Archive for November, 2012
Carretera Day 8: Tortel to Paso Roballo
We wake up to the continued sound of heavy rain and debate going further down the Carretera. On the one hand, we are only 100 kilometers and one ferry ride away from the end of the road in Villa O’Higgins. On the other hand, every kilometer past Cochrane, where you access the most southern pass accessible by car, is a kilometer we have to backtrack to move on. The heavy rain pelting down on our roof that we know will continue in Villa O’Higgins but will not make it east past the Andes tips the scale. We decide to drive north and take Paso R...
Carretera Day 7: Los Ñadis to Tortel
After about ten minutes back on the main road we spot our Slovakian friends, as we had predicted, and pick them up. They are happy to see us. We ride together the rest of the way to Tortel as we swap stories about our respective countries and about life on the road. Tortel is a small seaport at the end of a network of fjords that has only been accessible by road since 2003. For this reason the entire place has been set up as a pedestrian city, built into cliffs above the ocean connected by a series of wooden walkways and is sometimes referre...
Carretera Day 6: Puerto Río Tranquilo to Los Ñadis
After a mellow night we wake up early, make breakfast, and are sitting with the door open when a little girl appears asking if we have “monea.” She belongs to a family in a red truck that seem unworried about her talking to foreign strangers in a van. At first we play dumb tourists and explain to her that we only speak some Spanish and don’t know that word. She clarifies: “dinero.” “Porque tu necesitas dinero?” we ask. (why do you need money?) She looks at us for a minute, as if she’d never thought this through. “Gal...