Carretera Austral is a road – or often just a dirt path, which links a few remote villages and towns in Northern Patagonia. It is 1240km long but despite that only allows access to about 100 000 people. It is very popular with cyclists – the distance, mountains, bad weather and little traffic makes it a desired challenge for them.
Chaitén, Parque Pumalín
We arrived to Chaitén after a day in a bus, although more than 4 hours are on a ferry. From the ferry we got our first glimpses of Patagonia – we were lucky with the weather. In Chaitén we found a hospedaje (an accommodation in a family house) of lady Rita. Rita was one of the activists, who fought for Chaitén’s existence after 2008 Chaitén volcano eruption. They were not allowing the people to return to Chaitén, because the ‘ecobaron’ Douglas Thompkins wanted to buy the city parcels and incorporate them into the Pumalín Parque project. With a group of about 10 people, Rita lived with others alone in the deserted city without clean water or electricity for couple of years. In the end she even met with Chile’s president and Chaitén was saved (but it is a hole). Now she is an older cuckoo lady who sings all the time. If you whistle a tune anywhere in the house, she’ll start singing as an echo :).
We spent a day in Chaitén waiting out a crazy downpour before heading out into Parque Pumalín. Just as a matter of interest why we decided to check this park was the park’s website http://www.parquepumalin.cl/en/, and also the fact that there is no entrance fee, although campgrounds are paid, we did not pay anything. There are not any longer treks available there, just short hikes from the road. It was raining often – Pumalín is a temperate rainforest. Vegetation grow there into enormous dimensions. Local campsites are also prepared for climate conditions, but it might be that the park is in private hands too – each campsite is sheltered with a tap of drinking water, a bench and you can even fit a mid-sized tent underneath. There are showers, but you cannot really speak about hot water. The night we spent in the camp El Volcán was very chilly, so we camped one night only, and hiked the Chaitén volcano the second day – just out of interest, its crater is 3 km long. I (Kája) wore two pairs of thermo tights, trekking trousers, three thermo shirts, two sweatshirts, thermo hat, and to warm it up enough also a blanket in a sleeping bag. I could not really move too much in the sleeping bag. We also visited Alerce tree groove – the oldest trees in the world (some of them up to 3000 years old)!
Christmas in Coyhaique
On 23rd December we followed about 450km of the bumpy Carretera Austral to Coyhaique. We found first class accommodation there in a school. It seem the school janitor provide it as a hostel during summer holidays. People sleep on mattresses on the floor in classrooms. For Christmas eve there was a free barbecue including drinks! We made a potato salad for everyone and the atmosphere was great. The salad was made with ham and disappeared quickly. Even the vegetarians liked it :).
In the morning of 25th I was woken up by a shaking bed and the janitor running around into classrooms and shouting something. There was actually an earthquake! It was quite weak in Coyhaique, but the epicenter in Chiloé was 7.6 on Richter scale. Although the janitor tried, almost nobody run out of the building, because we all had massive hangover. Karoline slept through the whole thing :D. The feeling in this kind of eathquake was similar to the feeling I had when we were small and had to sit on the washing machine so it would not jump around…
