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From El Bolson we headed towards Chile. It was a little hard to say goodbye to Argentina, one of our favorite countries so far, but our absence would be brief. Our goal was to keep heading south towards Ushuaia by taking the Carretera Austral that runs from the north of Chile to the south. This road is primarily ripio (gravel) and offers some of the best scenery in the Americas. It is one of the few positive contributions of Augusto Pinochet, the former dictator responsible for thousands of deaths.
Our first stop was the village of Futaleufu near the border with Argentina. The village is not on the Carretera Austral but the views were impressive. Kind of like Canada except bigger. But once we made it onto the Carretera the views went from impressive to stunning with snow capped mountains visible for miles. It may have been the distraction of the view that caused the crash.
But one thing is for sure, just a few hours after we got onto the Carretera Austral we started getting into trouble about here…
And this was the result…
Fortunately neither of us were hurt and the bike started up as good as new right after the fall, but it is clear from Marie’s posture that my reputation as a safe motorcycle driver may have suffered some damage.
A few hours later we arrived in Puyuhuapi without any further incidents. The village of Puyuhuapi was founded by 4 German settlers seeking a bit of adventure in a foreign land. What remains today are dilapidated houses and a couple of poorly stocked grocery stores. The following picture is of the town gas station, the only one for 100 kilometers in either direction…
But despite the desolation it still offered interesting sights…
The following day we made our way to Puerto Ibanez from were we hoped to board a ferry for our return to Argentina. But we got there a few hours too late and were told that the next departure was 2 days later. So we took advantage of the downtime to watch some TV in our hostel and catch up on world events. It was incredible! Politicians were making promises that they had no intention of keeping, celebrities were talking for the sole purpose of being heard and capitalism did not seem to be working very well. Who would have though that all of this would be possible in this day and age?
The morning we were supposed to leave was windy. Like, trees just barely hanging on kind of windy. In fact, the coast guard did not want to let the ferry make the crossing so we ended up waiting near the dock for hours and hours. Finally, after over 12 hours of sitting on concrete and looking at waves we were told to return the next morning at which time the ferry would once again try to leave. But we did meet 2 Austrians that have be riding their bicycles from Alaska to Ushuaia for the past year and a half!
The following morning the ferry did manage to leave despite the high winds and within a few hours we were back in Argentina in the town of Perito Moreno. We didn’t know it at the time but 2 days later we would end up having our most difficult day of this trip…
Brian |
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