4-3-10 Carretera Austral, Chile

We caught an overnight ferry from the town of Puerto Montt, Chile to the ghost town of Chaiten where we started riding the Carretera Austral. This is a famous highway along the coast of Chile that is about 500 miles long but only serves around 100,000 people. It is said to be very similar to Alaska in both population density, the type of people, and the scenery.


The ferry ride wasn’t that bad. Airplane style seating. We were cramped for half the night then a lot of people got off somewhere so Mark and I sprawled out and fell asleep. We woke up the next morning early and took a few pictures when the light was good then went back to sleep. We were later woken up and told that we had to leave as we were in port and our bikes were the last onboard and thus were the first to get off.

The town of Chaiten was eerie. It was condemned by the government after a volcano erupted in 2008 which still has a huge plume of steam and smoke coming out the top of it. The volcanic ash released during the eruption and subsequent pyroclastic flows diverted a river through the center of town and deposited an enormous amount of sediment in their little bay.

We hit dirt about 20 miles outside of town and quickly met Frank, a guy from Papua New Guinnea who has been riding a 2001 BMW F650GS for 8 years around the world. Yikes. He told us of 3 Kiwi guys our age who were further on down the road that we might see.

There aren’t regular stores out here for the most part, most stores are not much more than a living room or front porch of a family’s home. We stopped at one that had a little wooden sign saying, “PAN” and sure enough, an old lady inside had a large basket of fresh bread, basically the size of hamburger buns. We bought a dozen. I asked her if she had any firewood we could buy as everything seemed to be pretty well soaked. She went out back and filled a garbage bag full of freshly split dry wood and dragged it out to us before charging us about a dollar which we were happy to pay. I lashed on the pile of wood to my bike and we set off down the road again in search of a campsite.

Forty minutes later we came upon another little store built onto a home which advertised hot coffee so we stopped, but they didn’t have any coffee. They did have some beer and eggs which we gladly took off the lady's hands. We tucked the eggs into Marks luggage carefully and he then jammed the 6-pack into the chest of his motorcycle jacket as we wouldn’t be going far.

A few more miles down the dirt road I slowed down to look at a potential campsite when I hit a bump that jarred loose a piece of wood from my bike. It fell in the road directly in the path of Mark who hit it with his front tire, jumpin the bike into the air which and then lost his balance and fell off the left side of the bike, landing on his chest. It would have been an unremarkable crash except for the beer he had tucked in his jacket. He let out some loud moans while thrashing around in the dirt, unzipped his jacket and dumped the beers onto the road. No broken ribs, beers or eggs.

There weren’t many spots available for camping as much of it seemed to be fenced off with old wire and logs to keep the cattle in. We did, however, find a little spot near a bridge that wasn’t fenced off. We jumped the bikes off the road and tucked them into some trees and set up our ‘Gangster Camp’ as Mark calls it. It seems to be a somewhat fitting name as we have very little in the way of traditional camping equipment. We’ve got sleeping bags and pads which are a luxury. For a tent we have a piece of plastic we bought back in Argentina. Not a tarp, even, just a big piece of plastic and a length of rope. Cooking is done in various tin cans, the best of which I’ve bent into somewhat of a tea pot. Bowls have been fashioned out of tuna cans. Beer cans are also used widely in gangster camp for cooking operations as there often times seem to be empty ones around. Wine glasses are skillfully made from ripping off the top of a can as well. Oh the class! Our whole mess kit goes in a plastic bag which I tie onto the back of my bike which swings around and jingles quite a bit on the bumps.

I also forgot to mention the hot water heater I’ve created for the bike. It all goes back to when I was sick on the catamaran in the Caribbean. To occupy myself while sick I thought-up a little contraption to capture the heat from the right exhaust header of the bike. It is now finished after gathering parts from five countries. The basic concept is that I have a water reservoir, about 1.5 liters, that has two copper tubes coming out the bottom of it. One tube is short, about 8” and leads directly to a valve. The other hose is about 8 feet long and leads to my exhaust header which it is wrapped around perhaps a dozen times before running to the valve as well. When the reservoir is filled and the bike is running, the hot water will naturally rise up out of the coils around the header as cold water drops down towards the valve where it comes in contact with the hot pipe and is thus heated and rises back into the can. Starting with a cold bike and cold water I can scald my finger in less than 10 minutes. Might need to sell this little contraption to BMW for release on their 2012 models.

Maybe 4 cars passed us the rest of the evening. Had some good chorizos, red wine and bread tonight.

The weather was superb, couldn’t have been better. Cool in the shade and warm in the sun with clear skies which seem to be coveted here. The road is in pretty good shape which we were happy about as we really had no idea what we were getting into. The sun is always low in the sky which makes riding on dirt easier. The low sun casts shadows of even the slightest undulations and irregularities in the road which alert us to potential hazards. The shadows of tire tracks running parallel with the road are the most disconcerting as they are a sign of sand or silt. Likewise washboards are easily seen as are the random rogue rocks that stick up out of the path. With the sun directly overhead no shadows are cast which gives the same feeling of having flat light while skiing.

On account of the equally good weather this morning, April 4, we had a lazy start. I got the fire going again and we cooked up a two sausages and some scrambled eggs in a beer can that turned out fantastic. Also had some mate and chamomile tea as well as coffee and cappuccino. We like our hot beverages.

Around 11am we saw three yellow dirt bikes coming our way, it was the Kiwis that Frank had told us about. Great guys who we exchanged a lot of info with.

We hit the road about 1pm and rode for perhaps 20 minutes to the town of La Junta where we fueled up and ate some cheese, bananas, crouton-like crackers, coffee cookies, apples and trail mix. We also bought some 'CHILE PATAGONIA' stickers.