26.9 mi / 6.9 mph / 2053 ft. climbing
Home: Lago Carrera Wild Camp

After four days off in Puerto Río Tranquilo, we had another clear window that would allow us to make it to the next proper town, Cochrane, in three days. It’s “only” ~70 miles from PRT, a distance that we have done before in a single day, but given the hills and gravel, accomplishing it in three days would still be no ride in the park. Well, I guess in one way it kind of would be a ride in the park; having a couple of amazing (and free) National Park-level waterside campsites targeted along the way was certainly an attractive part of the plan.

I had a hope that most of the relatively-heavy dust-churning traffic north of Puerto Río Tranquilo had been tourists heading for the Marble Caves, and that would make it less-busy as we continued south. Upon our 8am departure, it was a little difficult to tell, since traffic is always light at 8am here, but as the day continued, we definitely had fewer vehicles to deal with.

Even though there are probably 20+ cyclists heading the same way as us every day, we’re used to being out first and not seeing anyone else for quite a while, so it was a bit surprising when I heard voices behind us. Even more surprising was how I instantly knew that they were American, even though they were still too far away for me to discern any words. Just something about the cadence and tone of their speech made it easy to identify their national origin. We leapfrogged a couple times with quick hellos, but on the third pass, the more-casually dressed guy of the pair stopped to chat, and we learned why his friend was spandex-clad and continuing ahead.

Red Sweatshirt had been riding all of South America, while his friend Spandex had just flown in to join him in Coyhaique four days ago. Red Sweatshirt had been doing crazy distances, partly in hope to make it to Punta Arenas to see the total solar eclipse on the 17th (I said “huh, cool, I’m surprised I wasn’t aware of that one, since I’m sure I’ve read about all upcoming total eclipses of the next decade, but I guess I must have just not written it to my memory since it was only hitting this super-remote location and who would ever be there?!”) His friend, thrown right into the Carretera Austral’s fire, was becoming increasingly exhausted, and while their plan was to reach Cochrane in one day, I had serious doubts that would happen. And even if it did, Spandex would likely murder Red Sweatshirt at some point, especially when he eventually learned what I now know: there is no total solar eclipse anywhere on Earth until August. The one on the 17th is an annular eclipse, with the “ring of fire” visible only in Antarctica, while in Punta Arenas, a maximum of…1.8% of the sun would be covered by the moon. Whoops.

On iOverlander, a cyclist had marked (and essentially created) a bikes-only wild camp spot down on the shore of the lake below the road, even including a detailed map to make it findable. But his bit about the path down to it being “slightly sloped” was apparently an inappropriate use of sarcastic understatement? Because the steep and loose scramble was a challenge to walk down even unencumbered, especially since it was partially blocked with thorny bushes.

But my scouting showed the final location to be just as excellent as promised, and since it was only 2pm, I decided it would be worth the effort. I first helped Rett down, and then unloaded the bags from the bikes and carried everything separately. It took me an hour and seven additional trips along the rocks at the water’s edge, over the boulders, and through the thorns (totaling more than a mile), but once in place we had this secret spot on the lake all to ourselves.

While I was enjoying a rare opportunity to spend some time actually “working” at photography, Rett was spiraling from frustration into anguish back at our tent 100 yards down the beach, unbeknownst to me. Our tent zippers have been dying for some time, but by squeezing the zipper pulls closed with pliers, or using specific methods to pull them, I’ve managed to keep them operational. But this evening nothing Rett tried would cause the zipper to seal. Eventually she gave up in despair, and closed the door with clothespins.

I only did slightly better than her, so I figured it was worth trying another plier-squeeze, something I’ve been reluctant to do, lest I overdo it. And…snap. The zipper pull fell into my hand in two pieces. Shit. I guess at least my reluctance to overtightening them was vindicated?

Rett rejected (probably correctly) my proposal to sacrifice one of the four zippers on the rainfly, and instead settled for me just stitching the tent zipper closed, semi-permanently reducing our two-door tent to a one-door tent. Certainly we would lose a lot of convenience to us each having our own door, but we’ve used a one-door tent before, and honestly I’m frequently getting into the tent after Rett and out of it before her anyway. Following all that effort to get to our campsite, I certainly hadn’t expected to spend my evening on a sewing project, but there are worse places to do a sewing project!