ODO: 336,962
Puerto Rio Tranquilo and their Marble Caves are our adventure today. The small town is completely geared towards taking people on various tours. We find an entire alley dedicated to selling boat tours to the Marble Caves, which means we don’t need to book ahead! There are two tours, long and short, and we want the short. We had been advised by friends that the long tour wasn’t worth the extra time because you don’t actually see more caves. Also, one of us has a meeting that lines up perfectly with the end of the short tour. When tour time rolls around, we learn no one else signed up for the short tour so they are gifting us the long tour. They give us enough time to reschedule the afternoon meeting before rushing us onto the boat.
The weather today is perfect for a boat ride, warm, no wind and sunny. We haven’t had much of this, so the timing is amazing. Our first stop is a shipwreck. Its more a rusted out finishing boat that someone ran ashore. After this we start the caves. The cliffs around the lake are limestone that the lake has been eroding in interesting and sculptural caverns of different colors. Most of the caves are whites and greys, but there are yellows and greens and blacks as well. The boat driver literally drives the boat into the caverns in several different places. The ceilings are low and rippled. The water is crystal clear and tropical blue. There is even a cave the boat can drive all the way though. Great views, great weather, great outing. An hour past the caves we find the wind again, but it doesn’t last long. Once it stops we get to enjoy a warm evening. Warm enough that we open the windows in the tent for the first time in what feels like forever. In reality, its been a little over a month, so we’re excited.
It’s finally happened…Our inverter has died. Which means we have no internet…So we need to fix this ASAP. Luckily, this inverter has been dying slowly for almost a year, so we’ve been dragging a replacement around for a very long time. The weather is still holding, and being camped on a dry river rock bank means we can do this job without much mess. It takes us about two hours, but we get everything swapped, wired up, and we are back in business! Our reward is pizza for dinner at a place with amazing reviews. It’s crust has an interesting texture, but overall, decent pie. As we continue down the road we transition from dirt to pavement. Potential camp #1 is abandoned. Like 80’s horror movie summer camp, abandoned. Obviously this is a no. Our second choice is kind of a meadow, kind of someone’s driveway, but its late and this will have to do.
It freezes overnight! The frost on the ground catches us by surprise in the morning. Today is resupply day in the biggest town along our route, and sort of the half way point. We start with the best breakfast sandwiches we have had in as long as we can remember before hitting the big grocery store. An hour or so later we have arrived at another gorgeous riverside camp spot where the weather is a perfect 70 degrees and there is almost no wind. But before we arrive at camp, we take a detour into Parque Nacional Queulat to see Mirador Ventisquero Colgante. It’s a giant waterfall coming from the bottom of a hanging glacier at the end of a very scenic valley. The main trail is closed, so we hike two smaller trails to get some views.
We sleep late, easing into the morning. Then we have a chilly bath with the river water, but the sun helps. We spend so long easing into our day that its time for late lunch/early dinner when we get to the next town. More pizza! Next we do a small backtrack to try and get close to another gigantic hanging glacier we see from the road. Unfortunately, this one is at the end of a very long and steep hike, they wont let us start until tomorrow, and the weather is supposed to be really terrible tomorrow. The answer is no. While not as picturesque as our riverside camps, the trailhead parking lot we end up in does have one huge advantage: Garbage cans!! Public garbage’s are few and far between in Chile, doubly so in parks, so this is very exciting.
The rain pummels us overnight, but at least there is no wind. it’s still raining when we wake up, so we try to wait it out. Putting away a wet tent doesn’t set you up for a good next night…Our break comes, so it’s tent drying towel to the rescue as quickly as possible because our break doesn’t last long. There are two ferries in front of us, and as is our way, we do no checking on the schedule before showing up. There is a 12:30pm and an 8:00pm, so we are extremely excited to make it onto the 12:30pm. The ferries are separated by ten kilometers of highway. Once we reach the second shore, we drive the coastline until we find a nice spot to camp on the beach for the night.
The weather is back to perfection this morning. And we get dolphins! There are several small dolphins swimming in the very shallow water right in front of us. We get to watch them feed, at least we think that’s what they’re doing, for a good hour. There are also a lot of sea birds that do not like the drone. This is our last day on the Carretera Austral, and we have one final ferry between us and the city of Puerto Montt, the unofficial end. We are running low on cash, and the card machine on this ferry is broken. When the attendant comes by to load us, we explain the situation, and he tells us its no problem, just pay what we can. Awesome!
We visit another extremely giant grocery store once we get into town. They have a cafe that’s serving Texas style brisket, and it is delicious. Our plan is to stay indoors, but the hotel we picked out didn’t have any rooms, so we took that as a sign. Puerto Montt and its suburbs spread for a very long ways and we spend the rest of the day trying, unsuccessfully, to leave town. We finally settle in a spot tucked into the back of a lake front city park. Camping in towns and cities is not a thing we like to do, but sometimes this is just what how it goes.
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