19.8 mi / 8.1 mph / 1274 ft. climbing
Home: Yulissa’s AirBNB

Our final ride on the Carretera Austral would be a short one, so we “slept in” and didn’t hit the road until 8:40am. By that point a couple of the ~5 people in the bunkhouse were up-and-about, but we were still the first ones to depart. One of our main motivations for “racing” yesterday (besides our desire to secure a private space to ourselves) was because the forecast showed rain starting overnight and continuing through the morning, and the only thing worse than riding in the rain is packing up the tent in the rain (this was before we learned that tenting wasn’t even allowed at Refugio Las Raices). There were a few light drops as we brought our bags out of our little cabin and loaded them on the bikes, but largely the forecast was quite wrong (in our favor), and no proper rain ever fell on us.

Two-and-a-half miles in, we saw another ~5 cyclists eating breakfast where they had camped at one of the big new public shelters at El Tigre River. We recognized several as our fellow guests at Camping Maria whom we had “raced” against yesterday. I don’t know if any of them had come into the Refugio last evening and decided to move on after finding that we had beaten them to cabin, or if they had always just targeted the free camping option (it’s sort of the obvious “overflow” site when the Refugio does completely fill up). Either way, I’m sure they wished they had stayed at the Refugio, since they seemed to be fighting a debilitating battle with mosquitos; one guy was walking and swatting as he ate, another girl was sneaking bites in under her head-net. We haven’t had any issues with mosquitos (none were at the Refugio, and we haven’t been harassed by horseflies for weeks), so it must have been a really-localized riverside swarm.

When we bumped off the gravel and onto the concrete-pavered streets of Villa O’Higgins, another touring cyclist standing with his bike on the sidewalk was kind enough to give us a little clap of congratulations for completing our ride of the Carretera Austral. It didn’t feel as meaningful for me as it should have though, despite my objective understanding that it was definitely a major achievement, and a goal we’ve had rumbling around in our heads for years. It might have something to do with the enormous number of cyclists that have been surrounding us, tricking me into thinking that it’s an unremarkable thing that “everyone” does, so it helped when my Dad mentioned reading about drivers and motorcyclists thrilled to have reached Villa O’Higgins.

But also in my mind this wasn’t “the end”. Which it isn’t for drivers and motorcyclists either; unless they’re planning to settle in this town at the end of the road, they need to repeat their journey that got them here, in reverse! But our departure from Villa O’Higgins would take us even further south, and be one of our biggest challenges yet, so it was hard for me to mentally relax and celebrate.

Perhaps a more-positive reason why I couldn’t absorb the emotional satisfaction of completing the Carretera Austral was because it was surprisingly “easy”. No, it wasn’t actually easy, but we had expected it to be the most-challenging riding we’ve ever done, largely due to being forced to ride and camp in the rain, something we’ve done an excellent job of avoiding for four years, but something that would be unavoidable on the Carretera Austral.

Well, it turns out that it’s avoidable! We certainly had quite a bit of luck, first with what surely had to be lower-than-average rainfall during our 6-week transit, and then with our riding periods naturally aligning with periods of clear weather. And days like today, where the forecast had nearly-guaranteed that we’d be riding through rain, but somehow none materialized. But our time-tested strategy of taking days off when the forecast looks bad continued to work, with the surprise being that it was more possible to take days off under shelter than we’d expected. In all, we had 24 riding days broken up by 20 off-days, with proper rain on only a single one of those 24 rides! And even on that “rainy” day, we probably had less that 1/4-inch fall on us. I would not be at all surprised to learn that we are now the record-holders for “least rained-on” of the 10s of thousands of cyclists who have traversed the Carretera Austral, a crown we would be proud to claim.

A week ago, back in Cochrane, Rett had found an AirBNB available for four nights, and unilaterally made the choice to book it while I was out shopping. Even though it was really expensive (US$106/night, our first >$100 AirBNB in South America), the price is an indication of the demand in Villa O’Higgins, so I was glad when she told me, since removing the stress of finding a place (or needing to move) is worth quite a bit of money to us.

We (unusually) weren’t able to to check in until the official 3pm time (because it was genuinely being cleaned after the last guests checked out, more indication of the demand here), so we previewed a grocery store and then went to a surprisingly-fancy (wine glasses on pre-set white-tablecloth tables) place for lunch. It was a non-surprising surprise to see James, our angel from yesterday, at a table finishing up with a couple of other cyclists. Their ferry had just been cancelled/delayed, so they were amongst several people using the restaurant’s WiFi to unscramble their now-scrambled plans (my physical Entel SIM card that I got in Puerto Montt works here, but our eSIMs do not).

At a table behind us there was an Italian cyclist we’d briefly met four days ago, and I overheard the woman he was with sigh and say something like “alright, time to work on my Instagram, even though no one looks at it…” I turned around to encourage her, saying that no one reads my stuff either, but it’s good to keep posting anyway, because you never know when it might connect with someone (and it’s always good for yourself). She then asked enigmatically if we have a blog…because she recognized us…from seeing our photos on our blog! Which meant that I now knew her name was Lilly, since she had actually commented on the blog a month ago, thanking me for useful information (which is the exact sort of comment that encourages me to keep making the effort!) It’s really quite rare for me to publicly lament our relatively-low readership, so it was an unbelievable coincidence that the first person I complained to in nearly a year turned out to be literally the most-blameless person in the whole world!

Days 2-5

The only way to continue south from Villa O’Higgins is by taking boat across Lake O’Higgins, and then pushing through a remote hiking trail to the Argentina border. There are enough cyclists/hikers wanting to do this that at least two operators have set up businesses with relatively-standard sailings. But they only go three times a week (less in a couple weeks as seasonal demand drops), and the first sailing available when I checked several days ago was March 21st, five days after our arrival in Villa O’Higgins. We had been planning on taking several rest-days anyway, but this required us to add one day onto our AirBNB booking (which luckily was still available).

Despite the schedule, we knew that the boat runs are often cancelled by weather (wind, waves), apparently with the Chilean Navy making the decision rather than the individual operators. Months ago, way back in Peru, a northbound rider we met had encouraged us to collect a lot of cash in Chile, because we could end up stranded for a week in Villa O’Higgins (of course since we ended up in an AirBNB where our lodging was paid for online, we now have a ton of surplus cash).

From my non-naval perspective, the weather forecast for the week looked reasonably calm, certainly much better than other times when I had looked. So it was a bit of a surprise (and concern) to learn that yesterday’s boat had been cancelled, and the rumor around town (official communication from these companies is less-than-ideal) was that a week’s worth of sailings might be suspended.

We spent our time trying to relax as best we could, occasionally starting a cozy fire in the wood-burner to warm up our place. Even though it had been overcast on our ride into Villa O’Higgins, that turned out to actually be our best opportunity to see all the mountains that ring the town, as the clouds lowered further and remained that way for most of the rest of our stay. Frequent strong wind gusts, particularly overnight, suggested that the Navy perhaps knew something that the weather models didn’t; the gusts may have been a form of localized katabatic winds, coming from cooling denser air spilling off the mountaintops after sunset and then running south down the wind-tunnel of a valley aimed straight at Villa O’Higgins (and the arm of the lake that the boats start down continues the same wind-tunnel).

We worked on minimizing our packed volume, in preparation for our hike-a-bike crossing. We visited all four of the town’s grocery stores (up from one just 7 years ago!), including the one conveniently right across the street from our place, and while it definitely took some searching and good timing to find the fresh produce, we were able to get everything we’ve come to expect in southern Chile (we love the local “Aysen” brand here in Patagonia, which even has things like bags of pickled jalapeños, something we didn’t even see in the big cities of central Chile!) We took our laundry to a house to get it washed, where we paid an insane ~US$18, partly because she unusually charged per-piece, rather than by weight like everywhere else in South America. But that’s all part of supply-and-demand in this remote end-of-the-world town packed with cyclists waiting for their boat to sail.

It was funny to see all the locals in town, even kids, riding around on high-end mountain/gravel bikes, presumably from years of Carretera Austral riders selling their bikes at the end of the road (and then taking a bus back north). Now with the quite-popular bike-rental services running out of Puerto Montt (where the companies pick up your bike here and drive it back north), this trade might have decreased, but I am quite sure that there are houses in town where bed linens are stored inside Ortlieb panniers!

The evening before our scheduled 7:30am sailing, when we hadn’t heard anything by 7pm, we figured “no news is good news” and made our final preparations to depart early in the morning. But then at 7:42pm, we got a message via WhatsApp that our boat would be delayed until at least the next day. Shit! Thus ensued a mad scramble, which we could hear also included the bike-touring neighbors that we had been sharing a wall with for days. Our place was unavailable for the next day, as were several others that we quickly contacted (or they never responded). Worst-case, we would surely be able to find a spot in one of the campgrounds to pitch our tent, but it was a relief when we got a quick response from Hostal Brava Patagonia that yes, they had a room available.

Day 6

Home: Hostal Brava Patagonia

One of the worst things about the chaos induced from the last-minute boat cancellation was that we would have to move from our comfortable place. So we were lucky in this fully-booked town that the host at our new place was like “if you check out of your current place at 11am, you can come straight here”, which saved us from having to find a way to kill four hours. With no kitchen (though it did have a common area with tables and a breakfast setup), we just got some groceries and ate lunch in our room, and for dinner we walked out to the brewery back at the north end of town, which incredibly had some of the best beer we’ve had in South America (we later heard that the brewer is an expat from the US, which would explain a lot!)

Our six-room hotel was basic but modern, and clearly recently-built, a response to the ever-increasing amount of tourists reaching the end of the Carretera Austral. And especially in these periods where the boats don’t run and the steady flow of cyclists gets dammed up here (forcing them to stay for several nights longer than they would choose to), demand is still greater than supply. But the limited scheduled sailings create a bottleneck even in good weather, so I wouldn’t be surprised if an entrepreneur responds to that bottleneck by operating a much bigger boat, which could operate more-reliably in bad weather, which would then suddenly collapse the demand for room-nights in Villa O’Higgins! (The fact that our boat operator, Turismo Las Ruedas, also runs a substantial cabin-rental business, certainly allows space for an obvious conspiracy-theory to be floated when the boats are cancelled!)

One of the other couples staying in our hotel, from Colorado, was literally “in the same boat” with us, so we were all thrilled and relieved when we got a relatively-early WhatsApp message (5:30pm) saying that our boat would go tomorrow. We would need to get to the port (several miles away) by 5:40am, two hours earlier than originally scheduled, but that was probably better than the people who’d had bookings for previous days that would now be sent at 6pm tonight (and forced to camp at the opposite end of the lake), as an extensive backlog was being squeezed into a brief weather window.

So yeah, this is all why it was hard for me to celebrate our arrival in Villa O’Higgins, five days ago, as the “end” of anything!