Carretera Austral, Chile (and Route 40 Argentina)

March 26 - April 2

Picture links:

http://picasaweb.google.com/lotanc/CarreteraAustral

The Carretera Austral is a beautiful, remote road in Chile going through Central and North Patagonia. The road is mostly very bad for driving (gravel road in which they seem to dig holes on purpose to make the driving more interesting).

We rented a jeep in El Calafate and returned it in Bariloche (it is very recommened to drive this with a jeep, although possible also with a private car) for a week and went to drive through the Carretera.

The team for this adventure included (from left to right in the picture): Oren´s cousin - Lior, Oren, Limor (a girl we met hiking in the Fitzroy) who joined us , and yours truly.

The drive started in Argentina via Route 40, which is also mostly a gravel road, and where the views are more of a desert then we went into Chile to drive through the Carretera Austral which has more of the green trees and mountains (also with a changing scenery during the drive). Driving this road directly is about 1800 km. Since we made several detours that are not on the way, we drove around 2300 km..

There are many highlights on the way. One of the biggest highlights is the road itself. It is a beautful road, where you see many Estancias (farms) on the way, different types of animals, great mountains, lagoons, rivers etc.

On the way we did several hikes (or just short stops) to see mountains, lakes, rainbows, a hanging glacier etc.

We camped in several places, and slept in hostels.

The way was not always easy:

But I have to say that we got along very well and had a great time..

Another highlight was rafting on the Futaleufu river.

This is what lonely planet has to say about this river:

¨To rafters and kayakers the 'Fu' or 'Futa' river has the same significance Las Leñas has for skiers, Rio has for beach bums, Aconcagua has for climbers, or Buenos Aires has for fashionistas - it's simply South America's best. The crystalline blue and impressively wild waters attract more rafting enthusiasts and kayak-toting travelers every year.¨

After reading this we had to go rafting on the Futa river. It included rapid levels 3,4, and 5 and it was really amazing!!

We also stopped at what used to be a small city called Chaiten, at the north part of the Carretera. This city is next to a volcano that erupted last year. Although nobody was hurt, the river that goes in the city brought a lot of ashes from the volcano to the river, and it covered the city. Today most of the city is covered in ashes (and nobody lives there). This was very interesting (and sad) to see:

We finished the Carretera and arrived at Bariloche on April 2nd (my birthday). Bariloche and its surrounding will be in the next post, but I will just say that it is a great place to celebrate a birthday. It is known for its steaks, ice-creams, and chocolates.

For my birthday dinner I had a 500 gram steak with mashed potatoes followed by 1/4 liter of ice-cream. After that they (the Carretera team together with Yoni Ofir and his brother whom we met in Bariloche) had to carry me (because I couldn´t really move) to a bar / club to continue the party..

This is my steak: