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Published: February 8th 2008
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Blue in the sunshine..
.. But grey and miserable in the drizzle! I took advantage of half an hour of sunlight to capture the colours of the Pacific Ocean in Chaiten. After our fantastic time in Southern Patagonia, it was time to make the looong journey north to the Lakes District. There's not a whole lot in between these two regions so we decided to take the 'scenic route' to break up the long journey. We would otherwise have been face with a 24-hr plus bus trip, so the scenic route sounded like a good idea at the time. Patience is a virtue, be prepared for a loooong story here...
The first leg of the trip involved the bus trip from El Chalten to Los Antiguos. The bus trip was long and relatively uneventful, save for the french traveller who was humped by a llama at our lunch stop. I was lucky enough to have my camera ready and I took a video that I thought only appeared on YouTube. The trip was otherwise just endless pampas grass and bumpy roads. Oh, and we loved the sticker on the bus that proclaimed 'DO NOT TAKE YOUR SHOES OFF'. The bus company had obviously learned the hard way that sometimes travellers just don't make it to the laundry often enough.
We arrived quite late in the night in Los Antiguos and
The culprit
This particular alpaca was nasty but inquisitive. Too bad for the tourist he tried to hump. struggled to find suitable accomodation. We eventually found an overpriced hotel that at least had hot water. In the morning we had planned to take the ferry accross the lake to continue north through Chile, but after taking the transfer across the border to Chile Chico we found out that the ferry wasn't due to depart for another two days. We didn't want to be stuck in a small and boring place for that long, so we elected to take the bus north to Coyhaique instead. So we crossed the border back to Argentina, much to the amusement of the border officials who had searched our bags only an hour previously! We continued up to Coyhaique from there, through the most wonderfully scenic route. We hardly saw another car or bus on the road, and the border crossing to get back into Chile was the local police station.
Coyhaique is quite a nice town, large enough to have enough services but small enough to still feel quite safe and innocent. However as nice as the town was, we had to keep moving to make sure we kept to our timetable, plus our accommodation was the worst we'd experience on
The Fu
Except we didn't know it was the Fu until that night! our trip so far and we were keen to get out! We were disappointed to learn that the buses along the Carretera Austral are dreadfully integrated, if at all. Along with our previous ferry timetable blunder, at each stop from here until Barriloche we were faced with two- or three-day waits between buses.
After an uneventful day in Coyhaique we continued north to Chaitén, an even smaller and more uneventful town, in some of the worst weather of the trip - rain and drizzle. The roads through the Andes in this part of Chile are spectacular, a bit dicey in places and very scenic. We were unfortunately positioned within our small bus to Chaitén so that we could see the speeds that our driver was achieving throughout the trip... but unlike most other journeys we were frustrated about how slow he was going! On quite reasonable straight stretches he was struggling to reach speeds over 45km/h, distracted constantly by the eyelash-fluttering and knee-touching going on with his front-seat passenger, the daughter of the owner of the bus company. We had many scheduled and unscheduled stops on that particular bus ride and became friendly with the other travellers on our
Every town has one..
The lovely plaza in Futaleufu bus, Rob and Marta from the UK, and Paul from Scotland. We had originally planned to stay at the tiny town at the intersection to Futaleufú (Villa Santa) but were horrified at the state of the only accommodation in town and ran to catch the bus that had just dropped us off. Luckily we caught it and kept going to Chaitén
Chaitén was a nice, very small town, albeit quite boring after a few hours. We went out for a fantastic pizza dinner at an unexpectedly good restaurant on the first night, and on our last day before catching the bus we met the town's keenest entrepreneur at lunch in his restaurant. He was offering us everything from tours to the nearby hot springs to cheap home brew. After a few days stuck in the tiny town of Chaitén, we kept going north to Futaleufú, South America's premier white-water rafting region. Pete had been excited about rafting for months so there was no way we were planning to miss this place, despite being behind on our schedule.
We boarded the bus in Chaitén and were glad to find some of our friends from the previous trip on the bus as well! We also met another couple, Anne and Thiago from Germany and Brazil respectively. We all ended up in Futaleufú late in the afternoon. We had booked a room at the lovely homely Posada Ely, while the others found a cabaña to share on the other side of town. Pete scouted out one or two of the tour agencies around town to see if he could go rafting, but they would not run tours unless he could get a group together. When we met up the next day with our new friends we were disappointed to learn that there were no buses north for four days. Given that we'd have to wait for at least a day, we tried again to book a rafting tour but were surprised to find them all closed. We later found out this was because two American travellers had hired a raft without a guide (silly!) then accidentally got swept up into the torrent of water that is the Rio Futaleufú. Some parts of the river are graded above five, so they were in serious danger. Most of the tour operators were out looking for them on the one day that we were there, so alas, Pete didn't get to do his rafting. We decided instead to go for a walk to see the Fú, but since the scale of the map was wrong, we crossed the river and didn't know it, then kept going for another two kilometres. We only found out that night when we spoke to some other travellers who had a better map! The Fú just didn't want to be found by us, obviously.
Despite not seeing the Fú properly, we were running behind schedule and needed to keep moving north. The owner of our hostel, Betty, told us she knew someone who had a bus and would ferry us across the border. This sounded much better than waiting another three days for a bus, so we rounded up our travelling friends and went to see the bus driver, Patricio. He said he would do it the 'unofficial' way, since it would take 48 hours to lodge the paperwork. He said it wouldn't be any trouble, and we took his word for it! Big mistake.....
We turned up the next morning on time at 10am and met our bus driver. He gave us some very specific instructions: You don't know me, and don't cross the border until I have already gone through and am waiting on the other side. Luckily enough the Chilean officials are not fussed with official-looking paperwork and bribery, but the Argentinian border officials were a different story.
We were hassled by the Argentinian border officials after we had crossed and our driver was taken off to pay a bribe (we assume). So we were left inside the Argentinian border 35km from the nearest town. The border officials then caught up with us and said they would try and send a car. So a guy in a ute turned up and we climbed in the back, only to find that the original bus driver had called two taxis for us and they were miffed that they didn't get their fare.. so they tried to report us to the police who then stopped us at the next town and took our passports for checking. We were going to stay in the first town we arrived in but we re-evaluated and thought it best to keep going as far from there as possible! So now ended up in the delightful hippie town of El Bolsón and enjoyed organic vegetables and handmade chocolates. We ended up staying there for a bit to soak up the change of pace and great food.
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