Carretera Austral - March 21, 2023
It’s been a while since my last post but in the interval we have covered a lot of ground. We left Borde Baker Lodge on Friday for a town called Tortola, our last stop before Villa O’Higgins and the end of our road. Our night there was an experience that I would not want to repeat. Tortola is built at the bottom of a steep hill along the edge of a fjord, but since fjords don’t usually have a foreshore but drop from the land into the water, the houses are built on cyprus pilings around the edge of the fjord. Cyprus is a native tree and has the advantage of growing straight and true and is noted for its water and moisture resistance, a significant factor in the construction of homes and buildings in the extremely rainy communities built along the western shores of the country. Connecting all of Tortola’s houses is a walkway about 2 metres wide and 900 metres long, also build on cyprus pilings. The walkway is the only way of getting around the town. Most of the town’s houses however are not built on the walkway itself but are built up on the mountainside and connect to the town’s wooden walkway by staircases that climb up the mountainside to connect the houses and buildings to the cental walway.
One enters the town at the top of the hill abovethe town’s houses. You park your car next to the town square at the top of the hill and you get to the town proper by walking down an 85 step staircase to reach the walkway, carrying your bags and luggage. An 800 metre walk along the wooden walkway brings you to the staircase that ascends to our Lodge which is 100+ steps up a steep wooden stairway. It goes without saying that this would be a reasonably challenging exercise for the fit but for for two aging, out-of-shape and unprepared Pisco Sour drinkers, not a great way to end the day. However, an hours rest, a Pisco Sour and a good dinner prepared us for doing this trek in reverse next morning in the dark, so as to get an early start on our drive to Villa O’Higgins.
Villa O’Higgins when reached after a a 5 hour drive of relentless pounding revealed itself to be a tiny hamlet surrounded by mountains with a couple of guesthouses, 2 restaurants and a school. The Carretera continues through the town for an additional 7Km and ends at a Chilean Navy dock on Lago O’Higgins. Lago O’Higgins is a very long narrow lake on the other side of which is Argentina, hence the presence of the Chilean Navy. We took our final pictures at the trail’s end, had an early dinner and prepared ourselves for the long drive back, starting early Sunday morning.
On Sunday and Monday we covered the 527Km from Villa O’Higgins to Balmaceda Airport near Coyhaique, a distance that took us 5 days while we were travelling south. It was a punishing two day drive on unpaved roads which then allowed us the luxury of a 2 hour flight back to Santiago where I write this on Tuesday afternoon. Robert left for Australia this morning and I leave for home tomorrow evening.
The Chilean Patagonians we met were charming, gracious and helpful and were among the highlights of the trip. However, spending time with Robert after the passage of so many years was the real highlight and although we are unlikely to have another such chance, I am enormously pleased that we made this opportunity happen. Good friends are one of life’s gifts and I’m very lucky in my friends.
On balance, an amazing journey and a fabulous adventure but it did have its challenging moments. However our challenges pale in comparison to those of the steady stream of bicycles that we passed in both directions, loaded with equipment and toiling up and down the mountain passes. It seems presumptuous to compare our travails to theirs but with a 50+ year gap in our ages, I think we are allowed our own small moments of pride.
More to come!
