Rios and Rapids!
We head to Puerto Bertrand armed with info that this town was a good spot for whitewater rafting. Bertrand lies on the Rio Baker, which is the most voluminous river in Chile at 900 m3/second. It is fed by glacier melt and you can drink directly from the river.
A number of years ago, the government planned a series of hydro-electric dams along the Rio Baker to modernize the electrical grid in this part of Patagonia. The project faced a massive opposition of local habitants and environmental groups, eventually forcing the cancellation of the work. From Wikipedia, few rivers this large in the world remain undammed and free flowing.
En route, we pass a beautiful suspension bridge framing a postcard view on the lake and fishermen below catching large salmon. Andrew can’t resist the temptation for a swim in the sun despite the cold water temperature!
After a nice break, we continue to Puerto Bertrand and locate a rafting guide for an afternoon trip. We find a spot on the river in a food bus for a quick bite before hitting the water.
Our friends want to push on and get to the next “major” town of Cochrane to enjoy an extra zero day so we split and arrange a rendezvous point for the next day.
We join a Chilean family on our raft and head down the river alone, no other boats on the river. Everyone is very nice and we get to practice our Spanish words for left, right, forward, backwards, stop and dive inside the boat (Piso!)
Cannonball!
The guides provide us with coffee and cookies after the trip and we saddle up to find a wild camping spot about 10 km outside of town. We arrive and find a beautiful spot but it’s about 300m above the river with no accessible water nearby. As we only have about 1/2 a bottle of water left, we scan iOverlander for the next possible spot which would get us at river level.
We see an interesting spot 8km ahead on a side road off Ruta 7 which requires some route finding through the trees to actually find the river. A pretty precarious drop down rutted double track brings us to the shore and fears of the painful hike a bike that will await us the next morning.
But the spot is magical. A few locals are fishing nearby and the setting is so peaceful. And then, Anne looks in the distance downstream and asks if she sees Lara. I reply not possible, they are in Cochrane tonight and it’s someone with a similar color shirt. But then, that person starts waving their arms and running towards us and Angus suddenly appears behind us out of the woods. Somehow, we have all ended up at the same camping spot well off the main road and no clue the intention of the others. We can’t even calculate the odds of this occurrence!
But we are super happy for our family to be reunited and enjoy a beautiful sunset and sunrise together!
The next morning starts our push together to Cochrane, where we have an Airbnb awaiting us for our first real zero day since we started the ride about three weeks ago. Everyone is super excited but very fatigued. However, we have to cycle through the Park National Patagonia involving rough dirt roads and lots of climbing. One thing motivating us is the 10km of paved road passing through Cochrane for a little relief on our tired arms and butts.
On the way, we see our first guanacos, a type of llama. They are curious as we approach and then stay close to the road as we pass, not worried about our presence.
We finally arrive in Cochrane and plop down for a day of convalescing, eating non-stop and enjoying movie night with “Back to the Future” which Lara had not seen. Now she really wants to watch the sequel!
Next up, a side diversion off the Carretera to the village of Tortel!