Day 4: Puyuhuapi - Coyhaique

We started the morning by being super-efficient, we beat our own record and were ready to leave at 11:00. We must say to our defense, that Puyuhuapi gave us the best breakfast since we arrived in Patagonia. Isabel was talking in German with the house owner, Mijail was updating the blog while eating, Hadrien was devouring the breakfast and enjoying very good coffee.




During our super-efficient morning we realized that Puyuhuapi is not next to a lake as we originally thought but next to the Pacific Ocean. Small mistake for the starving bikers who arrived late in the evening (Isabel will claim that she was right from the beginning though...)

Yesterday, Isabel was a bit sad because we cancelled  a 4 hour detour to see some dolphins, so this morning, as soon as we realized that we were in front of the ocean, she said: "Ohhh let's go and see the dolphins", boys just laughed at her, but they were wrong - very much wrong!: We drove ten minutes and Isabel spotted happy dolphins swimming next to the road. They were a group of 5-6 small dolphins playing and at a moment even curiously approaching us while swimming on their back showing off their white bellies and doing little Flipper-jumps.

Later we stopped at the Parque Nacional Queulat, we wanted to see what was this Ventisquero Colgante (=hanging glacier) that everybody talks about. Miji was astonished to see these two "Swiss" so excited to visit glaciers...

While leaving the Parque Queulat parking, Hadrien bumped a car's bumper and dropped a side case once again. Given the frequency of this kind of incidents, for your convenience, we will be moving this kind of info to the footnotes in the future... what we will keep here is Hadrien's comment 30 mins later, out of the blue: "3rd time in 4 days, something is wrong..."

After a few hours came the "Serpentine-road", the most technique-demanding stretch of the road so far, a set of narrow uphill switchbacks in the gravel of Carretera Austral. Hadrien had a little incident but some muscled man helped him to quickly be back on the road again.

Approaching Coyahique we reached our 1’000 km mark.Congratulations to us!!! we are such an excellent team!!! Just before reaching this milestone, Isabel spotted other animals: several alpacas drinking by the river.

To get to the hotel we had to cross a “suspended” bridge - an adventure by itself. It was composed of wooden bricks orientated in 2 directions and overlapping each other. It was exactly what Mijail wished for earlier in the morning. So we went one by one unsure which side of the bridge we could use safely but we’ve made it. 

We went then to the city center in order to eat 500gr of beef each (man) at Carne Queulat. We enjoyed our time at the restaurant and Hadrien had the pleasure to try for the first time the local Pisco Sour and since it was so good - we had a second round... Does anyone remember how we got home?



It is to be noted that in Coyhaique, dogs are always barking at the motorcycle. Hadrien realized that the dogs here hate motorcycles and even more the drivers... and even more Hadrien than other drivers. Somehow Hadrien stimulates the same reaction with cows. Although nothing happened to him, Mijail got bitten (a little bit) by our host's dog while arriving to the cabaña - we guess it was just the way to say 'welcome!'.