As we said in the last post, riding through the gentle farmland and along the pretty lakes was just a bit too… easy.  For this reason we looked at the maps to see what we could do to spice things up a bit.  There were a couple dashed lines around and through some national parks in the mountains, so that’s where we decided to go.  There were more direct (and more paved!) routes through this area, but none of them called to us in the same way.  Into the mountains we went!

We set off from the tourist town of Pucon.  You may have heard of this town because it’s been in the news recently.  One of the big, iconic volcanoes we rode past erupted just a few days after we were out of the area, and all the town’s residents were evacuated.  Here is a picture (that we didn’t take) of the dramatic eruption:

So we set off from Pucon heading due East, towards the Chile-Argentina border.  There is a town there that is mostly composed of Mapuche people: the original inhabitants of the area.  It was a really lively town, with tons of Argentine tourists and a lovely plaza.  When we stopped to ask for directions the folks at the municipal building warned us that we would need a four-wheel drive vehicle.  They laughed when I told them we were on bicycles.

After the pavement ended we began to climb up a steep river valley.  At times the river was a deep canyon, and various bridges crossed it to connect small farmsteads.  We ventured out onto the most impressive of these bridges, and it was terrifying.  We didn’t even make it halfway across before we were too scared to continue and gingerly made our way back to firm land again.

 

 

 

 

That night we found a great camping spot: in a cow field next to the river.  As we cooked dinner various cows and horses wandered by to check us out, but nothing bothered us.  It was one of the quietest nights we’ve had in a long time, in spite of the little dog that barked at our tent around 2 am!  We were grateful to the dog though, since when we went out to chase it off we saw the most spectacular stars.

The next day we climbed up and up into the mountains.  We went three hours without seeing a car, and it felt like our own private nature preserve.  I (Daisy) found an insane beetle stuck on its back in the middle of the road.  Once I flipped it over I could not believe how awkward it’s giant mandibles made it.  We later learned it is called a ‘ciervo volante’, or stag-beetle.  Jason found a Chilean tarantula just down the road.  Around here they call them ‘little chicken spiders’ because they are known to be calm and friendly.

 

 

 

 

 

Here are some of the more macro vistas we saw on this day:

After this great loop in the mountains we spent a day on pavement to get to our next gravel road.  This one ran through a national park containing a massive volcano and its lava flows.  It was only a day’s worth of riding, but it was beautiful.  It was surreal to climb up black lava dunes, eat lunch overlooking a green lagoon, and ride through a high forest of Araucana trees.

 

We reached the top of the climb and began to descend.  At this point the road surface deteriorated and it was full of loose rocks and corrugations.  When a car came to pass us I moved over to give it some space, but I hit a loose spot and fell down while moving quite quickly.  Luckily I didn’t fall into the truck, but I did fall on top of a sharp rock that dug a deep gash into my knee.  It was only about a centimeter long, but it was full of little volcanic rocks.  The cleaning process was awful!  We had to use our water filter to squirt clean water in as we attempted to flush out the rocks.  When that didn’t work all the way I resorted to picking the rocks out with tweezers.  Yuck.

In retrospect, I am insanely lucky that this is the worst injury I’ve had on this entire trip.  Jason’s worst was the sting ray.  In both cases, we had less than a day’s worth of pain / discomfort before being back on the bikes at full strength.  Now, you probably need cheering up, so here’s some pictures of a couple more puppies we met this week!

 

 

Since the volcanic road we have been on pavement, climbing over hills and mountains on our way to the coast.  Not too much exciting has happened – we are just trying to put in the miles to get to another family visit and then on to Northern Chile.  Oh!  One more milestone to mention: 11,000 miles!

We love Chile. You might think by now that we just love everywhere, but that isn’t exactly true, since we didn’t love the Yucatan very much at all. Anyway, back to the positive: we love Chile. It is home to a grand variety of landscapes, and after spending a month in the forbidding Patagonia on rough gravel roads we were ready for a bit of a break. We planned a route through the famous Lakes and Rivers Regions, and hopped among huge inland lakes for most of a week.

We finally discovered some of Chile’s famous fresh produce, and we rode gentle hills through bucolic farmland. We also got kind of bored from how easy it was, and for that reason we have taken a turn towards the Andes where we are once again bouncing along the gravel backroads and climbing among mountains. We’ll talk about these latest mountains in the next post though. For now we’ll focus on the giant sparkling lakes and the volcanoes that tower above them.

Our first big lake was called Lago Llanquihue, which is quite a tongue twister. This lake’s perimeter is quite developed for tourism, and it was a hopping place for vacationing Chileans. A neat aspect of the tourism here is that they are actively promoting cycling, so there was a designated bicycle path along the road for many miles. The nearly perfectly conical volcano overlooking the vast lake provided a perfect backdrop too!

After that came Lago Puyehue after yet another stretch of bumpy gravel road. We had expected gravel for about 45 miles, but after a mere 20 there was a sudden, wonderful section of brand new pavement. We call this unexpected treat ‘bonus pavement’. We got more bonus pavement on the way to the next lake, Lago Ranco.

In Lago Ranco we stayed in a funny campground where the owner met us wearing teeny tiny black shorts and nothing else. The place was crammed with kids and dogs and barbecues. We snagged the very last site crammed between a young family and the playground. We were in for a long night, especially since the town fireworks show unexpectedly began at 11:30 pm.

We started to see fields of wheat, blueberries, and corn. Fruit and vegetable stores are found in every little town, and at night we often have so many veggies in our dinner that we can barely eat it all. We even discovered a brand new fruit: the sweet cucumber. Inside it has thick flesh that tastes like a fragrant sweet melon.

The weather started to get hot – in the 80s or even 90s. Because of this heat we decided to take a rest day in the small tourist town of Lican Ray on the banks of yet another large lake. This one was situated beneath the Volcan Villarica, and was home to a black sand beach that was packed with Chilean tourists. We found a backyard campground at the edge of town and settled in. Rest days are full of chores and very little rest. There are blogs to update, clothes to wash, families to contact, routes to plan, shopping to do, bicycles to repair / clean. On this day I (Daisy) had work to do on a statistics manuscript as well.

One more day of riding brought us to the edge of the mountains again, although we spent one more day camping on a lake. We had tried to stay at a cheap campground away from the shore, but the power was bizarrely out and it was closed down. Instead we stayed at a much pricier place, but it had a bonus kitten that happily drank the milk we offered and settled in for a nap on my lap. Bike touring certainly has its advantages!

Next up, we hit the mountains again on one-lane gravel roads. Spoiler alert: we found a giant beetle and a Chilean tarantula!

Well, we finished the Carretera Austral.

Technically we ‘skipped’ the last 45 km to the big city of Puerto Montt, but they were all paved and we took the unpaved alternated for an additional 60 kilometers of rough gravel. We decided to call this latest section the ‘Carretera Austral Plus’. If anybody asks, we’ll tell them we rode the whole thing!

From Chaiten we rode for a day through the beautiful park of El Pumalin. It is a very large private reserve (owned by an American, strangely enough), with many well-maintained trails and campgrounds. It was a mistly morning when we entered the park, but by midday the clouds cleared and we could see the lovely forest that was clearly recovering from the volcanic eruption. We even took a hike to see some old growth trees!

That evening we took a ferry across one fjord to a tiny spit of land between ferries. We decided to camp here for the night, which was a great decision. It was like we had the whole place to ourselves, and we wandered a side road free of traffic, just to see where it went. That night we camped in a shelter next to the following ferry landing.

The following day we had the whole bay to ourselves for the morning, and we lazed about reading and drinking tea. Just as the first group of motorists arrived a small boat motored across the water to unload a family and about a dozen coolers. They set up shop in the same shelter we had slept in, and proceeded to sell a delicious assortment of food. We bought empanadas and salmon ceviche from them.

The ferry eventually came and it was a production to get all the cars on and arranged properly. One long truck couldn’t make it around the tight corner, and it took about half an hour (and the assistance of another truck) before the long truck jolted down the hill and onto the ferry. The onlookers clapped.

That night, on the far side of the fjord, we followed a 9-year-old girl back to her house where her mom ran an unofficial campground.

From here it was only another half day of riding to the ‘end’ of the Carretera Austral, and to be honest it was pretty uneventful. The scenery got a lot prettier once we took a smaller route north along another fjord lined with steep mountains. For the next three days we wound along the side of the cliff over the saltwater, sometimes finding flat spots where rivers flowed. One night we camped in an abandoned soccer field. The following night we stayed at a very posh eco-campground with lovely sites on a river.

We finally reached the end of the fjord and climbed up and away from the ocean. The forest here was beautiful – lush and green with tall trees and ferns. As we rode we approached a perfectly conical 8,000′ volcano. It was topped with snow, and sometimes hid behind a bank of clouds. Now, we’re in the Lakes Region of Chile. There are volcanoes, large lakes, and farmland. We are looking forward to finding more and better produce in the town markets, and to riding the mostly paved routes that weave between the lakes.

It is our first night in this region, and we camped in the center of a small town. The wind is blowing off the lake (which is huge, by the way) in great gusts. Luckily, this budget site is well protected from the wind by a bamboo fence, even though it only cost $3 each. While we made dinner the campground folks played loud pop music, so we danced while the lentils boiled. It is a minor miracle, but we are still not sick of lentils – even after 3 months of eating them most nights!

It’s the end of our third week riding on the Carretera Austral, and we are in the comparatively large town of Chaiten.  This town is famous because in 2008 a nearby volcano erupted and buried it.  The inhabitants were vacated, and the town was relocated a few miles north of its previous location.  The volcano is clearly visible from almost anywhere in town, and it is still smoking.  Yikes!

It’s been an interesting and varied week.  We’ve been seeing tons of southbound cyclists – up to 30 each day.  It is the height of vacation season for the Chileans, so we meet many college students from Santiago out adventuring.  They are lucky to have such a fantastic area for adventuring just a few bus rides away.  For us, we’ve seen more mountains (of course), along with more towns.  There has been a series of construction areas that presented difficulties.  One in particular combined with a fierce storm and forced us to get our first ride since Washington State.

Leaving Coyhaique (where we last updated) there are two potential routes north: a paved route along the river, and a gravel road through the mountains.  You can guess which one we chose!  Despite some cold weather, a stiff breeze, and loose gravel, it was a phenomenal day of riding.  To illustrate:

That night we stayed inside for the first time in weeks.  It was only $8 each to stay in a very simple hostel, but it was actually very nice.   There were about 5 blankets on each bed!  We were happy to be inside, since the wind and rain raged all night long.  It stayed pretty rainy for the next day, and we kept hoping it would clear.  We spent that night camping along a lovely river, still hoping for clear weather.

It was not to be, even though the following morning hinted at better conditions.  The rain was on and off as we rode through the early hours, but it was all ‘on’ as soon as we started the biggest climb of the day.

This climb coincided with some nasty road construction that had more or less destroyed the road surface and made everything more difficult.  It really started to pour as we got higher and higher into the hills.  We reached the top and realized that the wind was insanely strong directly into our faces.  The rain was actually sideways.

We stopped to get some warmer clothes on, but it took us too long and we ended up chilled, wet, and not willing to start a long descent.  The only shelter for us was a plastic port-a-potty, which we were actually very grateful to shelter in (ok, it was disgusting, be we were pretty desperate at this point).  I (Daisy) tried to flag down a truck to carry us the rest of the way through the construction site.  The really bad part was that the road was to be closed for traffic from 1 to 5 that day, and it was 12:30.

I frantically waved down every truck that went by until we finally convinced two German tourists to let us pile into their rental truck.  Good thing too, since the rain continued sideways and the road was just awful going down the hills.  Even the truck had to crawl along in 4 wheel drive.  After about a half hour we got stopped at another construction block that wouldn’t open for two more hours.  The Germans decided they didn’t want to wait, so we had to get all our stuff out of their truck.  Once again, we were in the pouring rain and cold.

  Luckily, a lovely family took pity on us and made us cups of hot, sweet coffee.  It warmed us to the core.  We also found a truck carrying hitch-hikers that was willing to take us through the construction.  Again, we were very grateful for the lift as the construction zone was in awful shape (they were blasting up the sheer cliffs on the side), and the weather was nasty.   That night we were incredibly grateful just to be warm and dry in a covered tent area.

Since then, we’ve had some easy days through pleasant scenery.  It certainly hasn’t been spectacular by Carretera Austral standards, but it also hasn’t been raining!  We rode through yet more construction, too.

Last night we camped next to a glacial stream a little ways off the road, and the site seemed almost too perfect.  That is, until the giant bull came wandering into camp!  He was a bit upset that we were cooking dinner in his path, and he huffed at us a bit before sniffing the tent and rambling off into the bushes.  After that we used logs to build a fence around our sleeping area…

We have just a few more days left on the Carretera Austral.  It has been quite a ride for us so far, but we are looking forward to getting to know other parts of Chile.  A few more photos: