town plaza walkway.
At an overlook of the town, they have made a memorial to the constant year-around wind. And indeed, the wind was so strong up there, I could not stand against it. Mike hung onto me.
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| Lake General Gerrerra, largest lake in Chile |
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| The aptly name and placed, Memorial to the Wind! |
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| Pasture of lovely white flowers |
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| A family of fluffy geese |
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| A mountain of beautiful blue rock |
We decided to eat a nice meal out, and had probably the best salmon we’ve ever eaten. It was very simply grilled, but was so perfectly cooked that it was incredibly moist and flavorful, a fact we credit to a good cook and a full two-inches-thick fillet.
The ferry ride across the lake was a rough one. Six to eight-foot waves hit the bow of the boat making it shudder. An occasional larger wave caused the boat to stop for a second, then came the shudder. When we checked a map, we found that the area of high waves was wide open to winds coming straight in off the Pacific.
NORTHERN PATAGONIA
We drove off the ferry at Puerto Ibanez and immediately drove into the most incredible views of jagged snow-covered Patagonian peaks with small, somewhat haphazard farms clustered in the steep valleys.
We made our way to a charming, though cold, little campground with a creek in the front. The farm had 2 dogs (one looked so much like Mollie it made me cry), sheep and lambs, geese and chickens and small brown versions? of llamas.
They are just now getting the Los Nires Campground set up; making little cabanas, parking spots for campers, bathrooms, etc. Incredibly lovely older couple. They are on the Carretera Austral, Chile’s most challenging and spectacular road, and should have visitors from many (especially European) countries. The camp is about 10 kilometers south of the fork in the road that heads down to Puerto Ibanez.
Wonderful scenery was the norm on our way to Coihaique and then out to the coast at Puerto Aisén.
ALL-DAY TOUR TO SAN RAFAEL GLACIER
Our catamaran tour left at 9, after meeting at a local hotel and being shuttled to the boat at the dock. The trip would be five hours each way, plus 2½ hours at the glacier where were motored closer to the glacier in a Zodiac.
On the way we saw forested fiords with some snow-covered mountains, and a few salmon farms. We were served a nice breakfast, and then an early lunch with wine and a well-prepared salmon before reaching the glacier at 1 PM.
A few miles from the glacier, we began seeing stray icebergs making their way to the open sea. In the San Rafael Laguna (Lake), we encountered hundreds of icebergs, large and small. It was such a lovely warm sunny day for us, but it was bad for the glacier as it calved more bergs than normal.
We were divided into small groups and taken for 20-minute rides in the Zodiac to get closer to the glacier. Like most, it appears to have an incredibly rough surface. One “calf” berg was an incredibly shiny black! I’m told it was one that had flipped downside up. . . ?
The icebergs took on many unusual shapes as they melted and turned and rolled in the sea. One has to remember while looking at them that you were only seeing the top 10%, like an ice cube floating in a glass.
When we started back, THEN the partying on the catamaran began. First a whiskey toast with iceberg ice, then an open bar with anything and as much as you wanted to drink! Next the music and dancing. This night belonged to the oldsters! These Chileans danced to the rock music, sang along with all of the songs and partied heartily. Later, karaoke singing, led by passengers with familiar songs, was joined by all the Chileans.
After a glass of wine and a fresh raspberry rum drink, we finally tired of watching and laughing at the scene (and some rather raucous dancing) and retired to the quieter upstairs for the final hour back to port.
It was a good, well organized trip on Catamaranes del Sur and quite fun. On the stern deck I began talking with a delightful 9-year-old girl and a young woman pilot. The breeze, the sun, and the conversation were pleasant. Long day, but a good one.
CARRETERA AUSTRAL
I didn’t realized what Carratera Austral was. . . . I thought it was a good quality highway through Chile. It IS that, but it is one of the most spectacular scenic highways in the world through the Patagonian Andes.
The morning after the glacier tour, we left Puerto Aisen and headed north. First was a stunning double waterfall that rivaled those in the Columbia Gorge between Washington and Oregon. We followed a valley with little farms, lovely green pastures of red, black and red and white cows, some sheep, chicken, and even some baby pigs!
The pastures look as if they have been groomed for a golf course, then we actually saw some “marshmallow” hay bales and have to assume they hay them in the summer and have now that it is spring, they have turned the cows in for fresh green grass. Everything looked so pastoral.
In one small town, we drove by and stopped by another motor home. They were from Santiago and had only been on the road for three weeks, the same as we had. He was an accountant and she had run a AirB&B.
After a short visit, we both drove to the Puerto Cisnes, had beers and visited. Patricio and Claudia were just beginning their trip to Alaska by first heading to the southern tip of all roads at Ushuaia, where they will turn north again for their several years of traveling.
The demonstrations in Santiago had begun just a day or so after they left and understandably their conversation was full of this. Patricio was distressed because he “missed the revolution!!!” He had been saying for years that something needed to be done for a fairer shake for the working class. Claudia was in tears to learn that the police they so trusted were considering this a “war” against their own people and shooting rubber bullets which had shot out many protestor’s eyes.
I borrowed their WiFi just long enough to download emails, and she arranged with a local lady to launder 4 shirts and 4 pairs of socks for us!
The next morning we hit the road north, and they; south. Nice visit.
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| Patricio |
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| Claudia |
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| Mountain River Cisnes on its way to the Pacific |
PARKS OF NORTHERN PATAGONIA
We drove the Carratera Austral, parts of which are gravel, and parts; excellent paved highway. The park is so wild that no man could ever walk though it without clearing a path with a machete. But of course, there are many treks of varying lengths through the parks. The valleys have small settlements and at several we took side roads through incredible pastoral farms with lovely pastures and snow-capped mountains peeking over the hills.
There were the steep, incredibly beautiful glaciated mountains, the lower flanks covered with mixed forest trees, with tall bushes adorned with red flowers covering the roadsides and cliffs. Ditches full of lupine lined the highway, mostly purple but some pink and white ones cropping up occasionally. A short yellow flowering bush reminded me of forsythia, and a plant resembling rhubarb, called nalco or wild rhubarb was everywhere.
These parks have very little signage on them, and as a result we missed a couple of things we would have liked to have seen off the main road. One small town was nearly wiped clean from a mudslide that took a large portion of one mountain with it. It came crashing down several miles of canyon and swept over a portion of the town. They have barely begun to rebuild from it so we think the slide was this past winter.
We came upon three Patagonian cowboys moving a herd of cows and calves down the road to a corral. I had a great time taking pictures much to the amusement of my husband — you know, take the girl off the farm, but you can’t take the farm outta the girl!
We drove 77 kilometers off the main road up to a small town, Futaleufu, a rafting town we knew from our boating days. The river is the most beautiful color of water, but disappointingly no rapids could be seen from the road. However, the yellow bush was flourishing here — in the ditches, on the hillsides, and making up colorful fence rows. We will see this same yellow bush all the way north to the northern park of the Lake District.
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| Yellow hillsides and valleys |
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| Nalco (wild rhubarb) |
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| Lovely little yellow flower that carpeted pastures. |
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| These kids look like they're having fun! |
The park itself is the most amazing dichotomy of true wild temperate rain forest and American-style mowed parks, complete with wonderful campsites, bathrooms and showers. The Peruvians are lucky to have this area saved with some areas of it, I’m sure, reclaimed from worn out fields.
We made our way to a campground at the other end of the park. The path wound it’s way up and down and around for miles before we located a lovely oasis of green lawn and clean restrooms in the middle of nowhere.
In the morning — a low tire, not the same one. Mike decided to try to get out on it. We again wound up and down and around for miles, then found some air at the park maintenance shed and drove 20 miles to the nearest town. But, the tire was shot — numerous small cuts in it, about 15. Mike doesn’t know if the rocks were just that sharp in the park, or it happened because it was under-inflated — or both. But we had to buy a new tire for about $150 which Mike said he wouldn’t have willingly paid $50 for it in the states because of the low quality.
SURPRISE! Change of Plans!
Beautiful morning. We spent the night beside the ocean at Chaitén, and woke to a quiet, slight breeze and with singing birds. I saw 10 beautiful, graceful swans, white ones with black heads and necks, swimming in a flotilla across the placid ocean.
This is the town that was covered with ash from a volcano — twice in the last few years. They pushed all the ash into the bay and are now having to rebuild another embarcadero (dock) up the coastline about a half mile.
We went to get our tickets for the ferry confirmed and were suddenly thrown into a tailspin. Our afternoon ferry had been canceled because of riots at the other end, and a ferry to another destination, Puerto Mott, was boarding within the hour. Mike scrambled to get tickets and I took the truck to go pick up our laundry an hour early (getting her out of bed at 9 am.)
Our ferry ride will now be 7 hours instead of 4 and will place us miles north of where we were headed. So, a change of plans! Remember, our motto is what good is a plan if you can’t change it!
The ferries have been an interesting experience for us. We mostly travel by following our nose, but the one thing one had better plan down here is the long distance ferries, as they might be cancelled, as we found out.
Had we not scooted around and got on that ferry in one hour, we would still be down in that part of the country. The only way out was 57K up a gravel road to the next ferry stop, a short hop across a bay, then many, many more miles north.
You two certainly did a great job of researching things to do and things to see. Hardly any common experiences between yours and ours - which is good because there is always something new to experience on the next visit
ReplyDeleteTony & Betty