Day 20: Pivoting

We woke in Caleta Tortel to see the results of the storm: snow on the mountains all around. It was still raining down at sea level, though, but it was cold! We had furiously been checking and rechecking our varuos weather apps and we realized that we couuld no longer pretend we weren't in a sticky situation. To move on south was out of the question. It was snowing in the next stop, another camp site, at Rio Bravo and looked to do so for the next few days. Furthermore, our final destination, Villa O'Higgins, was also experiencing very low temperatures, snow and freezing rain over the next few days. We couldn't stay and 'wait it out' in Caleta Tortel, there wasn't anywhere to stay...all rooms booked!

And so, we made the grim decision to pivot and go back. It was a really tough thing to do, as we were only 90 miles from completing the entire Carretera Austral, our goal. But our cards were played out. So we scrambled to see if there was a bus that we could get from Tortel back to Cochrane. The idea of riding our bikes back up the tough roads we had just come down the last two days was not at all something we were interested in, especially with the weather. We found the ticket office and were amazed to discover that despite all busses being packed for the next few days, there was one going to Cochrane in the afternoon that had just had two cancellations! A sign we were doing the right thing! We got those tickets, making sure they would also take our bikes (yes, we just needed to take off our front wheels to make them smaller.)

After packing up our things, we once again faced the STAIRS. This time, we had to go UP! We carried the bikes first, up those hundred odd steps, locked them to a fence, then returned to get our bags. We learned very quickly how much weight our bikes had been carrying for us! Climbing back up those steps loaded with our bike bags was no easy feat.

When we boarded the bus and headed out of town, I was filled with sadness that we had not completed our goal. Yet, I knew we doing the right thing. We even had begun to make other plans for an alternative routing. As we rode the bus back to Cochrane, a journey of about 2.5 hours (hah! it had taken us two arduous days to do it by bike!) the mountains were covered in cascades of water from all the rain and snow of the last 24 hours. It looked for all the world as if the mountains themselves were crying! But in my heart, I knew we had done a good job, experienced a part of Patagonia we had not explored before and thoroughly took it it all into our hearts.