Tuesday 11th, Oct.
Still with the rain pouring outside I packed up my freshly cleaned clothes and said goodbye to my hosts. I was in no rush and not planning to go far so I went for a coffee in the only open cafe. Queulat National Park was 20km along the inlet and there was a campsite near the entrance which I would aim for. The rain stopped at around lunchtime so I picked up some last supplies got back on the bike, fresh-legged and heavy with food. The road was cut along the bottom of the cliff on the eastern bank of the water, turning to dirt road for much of it. It was a short and easy ride, still set with the backdrop of snowy mountains and misty forests falling sharply to deep cold water.
After navigating pot-holes and muddy sections I reached a sign for a campsite and turned off into a field with a couple of low buildings and a scattering of wood-framed shacks. No-one was there so I picked a shack and got ready for the evening, it was almost 4pm. One side of the shack was open and had a shelf on which I could prepare food while facing the the Ventisquero Glacier in the distance. I could see the top of the v-shaped ice field before it disappeared below a ridge line. At one point in the evening it sounded like thunder in the mountains but I would I would later learn that it was the glacier shifting and cracking. While I was making a hot chocolate (actually chocolate flavoured protein powder I’d been given on Chiloé) a tiny lady in her eighties came over to tell me that there was bread and fresh eggs in the morning if wanted. She showed me the two panels of scrap wood outside the shack with which I was to cover the entrance with to keep the animals out. Chickens, turkeys, a dog, three cats and few sheep and a duck all roamed freely.
I collected some wood from the nearby field and made a little fire pit in the corner of the shack. The wood was wet so this kept me occupied for about an hour before it was hot enough to sustain itself. Once the fire was going I hung the bike from the edge of a rafter and spent some time fixing the gearing issue I’d been having. After trial and error for a while, breaking off occasionally to stack more wood to dry, I had the bike back to 100%. It was a perfect time to get this sorted as I’d be entering the mountain pass the next day.
Austral Spring 