Highway 265

We knew this was coming and we were braced for it. We have to drive 200 miles of gravel to see some marble caves in Puerto Sanchez,Chile. Let the rattling dust clouds begin. 

To give you a rough idea where we are, we are quite far south but no longer in the land of the puffy jacket and freezing cold nights. Daytime highs near 70s with cool brisk nights and no insects. Quite pleasant. 

This is Highway 265 driving west from Chile Chico into the Andes. At our backs was the vast Argentine Patagonian steppe. 

Oh and we picked up two economics majors working in finance in Santiago the capital, on a ten day vacation backpacking their country. We wondered if they would regret our slow pace on gravel but they had been waiting three hours for a ride so they were quite happy. 

This map shows Highway 265 running alongside what Chileans call Lake Carrera but which, at the border becomes Lake Buenos Aires. The line does not give any hint of the state of the road struggling to get through some astonishingly spectacular  scenery. We took about six hours to drive the 80 miles marked in red. 

There was a surprising stretch of a few miles of crappy forgotten asphalt. 

I enjoyed it while we had it. 

And then back to this, a mixture of smooth graded gravel, pot holes and appalling washboard. Washboard is a series of parallel ridges in the gravel that shake your car like nothing you’ve driven. It’s caused by vehicles driving too fast in the dirt and the only way to smooth washboard out is to drive fifty miles an hour. Good luck; I’m not doing that. 

So we crawl, some at 10 mph but much of this at a noisy twenty. The dust was dreadful. 

Barely visible washboard: 

Chile does show signs of maintaining this road here and there, protective walls, lots of idiot signs “danger ahead” “suggested speed 24 mph” and so forth. And my favorite “no passing zone.”

Imagine this ever in real life. This is the Andes in Patagonia. We were about 1500 feet above sea level. 

We only met one bus. Chileans generally are wealthy enough to afford far more cars per capita than other Latin American countries. One bus head on, on this road was plenty.  

“Danger in 300 meters.”  No duh. 

Hills are steeper than they appear in photographs. And roads feel narrower than they appear to the naked eye. 

I’d love to drive this in the rain. 

Unlike in Argentina, in remotest Chile we were accompanied by power poles. 

He yielded to the big van. Good man. 

Please dear god no oncoming traffic here. 

Coffee break! 

Our hitch hikers insisted we share some Chilean snacks. It’s like we weren’t stuffed. This is a Chilean sopapilla, thick crusty fried pastry with cheese inside. A light snack…

And this is a completo: a hot dog with guacamole and mayo and hot sauce. We resisted this in our previous visit but our resistance is broken. It’s delicious. If it’s made with meat it’s called Ass. They choked laughing when I explained why I hadn’t tried food called ass. 

Madam has lived here all her life and has no desire to see the world.  Aside from the scenery this was the best party of this road which she assured me happily is not going to get paved.  Rusty behaved like an ass with their dog as usual. A happy young puppy just wanted a friend ever so briefly. 

The government is paving some of the steeper bits probably to prevent death and chaos in icy season. 

Puerto Gradal about five miles from the Carretera Austral (southern highway). 

A pleasant little town on the water. 

With a campground. They were grateful to be dropped off at the door but their back packs were huge and the road had exhausted us all. 

Ugo is said to be a character in the iOverlander entry for this campground. He is. 

Back to the dust. 

This road you’ve never heard of has mythic proportions in the overlanding community. It was built on the orders of the dictator Pinochet in the 1980s to connect the isolated communities in the fjords south of Puerto Montt. All but the southern section is now paved though ferries can get filled up during summer vacation traffic so you can get delayed where ferries connect the road. We are going north so pavement resumes for us 100 miles north at Cerro Castillo and there seems to be space for us to take a ferry back to Isla Chiloé which we would like to explore further before reaching Puerto Montt. 

Nighty night. More tomorrow. Ass for dinner? Not on your life.