Chile
January
5, 2013 - The Carretera Austral started off nice enough.
Beautiful pavement and great vistas. Fifty kilometers from
Chaiten, the road as we knew it ended and gravel started. It was
the start of a long and sometimes painful experience.
The unending battering we and the bikes endured came with lots of spectacular highlights and the next six days proved to be very much worth the effort. Our first decent stop was Puyuhuapi. The weather was ok, the vistas not too spectacular and the lady who ran the hostal was muttering at every turn. In some ways the surroundings looked very much like British Columbia in spring or fall.
The road varied - a lot. This is the butter-smooth six lane highway variety of the Carretera Austral.
On day two, the weather cleared up quite a bit.
The pictures below give you a good idea of what the general vistas are like while riding the Carretera Austral.
One of our stops was Puerto Tranquilo, where we visited the Catedral De Marmol, a marble structure in the middle of the lake, surrounded by lots of caves.
After six days, we were ready for a change - and paved roads, so we escaped via Cochrane and Chile Chico to Argentina.