October 26, Day 20: Coyhaique to Villa Mañihuales
Got a route choice today. Stay on the Carreterra Austral, or take another quicker route? The Carreterra Austral option includes a good 40km of gravel, and the estimate is 6 hours. The alternate is all asphalt and 5 hours. I decided to take the gravel option: I've got the time, it should mean less traffic, and as it's more remote the views should be better.
Since it was gravel and slower I’d have expected all navigation apps to send traffic the other way: but there was still a surprising amount of traffic passing by. A few stock trucks with trailers - they gave me a lot of space when passing, and I also moved far over, deep in the gravel at the edge of the road. Regular utes. A few small delivery trucks. The road was wide but the best surface for cycling is where the cars go so I had to keep an ear open and slide over to the shoulder when I heard something coming. Everyone was going slow so it was all very low-key.
The scenery was spectacular. The road did a fair amount of climbing up front - and climbs on gravel aren't that much fun, especially if the surface is large stones - but after that it was high up and there were some great views. The Carreterra Austral is threading its way up the Andes, surrounded by mountains until close to the end.
It's far enough north that everything is green, so all the mountains are covered in trees and there's grass trying to grow on any unattended spot. Definitely an improvement over the Patagonian desert.
From left to right: the gravel. Surrounded by the Andes! Back on a good road, not going to stop for a selfie. The Carretera Austral. Turned back into gravel, and ran between those two mountains.
Passed two cyclists today, heading the other way - they were going up a gravel hill and I was going down, we were going about the same speed.
The gravel surfaces were not bad - much better than the Ruta 7 section in Argentina, where a moment's inattention could mean running into deep loose gravel, floating a wheel and dropping the bike. Here it never got that bad, there were ridges of small stones around, but they weren't high or big enough to make it exciting. There were some spots where the stones were baked into the surface and it was so rough I had to go slow. But on the whole I was able to make good progress, and occasionally there were sections where it had been flattened and I could pick up the pace. In the middle is a village called Villa Ortega and for a bit the road changed to concrete slabs - I happily zoomed along at at least 20km/h and was very sad when it switched back to gravel.
The headwind showed up and made a nuisance of itself, as usual. The wind map shows there's going to be a northwester causing trouble for the next few days. Drop a gear. Try not to complain. Be grateful it's not Patagonian.
The route cruises up the side of an alluvial valley, some nice views of the overlapping mountains into the distance. I find a location where there's a nice symmetrical view of a distant mountain, and I'm taking a few different pictures to get some framing options when an SUV stops opposite and someone gets out with a selfie stick - presumably with the same idea. I leave him to it, but I wish I'd asked him to take my picture before I go, I've had enough of selfies.
From left to right: more scenes of the road going off to the horizon. That symmetrical image I mentioned. The roads have rejoined, nearly done. Unexpected rock formation just outside town. This is the shelf has the leaves for maté, to show how popular it is here.
The route is vaguely following the contour, and there's a big u-bend when it goes into a side gully and over a bridge. And then it joins the asphalt road, merging with that alternate route I didn't take. The surface is great and there's a generous half-meter of asphalt shoulder so I can get up into the high gears. More cyclists on the other side, I've now seen five today. Komoot directs me down a sideroad ... which seems dubious, is this a choice I want to take? It is, because I've arrived in Villa Mañihuales and this route avoids the main road.
So no complaints about the choice to take the gravel route today. I didn't break anything on the bike, arrived in good time, and saw a lot of spectacular views. There's a bit more ahead on the Carreterra Austral - for a major backbone route, there's a surprising amount of gravel sections.
