After a great night with amazing stars in the sky we packed up and headed north 310 km for Chaiten. The first 60 km was paved and then there was pretty good gravel for a bit.
Several others had told us how bad the 260 km of gravel road was, especially in the construction zone. The worst part initially was the almost one lane road up and over the mountain, which combined with steep switch back the oncoming traffic including busses and trucks were taking over the road and at very high speed. It’s a wonder none of us had a head on in one of the corners. There were some patches of deeper gravel and some pretty dusty sections. There were some intermittent bits of pavement a few km long, including a closed section we managed to ride for a km or so. The worst was the last 75 km of gravel in the construction where there were sections with deep large rocks. Overall it was a long and at times challenging day, but not as bad as we had expected.
Finally we celebrated the end of the gravel at Puerto Cárdens and aired up the tires again. This left about 70 km left to Chaiten, where arrived bagged and hungry.
The town of Chaiten was evacuated in 2009 when the nearby volcano erupted for the first time in 9000 years. The town was then completely flooded because the ash blocked the rivers. Much of the town had not been rebuilt. There are only 900 of the 4000 inhabitants left here.
This guy started walking with me in town and followed me all over the beach to the sea and back.
One of the main reasons we picked the cabanas to stay in was they had ESPN to watch the Gold medal hockey game.
