After Patagonia National Park, it was time to head back north a bit towards Lago General Carrera. The Carretera Austral does go farther south, past Caleta Tortel the town on stilts, and all the way to Villa O'Higgins where it dead ends. But, the road gets much rougher, and there is no way out of there other than by boat without serious backtracking. So, we decided to call it quits on the Carretera Austral in Cochrane; maybe we'll do the rest another trip. Instead, we would be taking Ruta 265 along the southern edge of Lago General Carrera to eventually cross the border into Argentina. From there, we'd be going much further south, all the way to Puerto Natales. First though, we stayed another night back along the Rio Baker on our way back north.
We then continued our drive north. It's amazing how when you drive the Carretera Austral in the opposite direction, it feels like an entirely new drive. So many things you didn't see well the first time.
We spent one night in the town of Puerto Guadal, which is the first town along Highway 265. Around the corner of the lake is Puerto Rio Tranquilo, the town where we stayed to do our Marble Cave boat tour. That town felt pretty touristy. This one, however, felt like where the locals live to then go work in Puerto Rio Tranquilo. Much quieter. Mas tranquilo. We got to park right alongside the lake, where there was a nice dock that Drew took advantage of.
In the morning, a local lady showed up at the dock with 8 or 9 dogs, all hers, including a tiny salchicha puppy. Oh my heart!
Highway 265 has a section in the middle called the Paso Las Llaves, aka the Key Pass, which is super narrow and cut into rocky cliffs high above the lake. This section of road wasn't completed until 1991! So until then, all traffic from one side of the lake to the other was done on foot or by boat. Going slow it was totally fine. There were a couple of spots where, with our big vans, if we had met someone else, someone would be reversing on some tricky terrain. But luckily that never happened for us. The views along the lake were amazing. It was probably the most scenic drive on the whole trip. Driving the opposite direction from Argentina to Chile would be even better, as you'd get to stare at the Chilean Andes the entire time. If this area wasn't so remote (5 hours over a mountain pass to the nearest airport), we'd find a way to get a vacation home down here. Who knows, maybe we still will. The remoteness is part of what makes it so pristine, right?
We stopped in Chile Chico which is the town right before the Argentinian border to relax for two days. The first night, we camped peacefully right next to the lake, which was a great spot for the boys to play. The second night, we got woken up at 11:30pm by flashing police lights and a knock knock on the camper door saying we couldn't camp there. They actually weren't allowing anyone to camp anywhere within the city limits of Chile Chico, despite there being no signs saying it was outlawed. So a whole sleepy caravan of campers led by the police themselves made our way from 3 or 4 different spots in town up to this sad parking lot just outside the city limits. This was the first time this entire trip where this has happened, and nothing on iOverlander indicated a past history of this. Maybe the citizens of Chile Chico were finally sick of seeing campers everywhere? Who knows. Not the best night of sleep, but at least we didn't get a ticket.
The border crossing the next day went smoothish. Our situation is certainly more complicated than most, as Drew's name is technically on both camper vans, and the second van is technically from Mexico and can only be within Chile for 90 days at a time. So lots of permits to renew every time we cross the border. Drew assumed since he was going to be there in person that he didn't need any special paperwork authorizing Grandpa to drive one of the vans. But, a Chilean border official stopped us immediately and recommended we get a notarized form giving Grandpa this permission. So we drove back to Chile Chico, luckily it was close, and found a notary, who was luckily available, and got the extra documents we needed within an hour. Second try was a success. We are going to be crossing the border 3 more times, so it was good we were able to get our ducks in a row here. Originally we were considering crossing the border at a much more remote location, and looking back, that would have been a terrible mistake, as we would have been denied and then needed to back track several hours to the closest big town. Thank goodness we didn't try that. Onwards!
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