Schnecken on the run

The drive along the chilean Carretera Austral was high up on our „Places to go“ list, when we started planning this trip 12 months ago. This road starts in Puerto Montt and makes its way south through amazing Fjords along the eastern side of the Andes. After 1200 kms the mostly gravel road reaches the little 500 people village of Villa ó Higgins. There are a couple of places in Argentina from where you can cross the Andes and access or leave this famous Chilean road.

We got into Chile through Esquel, Argentina. A 6pm bus that leaves only twice a week took us to a very small border crossing in the middle of nowhere. Minibusses were waiting for us to continue another 20 minutes to the small village of Futaleufu, famously known by Rafters worldwide . We, a group of 10 Israeli backpackers and two german couples seemed to be the only guests that Futaleufu saw that night. From here everything continues on partly bumpy gravelly roads. We wanted to stay in Futaleufu a day or two doing some kind of activities like rafting or hiking, but needed to change our plans when we found out about the traveller unfriendly bus schedule. Only twice a week a bus leaves from here to Santa Lucia, a junction village at the crossing with the Carretera Austral.  The next bus was to be leaving the next morning at 6 am…or 5 days later. 5 days in this place, that would be too long. We had to leave the next morning so we just enjoyed an hour long stroll through the village and didn´t unpack our packs.

The morning drive was beautiful, surrounded by nice hills and mountains. The road curves along the Rio Grande which truely looked like a real rafters paradise with class 4 and 5 rapids.After 2,5 hours on gravel road, our minibus arrived in Santa Lucia. Well, if the driver had followed the 30 km/h speedlimit signs, we would have needed double that time. But since there was nobody else on this road, he was trying hard to break his personal speed record.

There we were…on the Carretera Austral. Yes! From here we only had to head south for as long as possible. We just needed to hop on the next bus. Well, that was about it with our Carretera excitement for the following 10 hours. We got stuck before we even started. Our minibus driver continued north up the Carretera (not our direction) and told us that he would be back in 3 hrs to continue south (ourdirection). That sounded ok. We made ourselves comfortable on the sidewalk and waited to see how this p lace would come alive in the next hours. It never came alive the whole day. The lady owning a shop right next to the „bus stop“ saw us sitting there and started preparing breakfast. A happy and welcomed (second) start of the day for us.

Meanwhile, our waiting group of around 15 people got bigger. 4 Israelis came out of the bushes and joined the „waiting room“ on the sidewalk. They had arrived here on the previous days afternoon, realizing that the next bus would be the next morning. They camped down at the river for the night.

After three hours „our“ minibus returned. Unfortunately filled with other people and only having 6 spare seats available. We tried our best but did not get any of those seats. But the driver promised that in 3 hours he would return and take us all south.

I did not trust him. He must get exhausted, I thought. 6 hours later everybody seemed to agree that he probably would not come back and we would have to either camp down at the river or find alternatives. In the meanwhile, we all had become one happy jolly family. We were sitting together in the shadeunder a tree (on the Carretera), chatting and listening to the singing and guitar playing of some of the Israelis. Some played soccer and whenever maybe once an hour a car passed by, too many people got up and showed the famous hitchhiking sign. The cars were all full and even if not, who would stop at a place where 15 people needed a ride. Different little groups took off on their search for alternative transportation and walked through this little place of maybe 4 x 4 parallel roads, that even now, 8 hours after we had arrived had not changed one bit. It still seemed to sleep, actually, nobody seemed to live in these houses! Strange place, let´s get out of here!

The owner of one of the few cars around had his lucky day. We had asked him already a couple of hours earlier how much he would charge us for a ride to the next village, El Junta, maybe 80 kms south. He demanded double the cost of the bus and a full truck of 5 to 6 people. Except for a spanish girl, we coulnd´t convince any of the others to join in our hiring plan, everybody was still sure, the bus would return to pick us up. Meanwhile this changed and the few existing cars in this village got everybodies target. Luckily „our“ car owner was still willing to drive and thankfully for the same price, although the demand had changed. As I said, it was his lucky day. We ended up with 11 people in his truck, 4 travellers inside and 6 in the back. A beautiful 2 hours drive later we arrived in the unspectacular town La Junta and easily found a spot to camp.

Another early wake up because the only bus leaving south this morning was going to leave at 6 o´ clock. We still don´t understand, why the heck they leave every morning that early. They arrive at their destination at a time, when everybody is still sleeping for another hour.
Suprisingly the bus driver was the same guy, who promised to return the day before. Very nicely I thanked him for letting us wait for him. He didn´t care, it is truly not his problem.

A great 2 hour drive along an unsealed road and we arrived in  Puerto Puyuhuapi. What a name! A really neat and picturesque harbour village. We found a hosteleria, had breakfast and went for a walk through almost every street this village had and afterwards a one hour walk along the Carretera to some massively overpriced hotsprings. Here we could get a closer look at the brilliant vegetation in the area. The Pangue plant that grows here have leaves that are bigger then umbrellas. And best of all, these plants can be cooked and eaten.

We found a nice place for dinner (one of the two options) and together with two nice couples, one from the german blackforest and the other from Israel, we had some nice hours over terrible steak, good fish, wine and laughs.

The next morning we all left at 7 in the morning (only bus that day…and of course early!) for a 4 hour drive to the only big town along the Carretera: Coyhaique. It is the capital of this region and with its 45000 inhabitants, relatively big. Our plan from here was to move on south, either to the very end of the Carretera to Villa o´Higgins and cross the border (a two day hike and boat combination that nobody could give us much info about) or a little further south and around the big Lago Argentino (second biggest lake in South America after the Titicaca). Well, we tried to get information and what we foundout was not satisfying. Having in mind, that we have to be about 1000 km further south 5 days later to meet our friends from Hamburg on their honeymoon, we decided that all this is too risky and has to be done another day. Together with our new travel buddies from the blackforest, we took a bus along the so far most beautiful part of the Carretera to Puerto Ibanez. From here we took a 3 hr ferry across the Lago Argentina to Chile Chico. We stayed in this unneccesary town and crossed the border back to Argentina the next morning. When we arrived at the bus terminal in Los Antiguas, we realized, that we were „safe“…buses were regularly departing in all directions. We could relax a bit before we would continue our way south to meet our Hamburg friends.

We managed a great part of the Carretera Austral and although we had some difficulties we absolutely enjoyed it. It would be even more enjoyable if we had our own vehical. That´s exactly what we will do next time. And then we will as well manage to see the parts, that we missed this time. It is always good to have some goals (-;