The Carretera on Four Wheels

by Liz Krivonosov

The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. To prove this point, John asked me (Liz) to write this blog about the Carretera Austral – Take 2.

The Carretera Austal is 1240 km long. Due to inaccessibility, this area was settled only in the past 100 years, just before World War 2. We drove approximately one-third of the route from Chaiten south to the viewpoint at Cerro Castillo in 3 days.

We spent our first night in Puyuhuapi. This quaint village of a few hundred people is on the shore of a scenic fiord. This unusual sounding name’s origin is from the Puyu, a flower found in the fiord and Huapi or island. This village was settled in the early 1930s and like Puerto Montt, by German settlers.

Our next stop was 2 days in the larger city of Puerto Aysen. We planned on a day trip from there further south to Cerro Castillo. In Puerto Aysen, I had the best meal in Chile at the El Meson de la Patiko restaurant. The smoked salmon was not like gravlax. Instead, the fresh salmon was initially smoked, then cooked and served hot. The flavour was beautifully balanced. I rarely give out perfect 10 scores (you know the Russian judge), but this was an 11/10. Coupled with a degustation of four large pisco sour samplers, I was a happy girl.

Ruta 7 is the formal designation of the Carretera Austral. If you have a hankering for rally car driving, this is the road for you. There are still large unpaved sections of this road. One of them cuts through a mountain pass with steep, breath sucking hairpin turns. This is the section where John laid his motorcycle down on a curve.

When we arrived at the start of this section of the road, the pass was closed due to washouts from the rain overnight. The road crews work very hard on maintaining Ruta 7 however due to the narrow hairpin turns, the gravel trucks had to drive backwards up the road in order to discharge their loads.  Now that is fancy driving. Eventually the road was open to traffic. However, the rain, coupled with fresh loose gravel, made our drive even more of a challenge with our car. It was worth the drive as we landed on a nicely paved, flat section of the road in a beautiful valley. We were greeted by an honour guard of purple lupins standing at attention on either side of the road.

Springtime in the valleys of Patagonia is lush and green. Happy cows and sheep grazing in the pastures create a pastoral setting. There is no crop farming here, other than some hay – it’s all “fundos” as the Chileans call their ranches. The small but well-kept homes evoked a rustic tranquility. We passed several Chilean cowboys, “huasos” with their dogs along the side of the road. Along the coast the main industry is fishing. We saw several salmon fish farms as we traveled along the coast, as well as the traditional fishing boats.

This area is the second largest temperate rainforest in the world. Huge ferns, and gigantic rhubarb leaves spring from the roadside and cling to rock cliffs. It looks prehistoric, and I almost expected to see dinosaurs chewing on the leaves as we rounded corner after corner on the twisty road.

It was raining steadily as we continued south. Everywhere we looked we saw cascades of waterfalls… hundreds of them along the mountain rock faces like gloved white fingers reaching down towards the rivers below.

Throughout our route, we saw roadside shrines to various saints. My favorite was at yet another beautiful waterfall – the waterfall of the Holy Virgin. There was a small chapel and an open-air altar. God’s country in this wonderful natural setting.

Our time in Chile is ending. The one consistent thing throughout our entire stay in Chile is the incredibly warm, honest, and caring Chilean people. They are a joy. Despite the rough start this past month, we managed to have a beautiful and wonderful finish in mystical Patagonia.

Here are the other photos from the Carretera on Four Wheels.