Where: Chaiten to Puerto Río Tranquilo (distance ~650 km, ~+9000 m)
When: November 2017
How long: 2 weeks total (including flights from Europe and back), 9 biking days + 2 days margin.
Trip style: we biked ~ 6 hours (active pedaling time) per day, we camped (camping or wild camping), carried ~20 kg luggage each (inc. food & water).
Fitness level: to give an idea, I am a 50 kg-girl, I run a Half Marathon in 1h40, and bike up a 10km/+700m mountain pass in 1h (without luggage!). For me, the distances of this trip were demanding but OK. I do not think I could have been able to do longer distances comfortably. My partner is a relatively fit guy and could do these distances easy.
Getting there
We flew first to Santiago and then to Puerto Montt, where we arrived a Sunday evening. From there, we took the Monday evening ferry to Chaiten. This allowed a full day in Puerto Montt to get the bikes (they were stuck in Santiago and did not arrive with our flight, luckily they came in one of the first flights the following day!), get supplies, and pass by the bike shop to fix some minor issues from the flight. We arrived in Chaiten on Tuesday morning at 9h-ish and started straight away.
Route
Here is a detailed description of what we did each day, with distances and profiles. The days with the profile in grey, I had my garmin on (so distances, profile and times are more accurate). The days with the profile in red, my garmin was out of battery (profiles were generated by ridewithgps.com).
We arrived at Río Tranquilo by mid-day. We took a boat to visit the “marble caves” (“capillas de mármol”, there are small boats sailing constantly, no need to arrive at certain times). They are beautiful, try to visit them on a day with the sun up and shining, the color of the water is unbelievable!
The next day was our “extra day” in case we were running late on the route. You can do a day trip to visit Laguna San Rafael by boat, but that was >200$ per person (!!), or a trek on Glaciar Exploradores, but we did not feel like trekking on a glacier. So we took our bikes again (hehe), and biked up the Río Tranquilo, through the Lago Tranquilo, until the waterfall “La Nutria” (~25km away). Nice but not a must.
Getting back
From Puerto Río Tranquilo, we took a bus back to the crossing of Ruta 7 and the road to Balmaceda Airport on Friday morning (company: Águilas Patagónicas, they had one bus per day and transported our bikes for free). The bus leaves you at the crossroads; from there it is 15 km to the airport. We stayed in Balmaceda overnight (we again camped in the backyard of a very kind woman we met in a supermarket… we didn’t find any “official” accommodation option) and took a flight to Santiago on Saturday morning. As we did not have bike boxes with us, we used bike bags (TranZbag Pro, we carried them with us as emergency option). I still prefer the boxes but these bags don’t take much space and can save your return trip if it’s impossible to find boxes. We wrapped fragile parts in newspaper… and they survived. By the way, there’s no newspapers in Río Tranquilo, but we found one in the bus!
General information
It is a quite remote but popular destination. I would recommend doing it off season — November was great! There were not a lot of tourists, we overall met 8–10 cyclists (multiple times!) at villages or campings. We never crossed any cyclist on the road, and we were alone in most of the campings. For me, it was a good compromise between being alone and feeling safe (e.g. we had a flat tire, and in the little 15 mins it took to repair it, a couple of vans passing by stopped asking if we needed help or a ride somewhere!).
Bike & tools: I went with a mountain bike, and my partner with a touring bike (a mountain bike is not really needed but this is what I had). I had Schwalbe Marathon Plus tires and had no flat tires. He had Marathon Mondial and had a flat tire only once. From our experience,1.60'' was good enough. Bring a set of reparing tools (e.g. see link in resources below), as the only bike shops are in Puerto Montt and Coyhaique.
Clothes & gear: We wore warm clothes (several layers) and long trousers every day. We got rain ½ day and several nights (but not too heavy). We only got strong headwind one day. Our tent was a Decathlon Quickhiker Ultralight (3-people), it worked fine. For the nights, we had 13ºC comfort sleeping bags + inner layer (supposedly adding +15ºC comfort temp.) + isolating mattress + slept with fleece clothes on.
Water and food: There’s plenty of streams and water sources everywhere, we had a water filter and filled bottles whenever we needed. Food-wise, buy at each village whatever you will need until the next one, there’s nothing in-between. We also brought a bunch of dehydrated meals (I don’t know if you can buy there), they were really convenient. A couple of nights that we camped in a village with restaurant, we treated ourselves with “Lomo a lo pobre” or any of its derivatives — that stuff is just a hungry cyclist’s dream!
Overall: we loved it!
