Highs and lows
Trip Start
Dec 22, 2007
1
16
48
Trip End
May 01, 2008
Chile Chico,
Chile
Friday, January 18, 2008
18th Jan
Feeling a little better in the morning we went to try and find out how to get across the border to Chile Chico in Chile. This was easier said than done but we understood from the lady at the hostel that there would be a bus about 11. So we sat on the grass verge in the middle of the road keeping an eye out.
Luckily a bus came pass which we hailed and with our bad Spanish interpreted that he would come back in half an hour and take us across. This was good timing as we would have got very wet from a tanker spraying water on the verge if we hadnīt moved.
Getting across the border wasnīt too difficult. You are not allowed to take fresh fruit, meat etc in to Chile so we had to have our bags inspected but it was pretty easy.
From Chile Chico we were intending to get the ferry across Lago General Carrera to Puerto Ibanez and up to Coyhaique (on for us the start of the Carretera Austral). But it didnīt turn out to be quite so simple...
We got to the ferry terminal to discover that the boat was full for 4 days. We knew there was a bus which went a long way round the lake and it was supposed to be very scenic so we thought we would find out about that as an alternative.
We met Vanessa a Romanian lady who spoke far better Spanish that us and she helped us find out that we could get the bus to a place called Puerto Guardal at the end of the lake. We could then stay there the night and the next day get the bus to Coyhaique. After a little debate we decided to this.
So we got the bus, along with an Isreali guy we had met. It was a stunning drive, with 11 of us crammed in to the back of a minibus. Itīs certainly one of the most beautiful drives we have ever been on. It took about 3.5 hours to get there. When we got there the driver told us that there would be a bus at 8:30 to some crossroads where we would catch the bus to Coyhaique (coming up from the south).
We found a very cheap room in a hospedaje (basically a room in someoneīs house) and stayed the night.
19th Jan
Next morning we got up and waited for the bus to the crossroads but... it never arrived. Someone told us that it didnīt run on Saturdays. So we decided to hike the 5km to the crossroads and hope we hadnīt missed our connection. About 1.5km down the road we managed to hitch a lift (us and our Isreali friend - canīt spell his name!) with a bus which was going to meet the Coyhaique bus for transfers. We never discovered whether this was the bus that should have been running at 8:30. So we got to the crossroads feeling quite confident that we would get to Coyhaique.
Then we waited.
And waited.
After about 1 hour the bus turned round and went back leaving a single passenger, a Chillean (and us) waiting for the Coyhaique bus.
After about 2 hours we decided that the bus wasnīt coming and we would try and hitch. Two hours later we decided that we would hitch in any direction, north to Coyhaique, south to Cochrane (because there was a regular bus to Coyhaique) or back. The first person to pick us up was going back to Puerto Guardal. So about 6 hours after intending to get the 8:30 bus we were back again.
As the next day was Sunday we assumed that there would not be any buses. We discovered that we had missed the last bus back to Chile Chico so we figured that we might as well try and hitch back and if it failed we would stay for a couple of nights in Puerto Guardal (not something we were looking forward to).
Luckily we managed to get a lift with two workmen on their way back to Chile Chico. It was actually far more comfortable in the back of the pickup and the bus we had caught, and somewhat quicker. (Ignoring the couple of times they stopped to check the car after going over some rough ground - oh and also when the bonnet flew up and so we couldnīt see anything out of the windscreen, luckily they had some rope to tie down the bonnet). So we finally made it back to Chile Chico, where we had started, about 7PM feeling completely knackered.. We checked into what was called a hotel but has actually a hospedaje again.
