18.8 mi / 7.0 mph / 1539 ft. climbing
Home: Lago Negro Campground

The “bimodal” ferry from Hornopiren to Caleta Gonzalo is a much bigger deal than the ~40 minute ferry we took on our first day on the Carretera Austral. It’s an hours-long trip, with a road segment sandwiched between two water segments, runs once a day (at least for the version that takes bikes) and requires advance reservations. During this peak 3-month summer season on the Carretera Austral, it’s frequently booked solid, making it a bit of a choke-point on the route. There is conflicting information about whether cyclists can reliably get on even if it’s “full”, but a week ago when I’d seen space on today’s ferry (both “seats” for humans, which may be limited by the number of lifeboats, and “vehicle meters”, for which bikes require 0.5 meters in their online system), we decided to just remove that uncertainty and book it.

They somewhat insanely tell you to arrive at 8am for the 10am departure, but we were the 2nd and 3rd cyclists (of many more) to arrive at 8:25. A couple of guys walking around with a clipboard checked the tickets on my phone, but then paged through their sheets looking for Rett’s bike. I knew it wasn’t there, because after I’d booked online for two passengers along with a “vehicle” of type “bicycle”, I realized that there had been nowhere to tell it how many bicycles, so it it had dumbly assumed just one. At the time I figured this was just standard operating procedure, since I knew there was no shortage of space to stash bikes on the giant boat, and it was our “seats” that mattered. But these guys told us we’d have to pay for the 2nd bike, at the nearby ticket office, which opened in five minutes and already had a good-sized line (at least they had a deli-counter number machine, which Chileans love to do, making it a requirement even at their pharmacies).

We waited nearly an hour for our turn, and the clerk couldn’t really figure out how to charge us for the bicycle. Thankfully she had the wherewithal to just radio someone on-board to notify them that we had an extra bike and ask if that was fine, and then send us on our way. By the time we got back to our bikes, the other cyclists were just finishing getting on, so we followed along without anyone even checking a ticket or caring about us at all. So, a big waste of time, but I guess we didn’t have anything better to do with that time anyway!

I saw Eduardo, who we met on the ferry two days ago, roll on after us. He had ended up stopping in Contao just like us rather than continuing in the record heat to Hornopiren as he originally planned. And like us, now having done “the rest” of that ride, he agreed it would have been crazy to do it in one day (at least on that day!)

Since bikes load first, we had our choice of seating when we climbed up to the passenger deck, and we chose one of the big U-shaped banquettes next to the windows, especially since they had power outlets. A woman speaking English joined us, and she was surprised that I could tell from her Terry brand shirt and QuadLock phone case that she was a cyclist. But part of that surprise was because she hadn’t clocked us as cyclists (thus wondering how non-cyclists could recognize such subtle clues?), which is, maybe good, maybe bad? Diane is from Virginia, and while she may be a bit older than us, she has more muscles than the two of us combined. Like many here, she has come specifically to ride the Carretera Austral.

Despite this stretch of unusually-warm and non-rainy weather, I was a bit surprised that that hasn’t meant “cloudless”, and for much of our 3.5 hour crossing, the supposedly-stupendous mountains rising from the water were hidden from view. But in the last hour or so, their black forms began piercing the white veil, and it felt like everyone was on deck to enjoy the views. For some reason it was a rare boat ride where there was no motion-induced wind to freeze everyone, so a significant portion of the passengers spent the entire time out on the deck chairs.

Once our first ferry landed, there would be a 6-mile ride to reach another arm of the Gulf of Ancud, where we would then board a second ferry. The boat for the second crossing is smaller than the first, so in this maxed-out high season, it must make two crossings to ferry everyone across. Thus when we landed, most of the vehicles were let off before us, so that they could load onto the next boat and depart as quickly as possible, while we would then catch it on its second trip.

But just as we were cresting the final hill, we saw a line of cars waiting on the road, and then even better, vehicles began driving toward us. That means the next boat had just arrived from the other direction, and was still unloading its passengers, so maybe we could make it on the first trip after all! With hope rising, we cut to the head of the line (sneaking between the parked cars and ones driving straight at us) where the other cyclists were waiting, and about two minutes later, were called down to board. Excellent! It seemed like the combination of the first ferry arriving a little early and the second one a little late had lucked us into saving well over an hour of twiddling our thumbs, on what would already be an extremely-late day of cycling for us!

We began moving as quickly as possible, since even with our “early” crossing, it was already 3:10pm, and we didn’t know exactly where we would be spending the night. Unlike the 6-mile paved section between the boats, here we would be riding gravel, and after doing 100 yards on it, quickly determined that it was unfortunately not smooth “keep the tires fully-inflated” gravel, so we took some time to let some air out.

As we got further the surface improved a bit and remained decent for most of the way, though I still didn’t regret taking the air out. Worse were the quite steep hills. Worse than that was the return of the horseflies, in numbers we haven’t had to deal with since our ride between the lakes on the Cruce Andino crossing before Christmas. As their massive bodies swirled and buzzed around us, endlessly tracking us, it wasn’t long until Rett descended into absolute anguish.

Her instinctual fear of them outweighs any damage they can actually do, so she spent the next two-and-a-half hours with both her physical and emotional levels cranked up to 11. Unfortunately on the hilly rough surface, upping from 90% to 110% effort increased her speed from 3.5mph to only 3.7mph, not nearly enough to make a difference to the flies, though it made a huge (negative) difference for her. Combined with panicked attempts to swat them away from her as she rode, it was actually incredibly amazing that she maintained control of the bike the whole time, and never crashed out on the gravel. But I still did a good amount of “ferrying” her bike (riding ahead, parking my bike, and then running back to ride hers up a steep hill), essentially just to give her a break from the 110% effort, which, definitionally, would have been impossible to sustain.

There is a series of National Park campgrounds along the route. In retrospect it probably would have been best to just stop at the one right at Caleta Gonzalo (where the second ferry dropped us), and then tackle this stretch in the morning, when the flies were likely much-less active (a big part of the problem was the ferry timings “forcing” us into this late-afternoon riding). But then we might have needed two days to reach the town of Chaiten, and we hadn’t packed food for that (plus, we had left that campground behind before we even knew how bad the flies would be). My optimistic target had been Lago Blanco, 15 miles in, for its supposedly-awesome campsites, but we had written that off before we even got off the boat. Next had been Lago Negro, three miles closer (and minus a big steep hill), but Rett’s misery meant that we would now stop at the first possible opportunity, Cascadas Escondidas. She had even been wanting to just pitch the tent on the side of the road so she could escape (and possibly continue riding after dark), but the vegetation was so thick along the roadside that there wasn’t even really an opportunity for that.

Just as we neared the campground, the line of cars from the second round of the second ferry caught up to us, so I raced ahead to possibly grab a spot before they could. Only to find the campground chained off and closed. Fuck!! Rett surprisingly took the news in stride, and quickly resolved to push on in absolute misery for another three miles to Lago Negro. By this point it was after 5pm, and the extreme calorie deficit we were facing was making the unbearable conditions even worse (our last food had been lunch on the first ferry). But it’s difficult for me to convince Rett to stop to eat something even in the best conditions, so there was no chance of me doing it here, and onward we went.

When we finally reached Lago Negro, I scouted ahead, and was tremendously relieved to find a spot in a forested area still available that would fit our tent, even though at least half-a-dozen other cyclists had beaten us there. It wasn’t super-flat, and we were less than 10 feet from where our closest neighbor would lay his head, but it was a shelter that could finally give Rett some relief.

Even in the trees, even into the evening, the flies were still swarming around. And while I find them a bit annoying, they don’t inflict nearly the amount of terror in me that they do for Rett, so while it was cool enough that I could have put on pants or my hoodie to give myself some protection, I somehow never got around to going through the effort until after dinner when I finally got a chance to wash up a bit.

The flies didn’t really disappear until about 7pm, and by that point I felt rested enough to explore the mile-long round-trip trail to the lake (Rett was perfectly happy to remain relaxed in our shelter). When I got back, Eduardo had arrived, and repeated almost verbatim what Rett had been saying: “if there is something that will make me quit this, it’s the fucking flies! Why does everyone think that riding the Carretera Austral is worth it, or even fun? Because this is not fun!!”

So we will see. We might be done with the Carretera Austral after three days of riding. And that’s fine with me. Our lives are largely in our control, and if we’re doing something that isn’t enjoyable, we should change course. And the anguish that Rett has been in is far more painful to me than any bites from the flies. Unfortunately we still have one more day of riding the same gravel road before we can escape.