It's a grey morning and cycling down to the ...

Trip Start Sep 04, 2002

Trip End Mar 28, 2003

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Flag of Chile Chaiten, Chile
Wednesday, January 29, 2003

It's a grey morning and cycling down to the pier I encounter Eldon Dales, about to board. The Castro - Chaiten catamaran takes just under 3 hours to cross the gap between Chilo� and the mainland. Eldon and I met further north outside Osorno one afternoon. He's cycled down from Texas, climbing Aconcagua along the way. I knew he was coming down this way, and dropped him an e-mail about the cat. The more publicised alternative is a 6-hour ferry the following afternoon, at almost double the price (really can't figure that one out).

The ride across, weaving around small islets, is pretty uneventful. A bit of a wind blows white horses across the water. Once we�re out into the open the low cloud cover obscures the snow-capped peaks that normally stretch right across the eastern horizon.

Arrive in Chaiten around noon, and before long have done a tour of the town

05 Eldon, near Osorno

. It has the feel of a North Canadian frontier town, and one expects to see logging trucks all over the place. Later in the afternoon, sitting at a viewpoint up on a hill I hear chainsaws rattling away, so maybe I'm not far off. Below, the town is a regular grid of bare streets, here and there a stray dog or someone ambling across the road. Rusted roofs spaced out evenly across a rectangle bounded on one side by the ocean and on the other three by steep green hills (I hesitate to call them mountains). One block of grass and walkways indicates the central square, most likely called the Plaza de Armas (seems to be the case in every other town I�ve been through!). Light rain blankets the view at intervals.

At one point bump into a group of four Swiss cyclists coming down from the North. They are pretty demoralised, having experienced nothing but rain for the best part of a month. There is alot of talk of turning East over the Futaleufu pass into Argentina. Flat Pampas, heat... anything but rain!

Hopefully the weather clears, because the Carretera Austral is supposed to be one of the more beautiful rides in South America. It�s a dirt road that stretches about 1000 kilometers down to a place with the picturesque, rather European name of Villa O'Higgins. All the way down one passes through pristine wilderness with the steep snow-covered slopes of the Andes to the East and the ocean somewhere over to the West. I plan to follow this route for the next 600km and then cut across into Argentina. From there it will be south to the Moreno Glacier (which in Summer calves huge chunks of ice into a lake). Further still, and back into Chile, is the Torres del Paine national park, with it's alien peaks. One can�t take the direct route south through Chile, as it is blocked by rather large ice fields.

This is all assuming the rain doesn't result in suicidal tendencies...

Chaiten hotels Slideshow