Our dream was to traverse Chilean
Patagonia south to north. It is a magnificent 1700-mile archipelago stretching
from Cape Horn to Puerto Montt, sandwiched between the crest of the Andes
mountains and the Pacific Ocean. The best known and most touristed destination
is the iconic Torres del Paine National Park, popular for hiking and climbing.
We visited eight years ago and chose to skip it this time. The other 16
national parks in the region are quite remote and little known. The Tompkins
Conservation land trust, founded by the North Face entrepreneur Douglas
Tompkins, bought and conserved two million acres of wilderness and donated it
to the people of Chile. Park lands in the region now total 28 million acres.
The Foundation is actively promoting the Ruta de los Parques to develop
tourism for the benefit of local communities.
Patagonia is rich with virgin
forests, rugged mountains, active volcanoes, dramatic glaciers, rushing rivers,
profound fjords and few people. The southern-most part of the region is
accessible primarily by water. The next section around Punta Arenas and Puerto
Natales is accessible by road from Argentina. North of Puerto Natales, the long
middle third is served only by ferry. The northern third is a combination of
road and ferry. The 770-mile Carretera Austral extends from Puerto Montt
to Villa O’Higgins and Caleta Tortel. It was initiated by the Pinochet military
regime in 1976 with the motive to improve transportation, strengthen ties to
central Chile and secure the region in the face of ongoing border disputes with
Argentina.
Puerto Williams and Los Dientes
To start our journey we had to get
to Puerto Williams, the southernmost town in the world. (We had already waved hello
to Cape Horn a week earlier from our cruise ship enroute from Antarctica to
Ushuaia.) Although Puerto Williams is only 40 km from Ushuaia across the Beagle
Channel, that border crossing between Argentina and Chile had been shut down
during Covid and never reopened, so we had to travel by bus from Ushuaia to
Punta Arenas and fly from there.
Mon 3/11. In Punta Arenas we went shopping and researched our travel options for the next phase. Andrés, our host at the hostel, gave us a lead on a Patagonian agency for a one-way car rental to Puerto Montt, but it didn’t pan out: the one-way charges were higher than the rental fees! We stopped by the visitor center for information about the Carretera Austral. At the port we were delighted to learn that seniors over 70—including extranjeros like us—get a 50% discount on the ferry. We booked our return from Puerto Williams—the southern-most town in the world—for next Saturday. We struggled online to book an out-bound flight for the next day. Walking around town we were seeing and remembering places from our prior visit eight years ago.
Tue 3/12. The flight was only 40 minutes. The view from our window was mostly the wing and turbine, very little of the Beagle Channel. The Puerto Williams airport doesn’t have an actual terminal: they unload the bags directly on the ground at the head of the short walkway to the road. Good thing it wasn’t raining! There was a shuttle for 5000 pesos to take everyone to their hotels, or in our case just dropping us downtown. We had a bit of a wait, but he got us all in. We were last, standing room only.
We headed out about 3pm. It was a three kilometer walk to the end of the road where the trail starts. The trail was longer and steeper and we were slower than expected. We got to Cerro Bandera about 5pm. Past that the terrain was exposed and getting very windy. We found a small lake and decided to camp there: we were getting too cold and the trail conditions to the next campable site were uncertain. We set up the tent in a tiny depression, cooked soup and ramen with soy protein—we had found no freeze dried food anywhere—and went to bed about 9pm. We ate protein bars and slept with all our clothes on. It was hours before our toes were warm. The wind was blowing hard, with gusts up to 40 knots, so the tent was shaking and pushing against me.
Wed 3/13. The wind calmed down and it dawned
sunny. We stayed in the tent until the sun was on it and it got warm, about
8:30am. Simple breakfast of oatmeal and hot chocolate. Started hiking a little
before 10. We warmed up enough to take off some layers. We were traversing a
long, shale slope with gorgeous views of the Beagle Channel behind us, the
Dientes mountains in front of us, and several lakes surrounded with scrubby alpine
trees below us on the right. The trail was not easy: it reminded us of the Goat
Trail in Alaska. We were hiking in running shoes: not as good as real hiking
boots for these conditions. It took us another two hours to reach the mirador
and the lake. Glad we hadn’t tried it last night! We decided to camp two nights
here so we can just hike all the way out in one day (Friday). Also we didn’t
want to carry the packs up to the next pass.
We spent the afternoon hiking around our lake, scouting a way down to the next lower lake, and hiking around that. There was lots of evidence of beavers, though we didn’t see them. We saw their lodge, their dam and lots and lots of cut down trees. Old, not fresh. We saw a few other hikers—three at a distance and one near the mirador and we chatted. He runs a guiding business and was scouting for some new hiking tours.
It amazed us how warm it was in the
sun with no wind, how cold when a cloud came over and some wind, and how fast
it changes back and forth. We decided that when we hike out on Friday we will
take the “trail” from the lower lake, not return on the high trail that we came
on. We were not interested in climbing back up the loose shale to the traverse.
Had soup. A sprinkle of rain
motivated us to set up the tarp over our tent. More ramen for supper and early
to bed.
Thurs 3/14. We waited for the sun to hit our
tent, but it never did: high overcast. Got up about 9, hit the trail a little
after 10. The trail up to the first pass was steep, watery and hard. We were
glad not to have full packs. There was a campsite in the first cirque with a
substantial wind block built from stacked rocks—several actually—and one guy
camped there. The second pass was the high divide between the Dientes and the
next mountain.
After that, the route descended halfway,
then traversed a steep rocky slope with a lake below. We came out to a lower
pass and a series of lakes. We hiked down to the lower lake and circumnavigated
it. Lots of beaver activity. Beavers had been introduced in 1946 in
hopes of forging a fur industry, but with no natural predators the population
grew exponentially and created a lot of ecological damage.
The wind came up and it was getting
colder. We turned around about 1:30. I was a bit worried about severe wind and
cold at the high pass, but it turned out okay. There was a bit of tiny snow
crystals in the air.
The rocks were amazing: lots of layers, lots of colors, some like marble. Looking up at the pyramid mountain the face was gorgeous. Sometimes the trail was hard to follow and the cairns and paint blazes hard to find, but we never got too far off because the terrain where the trail is going is pretty obvious. Back to the tent about 5pm. Soup, reading, ramen, then nighty nite.
Fri 3/15. It snowed overnight. At least the
air was still, so it wasn’t unbearably cold. We stayed in the tent until almost
10, hoping the sun would warm it up, but no deal: the overcast was too thick.
We managed to pack up, shake off the snow and got wet gloves and cold fingers,
but we were on our way. The slope down to the lower lake was even more slippery
than before. We picked up the trail markers, but lost them again and had to
bush whack around a bit to find a large muskeg meadow with a clear and marked
trail. No more snow but lots of mud. The trail followed the stream down through
the wood back to the trailhead at the end of the road. We looked at the signage
and wished it had had more information about the trails.
We booked an Airbnb and walked into town. First, we went to the carabinero office to check out, then moseyed around town looking for a place to eat. Most of the restaurants were closed. Finally we found a Columbian one just about to open at the town center. We enjoyed our pisco Calafate, papas fritas, and a really excellent and big cheese empanada.
We hadn’t yet received confirmation
for our reservation at the Airbnb, so we decided to walk up to the approximate
location on the Google map to see if we could find it. We walked around asking
the neighbors where Alba lived; they directed us. We rang the bell. Alba and
her husband answered, confirmed they had a room, then confirmed the Airbnb
reservation on her phone. All good! Took showers, washed the mud off our
pantlegs, put our shoes and socks on the drying rack by the stove, made love
and rested. Then we fetched a take-out pizza for dinner and were in bed by
10pm.
Sat 3/16. Alba prepared a nice breakfast and told us her story. Her parents were communists. She finished her degree in social work two days before the Pinochet coup shut down the social sciences department at the university and took all the students and faculty away into mass detention. Most of them were tortured and killed and never seen again. Her parents were arrested and imprisoned. She married an a-political young man whose brothers were carabineros. His family took her in. That association provided some protection for her. She was never investigated.
We left our packs and walked into town. The Yangun museum was closed, but we got to admire the whale bones in the yard. Sra. Teresa at a local package store solved my problem recharging my Claro SIM.
Sat-Sun 3/16-17. The next stage in our journey
would be a 30-hour ferry transit up the Beagle Channel to Punta Arenas. We went
to three grocery stores looking for the things we wanted for the trip. The
panaderias had no empanadas—in fact, not much of anything. We did buy fresh,
hot muffins and some of the round flat breads that are common here. The
Columbian restaurant didn’t have empanadas vegetales either. But we did meet an
interesting French geologist on his way to do tectonic fieldwork near Cape
Horn, by Zodiac.
On the way to the ferry dock we passed a dry marina where we struck up a conversation with a young Swiss couple with a new 2012 sailboat: Ovni 365 with a beautiful aluminum hull. They sailed last year through the Northwest Passage, around Alaska, then down to Tahiti. They met an older couple on the same transit who decided to sell them their boat. They reconnected in Puerto Montt for the transaction. They will sail to Alaska next year, then return to Tahiti.
The ferry, Transbordadora Austral Broom, was small, with an open vehicle deck on the port side; the starboard side had a two-story passenger area with reclining seats, and an upper, open viewing deck. The semi-cama seats were the most comfortable yet for sleeping. The young people who sat behind us had done the whole Dientes circuit in three days. (The things these young people are doing with aplomb make me feel old.) Claire and Cleo do ecology studies for the US National Park Service. Clair has worked a couple times in Alaska, in Gates of the Arctic and Lake Clark. She’ll be doing field work on the Noatak this summer. We met more interesting people on board, including a couple from Barcelona, Guillermo and Marina, who are travelers, trekkers, and wanna-be sailors. Mike invited them to come sail with us in Alaska.
We were pleasantly surprised to discover that meals were included. Nothing to write home about, but better than the provisions in our bag. The 30-hour transit was spectacular: endless islands, fjord’s, rounded hills with a mix of glacier-scoured bedrock and green, low vegetation, and beyond that an assortment of jagged, snow-covered peaks. The area of glaciers we passed at night so I did not get to see them. It was dark and stormy the first half of the night and not conducive to being outdoors or seeing much of anything. Sunday day was a constant mix of dark clouds, cotton clouds, patches of sun, some hail, light winds, strong winds, calm seas, and high seas frosting with spray. The waves crashing on the reefs sent up explosions of brilliant white spray. We passed only one sign of humans: the ferry made a quick stop at a road-end with no buildings to unload a forklift of building materials and load a cargo truck. We also saw lots of light beacons with no visible light, and a Navy ship and Zodiac apparently trying to land on a rock to repair that light.
We arrived at Punta Arenas about 11pm. We started walking, looking for a taxi; not finding one we ended up calling one. It was after midnight by the time we checked into our hostel.
Mon 3/18. We spent the day catching up on email, running errands and researching our next moves: too many choices and not enough information. The tourist office was totally useless. We ended up deciding on a TABSA ferry from Puerto Natales to Yungay, the start of the Carretera Austral (Highway 7). We also finally found, after much searching, an open Claro office where they were able to resolve my i-phone’s problem accessing the internet.
Tue 3/19. We took the 11am bus to Puerto Natales then walked to our Airbnb hosted by Liber. It had a super comfortable, giant king bed! Not to mention a private bath and good light. We went out to the TABSA office to ask for our senior discount, only to learn that it is not available on this route. We also learned that though the ferry leaves at 5am Thursday, we will need to board the night before, so we had to cancel our second night at Liber’s house. We spent the day doing laundry, researching the next phase of our route north, some tourist shopping, and had the best-ever dinner: salmon ceviche, pasta putanesca and pisco sour.
Wed 3/20. A leisurely morning in Puerto
Natales. We went to the TABSA office again to ask about buses. They advised us
to disembark at Caleta Tortel, not Puerto Yungay, and catch a bus the following
day. We went grocery shopping, to a panaderia and to the history museum. We
made a point of going to the shop Etnia where Mike had bought his favorite hat when
we were here years ago, but found nothing interesting this time. We enjoyed a Greek
dinner then went to a bar for another pisco sour to pass the time before
picking up our packs and checking in with TABSA. Our seats were interior, not
window, but we diligently watched until everyone was on board, then switched to
the last available window seat. We slept in our semi-cama seats.
Thu-Fri 3/21-22. Fall equinox. While not as
spectacular as the journey from Puerto Williams, we enjoyed watching the
passing landscape of fjords, ringed with scoured bedrock and mature green
scrub, with snowy peaks behind, and lots and lots of waterfalls. The ferry is
pretty much the same but the passengers are quite different: far fewer
international backpackers and more middle-aged Chileans. Fewer cargo trucks and
more passenger cars and vans. Some pet dogs too. And the kitchen area is even smaller.
We met a USA woman and her Peruvian fiancé with whom we played cards and talked and talked and talked. We all enjoyed each others’ company. They had a car so would stay on to the end in at Puerto Yungay.
Sat 3/23. All the backpackers got off at
3:30 am in Caleta Tortel. Most of us slept in a shelter at the ferry dock. Two
by two, we went our own ways in the morning.
We walked around until 4:00 and came back to buy our tickets, then sat and used their WiFi till the terminal closed at 7:30 pm. We recognized some of the backpackers from the boat and Tortel who finally arrived on the bus. They looked wet and tired. We went out for dinner, finding only one open option, a pub/restaurant. We ordered two glasses of red wine, a veggie burger and a salmon dinner. Nothing very special but still expensive. We returned to the bus terminal and laid out our sleeping bags in a covered area outside.
Sun 3/24. We took the early bus to
Coyhaique. Mike had slept very poorly and was very tired, so he mostly slept on
the bus. Though it was hard to see out the fogged windows, we could see that
the landscape was changing: it was getting more and more rural and developed
with agriculture, cattle and sheep. We also saw some real forests with big
trees, and several huge lakes and big rivers with snowy peaks beyond. The bus
stopped in Rio Tranquillo and Cerro Castille; the road was still dirt until we
reached the outskirts of Coyhaique. We arrived about 2:45. It’s a pretty
nice town. We walked to the Airbnb, then went out looking for cars to rent. But
everything was closed (Sunday). We found a couple outdoor shops in case we
decide to buy another sleeping pad. We came back for showers and love making.
It felt great!
Mon 3/25. No breakfast provided in the “bed and breakfast.” We cooked oats and hard boiled some of their eggs, then went out to find a car rental. We checked with half a dozen companies before deciding on RecaSur—the same company we had been referred to in Punta Arenas. They were closed midday, so we went shopping for food and a new waffle style camp pad. We picked up the car, stopped at the bus station for information about buses to Chaitén, fetched our packs from the BnB and were off!
This week-long road trip offered the
best hiking and sightseeing we had in central Patagonia, replete with steaming
volcanoes, glacial cirques, and lush rain forests.
First, we drove to Parque Nacional
Cerro Castillo. We picked up a trail map from the visitor center and drove down
the road to check out the trailhead. Well, almost. It was a dirt road with a
hill too steep to navigate without 4-wheel drive. We figured we’d have to walk
the last kilometer. We camped by the river near the bridge across from the
village. It was a very pleasant spot on a warm evening.
Tues 3/26. Up at 9, we walked to the trailhead where we were charged $16 each to cross private property and enter the park. It was a two-hour hike up through the woods, over cow fences, up to alpine, to a park ranger guard station where our permits were checked again and our names recorded. Then on up to the mirador, the lagoon, hanging glacier, and the dramatic Cerro Castillo. The rules were we had to head down by 4pm, which left us a couple hours to explore. We followed a route down the boulder slope, across the stream, and down valley to ever more spectacular alpine and glacial terrain. Some fall color too. Back to the mirador just at 4, in time to meet the young rangers who were carrying a sign saying it’s 4:00 and time to leave. Our knees were getting tired on the way down. We used poles and I took Ibuprofen. We checked out the showers at the bottom, but they were not operational. We started to walk the road back to our car, but a pickup offered us a ride. Yes! Dinner and camping in the same spot by the river.
Wed 3/27. We decided to skip Rio Tranquillo and drive north to the parks near Chaitén. Stopped in Coyaique to buy to buy bus tickets, yogurt, wine, another pad for the car, camping gas, and a FABULOUS salmon poke lunch. The drive was gorgeous! Down a lush valley with tall sheer cliffs on the sides, down almost to the Port Chacabuco, then up a side valley to a high pass, and down a very step, windy, dirt road (highway!) to follow another river out to the fjord Canal Puyu Huapí. We stopped in the Parque National Queulat, but were discouraged by the $11 per person entrance fee for a piddling 3.3km hike to see a glacier. We also had sore knees and thighs from the hike yesterday. So we continued on. We stopped at the visitor center in Puyahuapi to get more information about hikes, kayaks and hot springs, but decided to drive on.
We have really been enjoying the
vistas from the car—so much better than the bus—and the freedom to stop
anywhere, go anywhere, sleep anywhere. If only our car bed was more comfortable…
It was starting to get dark, so we
looked on I-overlander and found a place to stop near a bridge and creek.
Thu 3/28. Another fine morning. It was getting steadily warmer and less windy at the lower latitudes. The forest was more lush, tropical almost, with giant ferns and bamboo. We stopped to hike a glacier view trail in the southern Amarillo section of the Parque Nacionale Pumalin, founded and donated by Doug Thompkins. We signed in at the guard station. The road she directed us to was barricaded, so we drove up to the Termal road, past the hot springs baths which have been closed since a landslide, and up to the end of the road about 24km. Beautiful valley with small scale lumber operations and small homesteads with goats and cows. Back to the guard station. She told us to just move the barricade and replace it. So we did.
We picked up a walker on his way to our same trailhead at Camping Grande. On the mis-advice of people in the parking lot, we walked down the wrong trail. Our Belgian friend Agustin looked at his GPS and saw it was wrong, so we backtracked to the parking lot and walked up the closed road to the real trailhead. Thinking it was an easy trail, we didn’t take our poles. It was harder than expected: steep with log stairs. I was dragging well before we got to the first mirador where we stopped for lunch. It turned out the “real” mirador with the glacier view was only 50 feet farther. We saw three condors flying overhead. Mike and I waited at the second mirador waiting for Agustin who didn’t arrive. Getting cold, we decided to go back and tell him we were going on—it was a loop trail. He had gotten waylaid eating a second sandwich and talking with some newly arrived Europeans. The trail down soon joined another section of road. Augustin is fast and caught up with us. We drove him to his hostel in Chaltén. We liked it and booked reservations for next week.
Fri 3/29. We headed out to hike the volcano trail. It was cloudy enough that we didn’t know whether we would see it, but wanted the hike anyway. Once again, we expected it to be a moderate trail and left our poles, but then wished we had them. The trail was in poor repair, wet and steep with broken log steps. Up in an hour. Sure enough, no view, but the sun was working hard to clear out the mist. Finally, we got a stupendous view of the still steaming volcano. It had erupted in 2008. The blast had broken and killed all the trees, so there were lots of bare, standing large trunks. It had also melted the glacier and sent a major flood down the river to the town. There were lots of photos of the devastation. The forest on the way down was subtropical, very different than southern Patagonia or any place I’ve ever seen. Augustin showed up at the summit, took pictures, and hurried back down for a 1pm phone conference. Going down without poles was less traumatic than I expected. We were down in half an hour.
Back in town we visited the
festival again, then walked around town until it was time to settle for the
night. We parked by the dock at the end of town; it was a popular spot for
people to come to enjoy the evening light.
Sun 3/31. It was a bad night. There were partiers nearby with their music until 8am, and a couple vehicles with lights came and went. Plus my hips were bothering me in the hard bed so I never got comfortable and kept changing my position. Baby gruel for breakfast, a short stop in town to use the public toilets and we hit the road.
Back in Coyhaique we found a trail to
hike in the morning—if it’s not too rainy—and slept in the car near the
trailhead, on a dirt street, across from a play area, with four cows wandering
around eating paper garbage.
Mon 4/1. April fools! We weren’t at the trailhead, but on a street with the same name! Turns out the trailhead for Cerro Fraile is on the back side of the cerro, 45 minutes south of town. Mike found an alternative on maps.me, but that was a dud too: private property and new construction closed the trail. I found an option at the river on the north side of town so we went there. Not much of a hike. It was a picnic area with a social trail up river, and another trail down river. We explored both. The most interesting sight was a huge Kingfisher, and three large birds we couldn’t identify. No rain anyway. We packed up our gear, dropped our packs at the Airbnb, and returned the rental car. We celebrated with pisco sours at Tropero restaurant—the same place I’d bought the great poke a week ago. Went shopping for tomorrow’s bus trip and back to the Airbnb. They had a new baby that was crying so we hung out in our room using WiFi.
The power in Chaitén was out city-wide so we used our headlamps that evening at the hostel. The Flamenco restaurant however had a generator, so we were able to enjoy our dinner in the company of Swiss and French friends from the bus and boat.
We arrived in Puerto Montt at 9:30pm Wednesday evening. Once again, Google misled us: apparently, the bus company had an office up the hill near the hostel where we made reservations, but the bus terminal where we were dropped off was on the waterfront. It was late and it was raining, so we took a taxi.
Our trans Patagonia journey was done. On to central Chile!
