36.7 mi / 8.1 mph / 3911 ft. climbing
Home: Camping Laguna Chinguay

After more than a week in Coyhaique, we began the second half of the Carretera Austral at 7:20am, with the weather still warm enough that starting off in shorts at that hour was no problem. That’s been the case for nearly all of our days in 2026, flipping my fears that we would be constantly cold on the world’s Southernmost Highway. We were in fact grateful that clouds for the first couple hours kept us cooler than we would have been with the sun beating on us.

I had read many people complaining about the traffic on the way in to Coyhaique from the north via Ruta 240, but I guess I hadn’t paid attention to the way out, because I was surprised to find it much worse. It tended to come in long lines, and the road was wide enough that vehicles from behind felt comfortable passing us simultaneously with oncoming vehicles, even though it didn’t feel at all comfortable to us. Where are all these people going?! I thought maybe it was traffic to the Balmaceda airport, which I knew was somewhere outside of town, but it seemed like far too much for that. And even if that was their destination, it turns out that “Coyhaique’s” airport is super far away, so we were stuck with all the cars for the first 24 miles before the road finally split! At that point we were within 5 miles of the Argentina border, so maybe “Argentina” was a more-general answer to my question? But that part of Argentina seems like a whole load of nothing (we were already far enough to the eastern side of the mountains that everything was far drier here), with no population centers for hundreds of miles, so it’s really quite a mystery.

The small town of El Blanco had a couple of stores, and although one of them wasn’t open, that was still 1.5 more places than Timothy Tower had noted on his ride through in 2019, so that provided more evidence of the continuing development of the Carretera Austral. On the way out of “town” there was a caribinero standing in the roadway, presumably doing random vehicle inspections, and surprisingly he motioned for us to stop. But it turned out he was just friendly and wanted to chat, and spoke excellent English too. He was surprised that we had arrived all the way from Coyhaique so early in the morning, which was just more evidence of how most other cyclists seem uninterested in catching the worm. When I asked he said that we were the first of probably 20 bike travelers that would pass him today (for ourselves, we got passed by one guy shortly before we reached our destination).

Once the road to Balmaceda/Argentina split off, traffic again dropped off to the minimal levels on the Carretera Austral. That made it easier to stop and investigate the creaking sound coming from my rear brake. Somehow the caliper was no longer aligned with disc, which made me scared that something was loose and shifting due to my disassembly of the hub in Coyhaique. But re-seating the wheel in the dropouts helped, though the creaking was then replaced by a strange rubbing noise. So, time to take all the bags off and flip the bike. That’s when I noticed the rear derailleur wasn’t seated quite right. How could that be? Very simple: I had taken it off last night, because the hub body that I sacrificed to get an insurance freehub had provided a 6-inch long 10mm-diameter threaded rod, and I wanted to take advantage of possession of that rare “tool” to check how straight my derailleur hanger truly was after roughly bending it back into place a few weeks ago (a 10mm rod/quick-release hub fits into a derailleur hanger, and gives a longer visual indicator of any undesired angle). So trying to verify one fix with a leftover from a second fix forced me to make a third fix out on the road. Ugh. On top of that, the dryness meant that my leather saddle started to make a creaking noise. Argh! The freehub problem from the ride into Coyhaique already had me paranoid about mechanical issues, so it’s the worst possible day for odd noises to appear!

In December of 2019, Timothy Tower had reported a “clear stream” at the spot where we stopped for lunch, but in February of 2026 we found barely a trickle. Still, all our sweating meant that we needed water, so I collected what I could and pre-filtered it through my wool headband to remove some of the plant matter before running it through our actual filter.

That’s when the day’s strong wind cranked up; thankfully it was a tailwind, and even better, strong enough that it blew faster than us up a long slow climb, so it still gave a cooling effect. Timothy Tower’s next three marked water spots were completely dry, but thankfully the fourth was a good clear stream, so I spent 15 minutes filtering and filling our bottles while Rett went ahead to the campground. She’d been having a tough go of it, stopping a lot on the climbs after getting winded, even though the grades weren’t insane. Though, we did climb nearly 4000 feet on the day, so some exhaustion isn’t too surprising!

Laguna Chinguay campground is maybe the first actual campground we’ve stayed in in South America? Years ago it sounds like it was an okay place, then it was abandoned for a couple years, and now it’s restarted by a new family(?…though it also seems to be a National Park campground), and it’s amazing. And I don’t think that’s just because we’ve become used to wild camping. The forested setting gave shade and cut the strong wind down to just a soft cooling breeze, and many of the sites had wooden shelters that you didn’t even need to pay extra for! Nice bathrooms with hot (wood-fired) showers, a little kitchen area with charging available, and you could even do laundry (for an extra fee)! Previous reports all said the water (which we could get from a tap right at our campsite!) wasn’t potable, but no one knew if filtering/boiling would make it potable (hence my stream fill-up a mile before the campground). But these new hosts reported that yes, just boiling/filtering would be fine. They also warned about hantavirus (and the shelter even had a bottle of “cloro” to spray to disinfect it), though when they also warned about pumas, it made me think they were more government-mandated warnings rather than actual issues (I didn’t see any roent poop in the shelter).