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. 

Chile Chico

We made a concerted effort to get up early on Monday and left the campground at Perito Moreno in Argentina by 8:30. The staff in the office were as surly as ever when Layne went in to pay our seven dollars for our fourth night in town. I was looking forward to crossing the border thirty miles to the west. Southern Argentina has been a disappointment with not terribly friendly people and astronomically high prices and the sense of a country stalled out economically. Sant Cruz province is one of the poorest in the country and it shows. 

Despite the drawbacks we liked Perito Moreno and were glad we had stayed a bit and explored what it had to offer. I have high hopes that were one to return in a year Argentina might be getting properly back on its feet to offer some optimism to people who have been suffering a lot of cuts. 

The US is entering a period of uncertainty that looks bizarre to me as the economy at home seemed to be doing well and if a period of austerity is to be inaugurated to give the US the same treatment as Argentina is getting I’ll be glad to not be there. I don’t think Americans are in the mood to be cut back economically but we shall see. I hope things will get better for everyone in the years ahead but I will miss the peace and quiet of the Biden years. 

I was glad to be leaving behind the vast desert steppes, the sweeping winds and the communities in decrepitude. The hope is Chile’s Southern Highway will be as scenic as promised as it winds through the fjords and mountains ahead. 

By ten o’clock we had joined the line at the back of the informal parking lot to exit Argentina. We parked, gathered our documents for us, GANNET2 and Rusty walked to the border post. The officials were cheerful and exchanged banter about working on a Monday morning and I made a play of being retired.  I guess if you still have a job in Argentina you can still flash the lighthearted humor they are famous for and the exit was a pleasure. 

A mile up the road we came to the change of asphalt, in this case on the Chilean side the surface wasn’t nearly as smooth as the Argentine… but it was even offer to me as the border wasn’t actually the nearby river Rio Chico, but simply a line in the dirt. 

We crossed the bridge and there ahead we found the Chilean border post beyond the river. 

You park somewhere in the line and walk to the building with your documents. You bring a passport each, the registration for the vehicle, driver license for the driver and Rusty’s 60 day permit from Chile’s agricultural authorities. And then you get in line. 

The lines can be long but they seem to evaporate fast enough and in the end we didn’t about an hour leaving Argentina and entering Chile. The Chileans have an electronic customs declaration form where you use a QR code to download a declaration form. Yes we have bananas and a dog. No hiding Rusty, who does not leave the van while we do this stuff. 

We chat and joke our way through and we saw the payoff outside. This Dutch couple radiated irritation with us and the officials and the process. They ended up snorting their Gouota for inspection. Layne handed over our fruits and vegetables, showed them our fridge and our dog food ( why? No idea) and we left all smiles and waves. 

The town of Child Chico was just ahead and now we had to get some fresh food. 

The museum we planned to visit is closed Sunday and Monday so you are spared another history tour. 

The town is pretty enough but not special. 

We found  fruit stand and it was fun to be back in Chile. The clerk was a bright spark and engaged us in conversation. It was noticed after Argentina and we enjoyed telling our story. 

Layne cruised two local supermarkets but she didn’t enjoy it too much. She sort of got what she was looking for but we aren’t going to see any big towns for a while. 



Lunch wasn’t great and we had no lake view as we had hoped but I stepped out into the ferry dock to get a picture. We had thought about crossing the lake but there is one ferry a day at some ridiculously early hour. It wasn’t worth waiting around for the next two and a half hour ride on Tuesday. 

Check that splendid van out. 

I had a local beer…

…and pork loin. It did the job but it wasn’t delicious. Layne’s cod was okay but not very flavorful. 

We drove on. It was going to be a hell of a drive, 70 gravel miles west to the famed Carretera Austral -the southern highway. But getting to the gravel highway was pretty spectacular.