We continue to Puerto Chacabuco. The mountain scenery is equally spectacular as before, but in a different light. Sometimes dramatic, with the clouds hovering above the highest peaks, and sometimes enlightened, as some sunshine manages to get through. Most of the road is actually in pretty good condition, only part of it is ‘ripio’, although in some parts the question is not if, or when, you are going to hit the potholes, but more like, which ones are you going to hit to avoid the others. For most of the road there is very little happening, no villages, a few houses, a bit of cattle, but mostly the road, at one moment climbing up to a not-so-high pass and at other times following the river Maniguales. View of the mountains comes and goes, but it is never boring.
We reach Puerto Chacabuco at the end of the afternoon, about as far as we go on the Carretera. Where all the other places we have seen so far were enchanting, if small, Puerto Chacabuco is the pits, and small, and not just because of the rain. It has all the hallmarks of ‘end of the road’, and in a way it is. This is where we would have wanted to arrive by ferry from Chiloe, or would have liked to depart to Chiloe, one way or the other, a thirty-hour crossing. But partly because of the difficulty booking, and partly because, having been on the Hornopiren ferry for several hours, we are now somehow a lot less keen on long ferry crossings, we consider this the end of the road for us, too.
But before we turn around, we have one more excursion to do: the San Rafael lake and glacier.
😄 credit to the travel companion foto input. Graag gedaan!