January 1, 2019 – January 7, 2019
The Carretera Austral is a 1,240 kilometre road that runs from Puerto Montt to Villa O’Higgins, through mountains and forests, around fjords, lakes and glaciers, and relies on a couple of longer ferry crossings where the terrain is just too challenging for road construction. Work on the highway began in 1976. It was opened to traffic in 1988 and the last 100 kilometres to Villa O’Higgins were only completed in the year 2000. The road winds through remote areas of what is know as Chile’s Northern Patagonia region and we were very excited to be finally making our way into this region that is so famous for its beauty.
We drove to the small village of Hornopiren where we spent the night along a river before catching the 5 hour ferry the next morning.
The road from the ferry dock took us into Parque Nacional Pumalin, one of the parks that were created by land donations from Douglas Tomkins. Douglas Tomkins, founder of the North Face outdoor gear company, and his wife had purchased and conserved more than 2 million acres of land in Argentina and Chile, and then donated much of it to the Chilean government to form national parks. The campgrounds in Pumalin were some of the nicest we have ever visited.
We were sitting in our cute little gazebo when a couple walked up and asked if we were really from Canada. Turns out they, Sam and Don, were from Ontario, and were doing a long road trip as well (check out their great website) …..and, they had partially slipped off the road on the entry to the campsite and were wondering if we could lend them some of our Seymour muscle to help get them back on track. The process went well. As it turned out Don was able to drive out of his predicament without actually hooking up to Seymour but it was nice there was another 1 ton about if the road under his big Norte Americano Ford gave way any further. So, we celebrated with beer.
As they were from Ontario, I asked them if they knew where Blyth was (my home town). They did, in fact. Then Don asked if I knew Grant Sparling….and I did, in fact. My father had a construction company when we lived in Blyth and did several jobs for Grant Sparling. Turns out Don use to have a business that sold equipment to the Sparlings….small world.
The next morning we retraced our route a little to do a couple of hikes that we had driven past the day before. The first was a short trail/boardwalk through a grove of ancient Alerce trees, some as old as 3000 years and with diameters up to about 3 metres.
Next, we hiked the Laguna Tronador trail…..well, it was actually more like we climbed stairs/ladders to get to an overgrown view point. We had decided to not take Piper on this hike as we had read about all the stairs and we are glad we left her in the truck. Long sections of slippery ladders made this a tough hike and we both felt it the next day.
We drove to another great campsite for the evening, called Campsite El Volcan. Someone was supposed to come around and collect camping fees, but we never saw any workers the entire time we were at these camps, and yet the bathrooms were spotless…maybe we were up and driving too early in the morning for the rangers to collect the fees…. it made for some really nice free camping.
We continued along, marvelling at the views around every corner. Our next destination was Campsite Ventisquero, for which we drove several kilometres off of the Carretera Austral to reach.
We headed out on a 20 km return hike to the glacier at top of the valley.
We headed off the Carretera Austral again, this time on a side road that lead to the town of Futuleufu. If you are into river rafting, you may have heard of this town. The river is rated as one of the top rafting rivers in the world but having a healthy fear of ice cold rivers with class IV and V rapids, we just couldn’t get motivated. We did however get some nice views of the river and go for a nice lunch.
Still to come….more mountains, glaciers, lakes…. and some marble caves!