Blogpost 13 Patagonia Santa Lucia to Villa Cerro Castillo

It’s been a long time since the last post sorry but we have been busy.

I note I had the last post title wrong. I have now corrected it.

So we headed to off to Futaleufú (what a great name). Futaleufú is close to Argentina but that is not what is known for. It is suppose to be the best place in the world to go rafting and canoeing. The main river that runs past the town is huge and wild. With rapids up to grade 6 I think.

We didn’t go rafting as our insurance doesn’t cover such ventures and the cost was in incredible.

Check the photos and you will see what i mean re the huge rapids. Unfortunately there are not many places you can see the river but it was a nice drive and we stayed in a great hostel.

We are back into hostels and are enjoying the experience. Much better than the ones we stayed in further north in SA.

We expected to see big rafting companies with big offices etc but no. Just lots of smaller more discrete businesses.

From Futaleufú it was back to Ruta 7 and off to Rual Marin Balmacida. It’s out on the west coast and was an early settlement only accessible from the sea. It was a long 85 km drive in the rain on gravel with many potholes. We stopped at a thermal springs site about 17 km down the road and had a soak in the very nice hot springs. The spring comes to the surface at 84 degrees C and they cool it in the pools with cold water. A very pleasant stop.

We finally reached Balmaceda late in the day and booked into what turned out to be a relatively expensive cabana (Chilean cabin). It was quaint and as always very rustic. See photos.

The area is known for its wildlife but the weather was not good so we didn’t go wildlife spotting. Decided a merlot was a better option.

Next day we did a walk in the local rain forrest to check out the see from a couple of view points and to check on the big old Chilean Myrtle trees. They have smooth orange bark and are used extensively in this area for making interesting looking indoor beams and the like.

The forest was special. Very thick with mosses and ferns and all sorts of trees and very damp. See photo

Back down the long gravel potholed road to Ruta 7 again in the rain. It’s was amazing how tired I was after the 2 hour drive as the concentration required to avoid the potholes seemed like it was never ending.

The next stop was Puyuhuapi, a nice title town at the head of the Canal Puyuhuapi. It is really along fiord but for some season is called a canal. The town was established and developed by German immigrants who set up all sorts of small industries including a carpet factory.

We checked into our hostel and met a lovely German couple who we have got to know quiet well. The hostel was one of the nicest we have stayed in with nice bed linen and just that extra touch.

Next day we planned to visit the Ventisquero Hanging Glacier and our new German friends joined us for the day as they didn’t have any transport to get the Galacier.

We awake to a day that was mostly clear after a very wet day the day before. It was a bout a 1.5 hour walk up through the bush to the viewing platform to join the about 15 other people all glued to the view waiting for pieces of the glacier to break off and come crashing down to the valley below. The high clouds mostly cleared away as we got to the viewing platform. We were treated to a number of ice falls and the view and noise as it did so was spectacular. Rain and cloud seems to be a very common feature of Patagonia and so far we have managed to have fine days at the times it really mattered.

We went out to dinner that night to a local restaurant and had the set menus meal of the day made up of soup, a man course of fish and pancakes with ice cream for desert. Yummy and relatively cheep for what you got.

Generally fuel, food and accommodation is about on par with NZ nut it must seem very expensive for the locals. The minimum wage here is about $nz700 per month. I don’t know how they survive.

The next day it was off to Coyhaique which was a long drive south down through some more spectacular scenery stopping at time to view amazing water falls and more mountains. We invited our German friends to join us on that drive rather than take the bus. We had the room and we enjoyed their company.

Coyhaique is the largest town along the Carretera Austral but it was much larger than we expected. Booked into another nicely organised hostel and headed off to the very large supermarket to restock the wine cellar and food stores.

We have heard that patrol could be hard to get in Argentina when we start our trip north so we may have to cross back into Chile at Futaleufú to fill before heading back and up through Argentina. However the first part of our drive up through Argentina will be too far for one tank full so we have bought a 20 liter fuel container that will give us the extra mileage we need. This will take the stress out of having to find petrol on the way. Unfortunately we will have to give the container away at some point as I don’t think we could fly home with it.

There was not much to do in Coyhaique so we headed south again today down to Villa Cerro Castillo. This is a small town surrounded by spectacular snow capped mountains. We plan to do a big hike tomorrow up to a high level lake which we are looking forward to. We have become really fit over the past two months of walking and we are finding the climbing up into the hills quite easy. We probably also still getting some benefit from all the time we spent at high altitude in Bolivia and Peru.

The drive today south from Coyhaique took up through very different terrain than what we had seen up to now. The area had wide open valleys of farmland dotted with the occasional small village and farm houses. As we approached Cerro Castillo the valleys narrowed again and it actually snowed very lightly as we came over a pass before we dropped down into town.

The wind is very cold here now as the we are surrounded by snow capped mountains but out of the wind in the sun, it is quiet pleasant.

Must stop writing now as it’s almost wine time. We need to make some more progress towards depleting out wine stores.