Jumped from Ushuaia up to Coyhaique, ok we took an 11 hour bus ride and a cheap flight (saving us about 26 hours on a bus!). From the ridiculously small airport, like a shed in a field, we caught a bus into town and headed for a nice sounding hostal on the edge of town. Met the owner and had a quick look round and it was cool – hammocks and bean bags in front of a big log fire and really chilled out looking, shame it was shut! So with some help from the owner we found another hostal to stay in then popped into town to buy dinner worried that we were now off season and it might be difficult to do anything or even move on in a hurry! We'd come to Coyhaigue to check out the Carretera Austral, a stretch of road that is surrounded by amazing scenery, supposedly some of the best in Chile and we wanted to see some of it before heading back further north. So for a few days we just trekked around taking it in and wishing that we had a car to actually explore it properly but we made do with our own feet and a few local buses. Having found out that the next long distance bus heading north wasn't coming through for about another 4 days we managed to book ourselves onto a cargo ferry that also takes a few passengers from a port an hour or so away. So we caught a local bus over to Puerto Aisen to spend a night before boarding the ferry. Puerto Aisen was a strange little town with nothing going on and hardly any people around, however we had to try about 4 hospedajes before finally managing to get a room and even then we had the feeling the owner, who wanted about an hour to get the room ready, had actually just kicked her children out of their room for the evening as we had to sleep in kids beds! Strangely the house also seemed to be full of Chilean fisherman who seemed to be struggling with their aim using toilets on dry land much to Shona’s bemusement – why didn’t we pack those wellie boots?!
Wanderlust for Life
Adventure travel around the world