We woke up early in the morning and left with Carlos, Alejandrina, Antonino and Akiva the dog to drive along the "Carretera Austral" from Coyhaique to Chaitén.
This road is more interesting than you would imagine, with plenty of viewpoints, treks and amazing things along the way. The drive is over 500kms, and we took the entire day to do it.
The first place we stopped at was the waterfall La Virgen, beautiful landscape which also carries religious meaning. At this place people stop to pray to the Virgin, whose's statue is in a shed by the waterfall.
We stopped later on at a viewpoint of Rio Cisnes Valley, a small village built by the sides of a small river. These stops were the short stops we did before the day started getting unusual.
We got some chocolate at a Punto on the way, a petrol station that was still open during Christmas and we carried on to the Enchanted forest (el bosque encantado), which did look like the setting of a Disney film: everywhere I turned everything was green only cut by small streams of water along the way and the path made with tree stumps and wooden bridges. There's a trek of 2.5 hours to a glacier, but we had to leave the dog in the car so we only did 30 minutes in and went back.
We took the car to go into the Queulat national park (5.000 pp for foreigners) and again, the dog was not allowed in, so Carlos stayed outside with the car and we walked to a lake where we could see the glacier and the waterfall made by the melting of it. The viewpoint we stopped at had a boat ride you could take for 5.000 pesos per person, but we didn't take it, we simply took pictures on the pier where the boat was meant to stop at.
Again, the Queulat park has treks to see the glacier, but none of them stop too close to it. We went back without walking any further from the lake and met Carlos at the parking.
From here the day started turning odd. For a start we managed to find a restaurant open at Christmas, we were the only customers of this old couple that were serving food in Puyuhuapi. We had ice cream after lunch and went to the shore where some children were bathing in what finally was an entry of the Pacific ocean. This small port also had tsunami warning signs, and it is the very first time I see a warning of that type which all of a sudden made me think about the possibility.
After the stop at Puyuhuapi we got in the car and drove to Chaitén, we thought the day was over, it had been fun, full of adventures and a little bit surprising too, but it had only started to get strange. On the way we had to avoid flocks of sheep and cattle and I forgot to mention that all the way we had hitchhikers trying to get a ride with us, unfortunately we had to do the "full car" hand sign every time. But when we were near Chaitén, we had to stop. An old man's car had broken down so we stopped to see if we could help him. We had to pull the car but seeing that the car wasn't responding to the driver we ended up taking his car with us all the way to Chaitén (15kms). When we got off, the old man paid Carlos with a box full of avocados (apparently they are expensive in Chile) and they pushed the car into the man's house, who by the way, owned a discotheque.
We left the man at his place after receiving advice of where to stay and how to get boat tickets to leave Chaitén going north and walked around the town for a while, which compared to the rest of Patagonia was the ugly duckling, as a volcano erupted recently and the area is covered in ashes, many houses burnt to the ground and even the market is abandoned.
It turned dark and we went to a hostel which cost 10.000 pesos per person and we had a private room and breakfast included. And here, Carlos saw one of his patients from Coyhaique (he is a dentist) who was heading north to Puerto Montt and agreed to take me and Oli the next day!
It was an unusual Christmas, one full of crazy and funny stories we will remember forever. It only made it more amazing that we were able to spend it with a wonderful family. If you're of the ones that believes in Christmas miracles, I think you'll like this one.
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