Patagonia and its climate

• From October 30 to Monday November 7 From Puerto Montt to Villa Amengual

One day cruise

Tuesday October 30, we leave Puerto Montt towards the Carretera Austral. Our passage through the Chiloé Islands was canceled at the last minute, the snow fell heavily during the night and the road was not passable.

The start is a little difficult, the weather is quite cool and the weather forecast is bad. We drive all day and it’s impossible to find accommodation. For this first day, we don’t want to camp. After a day of more than 110km, we arrive in Hornopiren in the dark. It’s not easy to navigate the streets. It’s Halloween night and it seems like the whole village has dressed up to celebrate the event or our arrival.

We find a small accommodation at rublas. Comfort is quite rudimentary, but with fatigue we fall asleep quite easily.

Wednesday October 31 we have to take a ferry which will take us across a long arm of the sea. A 7-hour mini-cruise in what I will call the Chilean fjords. The show is magnificent, it’s a shame the weather isn’t good. We navigate between salmon farms before arriving at our destination for the day Galeta Gonzalo where we settle in for the night. We camp with Peter, Mark and Maxence we met on the boat during the crossing.

Bingo

After a quiet night, we set off on Carretera Austal, direction Chaiten. The surface is really very bad, it requires a lot of energy going uphill and also a lot of attention going downhill in order to avoid huge holes in the road. The sky is very gray. In Chaiten we sleep in a very pleasant little inn run by Rita.

Friday we drive to Santa Lucia. We don’t really have pleasant weather conditions. The temperature is around 10°C, it is raining and snow is present on the high points. This evening we sleep in the isolated village of Santa Lucia where it’s a party. Everyone participates in bingo organized for the benefit of different associations. We join the event, it’s also the only place to get food, because everything is closed. Fortunately we didn’t win anything this evening, it would have been difficult to transport the prizes.

An incredible and probably unthinkable thing in France, there is no internet in this village, the latter following a landslide has been cut off for more than five years.

Four days with rain.

the next four days we ride with rain, which spoils the landscape a little, but fortunately good weather is forecast for the next week. No significant points during these four days where we will cross the villages of La Junta, Puyuhuapi to arrive at Villa Amanigual.

During this first week we met a few cyclists:

• Maxence, a Frenchman from Grenoble.
• Peter and Mark two Dutch people
• Darius who is traveling for a medical cause. He had surgery for a brain tumor. He travels to raise awareness of the cause and raise funds. Bravo to him.
• During the week we cycled 531 km for 7 days from Puerto Montt to Villa Amingual. You can find the map on the blog’s home page.

Did you know: Chile is the second largest producer of salmon after Norway