Blogpost 12 - Patagonia - Lenca to Santa Lucia

The weather has cleared at last.

It turned out to be fortunate that we could not get the ferry on the 28th as the sailings on 28 & 29 were cancelled with the bad weather and we would then have had to book in the next available slot which may have taken a few more days. Our sailing on the 30th sailed on schedule.

The bad weather has also bought a whole lot of snow down to quite low levels which makes it look very pretty and the mountains more spectacular.

We left Lenca in showers and headed South to the first ferry at Caleta La Arena. A short ferry ride to Carleta Puelch. We then had a choice of the direct road to Hornopiren or the longer coastal route. We took the later. It passed through lots of small, generally very untidy villages with very rundown houses. Property maintenance is clearly not high on the agenda here. Each village has a big very tired looking church. There was a very active boat building industry along this coast building quite big heavy local fishing boats.

What did brighten the scene in a few places was the local cemetery. Very brightly decorated with plastic flowers. We saw one man being a new bunch to a grave that already had so many you could barely see the grave. He had to cull out the dead ones.

It’s just amazing how primitive and basic this part of the world is. We didn’t come here for an architectural wonder trip so it doesn’t rally matter.

We got to Hornopiren late in the day and had a bit of trouble finding the Hostel. It had no sign displaying its name. It turned out to be very nice well equipped, and comfortable. We had a good chap to and English girl of Taiwanese decent who we had a great chat with and got all the gen on Taiwan and China. Quite interesting.

Next morning it was up for the best hostel break&sat so far. Then off the gas station to top up the tank before joining queue of cars waiting to catch the ferry, in the rain again. Gas gets more expensive the further south you go.

The ferry trip was a 5 hour tour down through a number of Fiords to Caleta Gonzalo. Fortunately the sea was calm and boat was warm. The scenery was great with large and small islands passed on the way. They larger ones all seem lived on but they are very isolated. Mostly small fishing villages. There were lots of fish farms in the more sheltered area. The sea is very much an inland sea but it would still get pretty rough at times.

The ferry trip was actually two trips. The ferry stops and you get off and drive about 10 km and get on another one for a further half hour of so.

We got off the second ferry and onto a gravel road currently under reconstruction that went on for ages but about 20 km from our destination the seal started. The sealed section was a beautiful road that would even put SH1 in NZ to shame.

Our destination was Chaiten. We had not booked accommodation there and we thought it would be easy to find somewhere as its early in the season. Alas not so easy but after lifting our price bracket up a bit we found a great site with small but really nice Cabins. Just like a small motel.

The day had cleared by then and the weather report for the the next day (today).

We awoke to a beautiful day and headed back up the road to climb Chaiten Volcano. The volcano erupted big time in 2008 and put the town under a meter of ash and was then flooded in an ash mudslide from the large river that flooded through the town. Amazingly only one person died.

The climb took us two hours with the upper half up into the snow. The track did not go to the top but to a point where you look out to the top. It’s quiet active so you wouldn’t want to.

Back into Chaiten to do some more shopping as we didn’t know what we would find as we headed to the next town down the road called Amarillo. We had booked a cabin there. It was the dearest place we have stayed in but the quality left a lot to be desired. We downloaded the 1970’s song “ Is this the way to Amarillo” onto Spotify last night. Clearly not the same Amarillo.

The mountains in this area are amazing and with all the snow they are really spectacular. They are all very old and some not so old volcanoes and as the soft material has been eroded away around their summits, it has left very steep sharp peaks. Just south of Chaiten, the Corcovado Volcano sits up high on the skyline. They say it has never been climbed and the photo below will show you why.

The main entrance to Pumalin Park is in Amarillo. The park covers a huge area and was established by an American, Douglas Tompkins (he founded the their business North Face and Esprit). He eventually donated the park to the Chilean Government. His story is worth Googling if you have time.

Today we drove into the park, see photos, and climbed (2 hours) up to a lookout point from where you could see the Michinmahuida Glacier that descends from the Michinmahuida Volcano. The park and all the associated camping sites and buildings were all designed to fit into this beautiful landscape.

And then on down Ruta 7, a gloriously smooth road. We are making the most of it as it’s soon going to deteriorate into gravel with potholes.

Ruta 7 is the main road that runs the full length of Chilean Patagonia and all the major towns are located on this road.

We hadn’t seen enough glaciers today so it was off on another walk up to the viewpoint that looks up at their Ventisquero Yelcho Glacier. A 2 hour walk up a beautiful stream on a track that could easily been plucked out of NZ. The difference was the view at the top. See photo.

We are tonight in a hostel in Santa Lucia. A very sad town that got almost wiped off the map by a gigantic landslide that came down off the local mountain in 2017. Like Chaiten up the road, they have built stopbanks that hopefully will divert any such repeat from wiping out the rest of the town. Some of the old buildings could do with a wipe out but there are clearly ones that have been built since the event so this who live here must feel that the threat is now over. It’s worth Googling the Santa Lucia Landslide to see what happened.

The weather for the last few days has been glorious and warm once the sun warms things up a bit. Tomorrow would also be good but after that we are going to have a few days more rain.

Tomorrow we take a side trip to Futaleufu.