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Some Notes from the Road

By Chris Thompson - 2009-03-23

I realized we had forgotten to talk about some of our everyday experiences traveling from Villa O’Higgins to Cochrane, our first stretch of the Carretera Austral, or the road that stretches north to south through Chilean Patagonia. Built in the 1980’s by Pinochet, it’s one of the most challenging, and beautiful roads in the world. Here are a few notes from the road:

We left Villa O’Higgins mid afternoon, the day after we landed and spent the night battling mosquitoes. Mike made a set of brake pads using super glue, and my recently discarded rear tire. To my knowledge, several hundred kilometers later, and some gnarly descents, they are still functioning.

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The Carretera Austral, or southern highway, is a beautiful road. Glaciers hang high above our heads, misty clouds swirl around the mountain tops and cliffs around us. We climbed up to narrow rocky passes gouged out of the mountain side, and descended into lush jungle valleys. Our first night camping north of Villa O’Higgins, we made a huge bonfire. I slept outside next to the fire. The southern stars were bright above us. There were no artificial lights, no traffic noises, just water, ice, and dark forests perched on cold stone.

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We climbed up and down beside the steep shorelines of lakes and rivers. It began to rain again. As we passed a woodcutter’s camp, the cook came out of the rough cabin and called us in to sit by the fire, talk, and warm ourselves with coffee.

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We took refuge in some abandoned cabin from the rain, warming ourselves by the fire we made in a rusted woodstove. We spent an entire day there, relaxing in our mountain cabin, watching the clouds roll over the mountains around us.

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We reached the mouth of Rio Bravo, which spills out into one of the fjord like fingers that stretch into Patagonia. We were waiting to take a ferry to Puerto Yunguay. A man in a small wooden work-boat, or ‘lancha’ told us the road after Puerto Yunguay was flooded. Twenty days of rain had taken a toll on the roads. We asked, "Is there food in Puerto Yunguay?", "No", he replied, "Only one man lives there, I can take you to Tortel, the next town, for 20,000 pesos". Daniel talked him down to 10,000, and we set out. We were almost out of food, and 10,000 was exactly half of the money we had left. The boat ride lasted three hours. It was 11:00 at night when we pulled into the small town of Tortel. We had been out on the deck, freezing in the rain. I remember trying to coach my legs into functioning. Howling every song we could remember at the top of our lungs for the last hour kept us in good spirits.

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Tortel is a town of boardwalks and stairs, perched on the edge of a cliff and the water. We wheeled our bikes across the boardwalks in the darkness, and pitched our tents on a pavilion above the water. We were moved along in the morning by our friendly neighborhood ‘Caribineros

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Four other cyclists had been stuck in Tortel, as well as everyone else in town, for six days by the flooded roads. The next day, the water receded several feet, so we left town as quickly as possible. Mike had woken with a slight fever that morning, a sign of things to come. We crossed several streams flowing across the road. I saw in one section, the high water mark was at my chest for about 100 meters.

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We cycled to a campground. Some tourists had given Dan and Mike some money, and a few cans of peaches in Tortel. I guess they looked pretty miserable. The cost for the campground was the exact amount we had been given, so we splurged for the night. We slept under a big pavilion, a roaring fire drying us out.

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The next day, we climbed through the three lakes region. Climbing our first Patagonian ‘questa’ or switchback pass, we rolled down towards Cochrane. We’ve had good weather for several days now, and the views are spectacular. Everything we suffered through before was worth it.

Then roads became miserable. Pure washboard road surfaces so bad we had to walk the bikes on downhills and flat sections. Pedaling at the furious speed of 5 mph on a flat road to save your bike from being shaken apart is a little disheartening.

We later learn from a road engineer that these roads are terrible for a good reason. The soil chemistry here causes the dirt particles to separate through electrostatic repulsion when they get wet. Most dirt forms positive and negative charges when wet, and bonds together like cement. Near Cochrane, the dirt forms the same charge, and separates.

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Mike started feeling sick. We slept for a while next to the road. I built a small fire to keep him warm. The next day, he could’t even push his bike the last 7 km into town. Daniel and I took turns ferrying bikes up the road a few hundred yards, while Wallace scouted ahead for a hospital, food, and a bank. The last few days had been a roller coaster ride. I was already in love with Patagonia, and the Carretera Austral. We limped into town, a little worse for the wear, but by no means defeated.