Caleta Gonzalo Ferry
Day (and night) 42 20th February
When I was on holiday in some place Roman at the the tender age of 7 or 8, I remember asking my dad a question about dates. I had figured out that if things had started with BC and then gone on to be AD then logically the next period in history would be FG. Once the hilarity from the passing tourists had died down and my dad had recovered from his embarrassment at spawning a dunce, I was corrected. Apart from realising that my brain works in logical patterns, I learnt two important things from this event; 1) There are certain things in the world that you are just expected to know about and 2) if you haven’t consumed the knowledge already, it’s best to keep this to yourself unless you like looking stupid.
Understanding how the ferry at Caleta Gonzalo at the northern end of the Parque Pumalín on the Carretera Austral is obviously one of the things that falls into this category. Or so it would seem because there doesn’t appear to be anyway of finding out how it works or what you should do even if you didn’t care about looking stupid.
What we did know, or at least what we thought we knew, was that we were due to make this journey from Caleta Gonzalo to Hornopirén at 12.30pm on Monday 20th February, that it involved a short ferry, a short drive and then a long ferry taking a total of five hours. We had this information in our itinerary from Ed and so far everything written in the itinerary had come to pass.
So, on Sunday, we drove from Puyuhuapi to our next cabaña just north of Chaitén on good paved roads and stopping off at the entrance of the beautiful Pulamín park on the way.
Arriving a little earlier than the 3.00pm check in we were invited to visit the private Pacific Ocean beach at the end of the track so we spent a very pleasant half hour there watching the world go by.
At check in, we innocently asked whether or not there were any ferry tickets for us. Blank looks and a shoulder shrug indicated not but the hippy brother and sister act that seemed to be charge of the place assured us that everything would be fine and that we should just pitch up at the port tomorrow.
We don’t see that many people on the road each day but know that this ferry is the only option to get anywhere north of here so tickets are in big demand. We looked on the ferry web site which confirmed to us that there were indeed no tickets available for the lunch time ferry for the whole of the week ahead. There was some indication that a second ferry at 8.00pm might run but again, no availability was evident. We weren’t entirely comfortable so emailed the travel agent dealing with the Chilean leg of our journey. Of course, it’s Sunday so we didn’t really expect to get a quick response.
We knew that if we were on the 12.30 ferry the next day then we wouldn’t have much time in the morning as the port was an hour and a half up the road plus the recommended two hours of pre embarkation time. The ferry office in Chaitén opened at 10.00 am so the option of going there in the morning before trying the port was void.
Puzzled once more by the quirks of our itinerary, we headed out to make the most of our potentially limited time to explore the glory of the national park. Whether this was a temptation too far for the gods of grit will never be known but shortly before arriving at the walk we had chosen, we picked up the puncture pictured in my last blog. This gave us another dilemma; do we risk the rest of the journey with no spare or do we try to find a kwikfit garage in the morning before heading to the port? Oh dear, our metal really was being tested.
A calming walk in the woods was called for before heading back to our Cabaña which regrettably didn’t feature any of the nice things that transform a garden shed into a nice cosy spot to spend the night. We didn’t have the spirit left to head into town to try and find a restaurant that was open on a Sunday so settled for the meagre offerings that the hippies could contour up and went to bed knowing that sleep would be as precious a commodity as confirmed ferry tickets.
In the morning, we hurried to the breakfast room where Wi-Fi was available if you held your phone at 52.7°N whilst standing on a chair to discover that South Bound had responded to our email. The news wasn’t disastrous but we weren’t going to be on the 12.30 ferry that day. Because ‘the 12.30 ferry is only for locals’ so ‘we had no choice but to book you on the 8.00pm ferry’. Tickets were attached to the email along with an itinerary that we had not previously seen that detailed our whole trip within Chile. Deeply suspicious that this was a load of bull shit, we responded to express our dissatisfaction and how disappointed we were that we would not now be seeing the beautiful fjords that the ferry sailed through Owing to the fact that it would be pitch black.
This eventuality did give us time to go to town to try to get our tyre mended and go to the ferry office. The tyre repair man said no because the rip was in the wrong place so we went to the kwikfit equivalent for a new tyre. This made Pauline happy as the risk of being stranded with another puncture and no spare had now diminished considerably.
The sour faced woman in the ferry office blew my theory of everyone being friendly out of the water. She did, however, manage to print us out a ticket that included our car registration which was lacking on the e-ticket from South Bound. Definitely something that you just know is going to be important without having to be told!
We now had time to have a large and leisurely lunch, buy snacks for the journey later, email our next hotel to say that we wouldn’t be arriving until the early hours of the morning and visits more of the best park that we had been to so far. It almost felt like a good thing that we were now getting the later ferry and we were determined to make the most of our time.
We found Treebeard in the woods.
In spite of more roadworks and a hideous section of what was once gravel road (not the bit in this photo which was actually pretty good road), we made it to what might loosely be described as a port with three hours to go before the ferry was due to leave.
We weren’t the first but it was reassuring to see that others had found their way to this point too. Perhaps we had got it right?
There wasn’t anybody about at the front of the line but two signs made it clear that our arrival was expected. Sign 1: ‘queue here’ sign 2: ‘don’t move the bollards’. There were many times during the next hours of our life that we Wondered if moving the bollards might bring someone out of thin air to tell us what was going on but for fear of some sort of disqualification, we didn’t try.
The ferry was in and, as you can see from the picture at the top of this blog, the tide was up.
Hours went by and we chomped our crisps, ate of peanuts and apples and drank our drink. 8.00pm came and went and nothing was happening. We got chatting to a few others in the queue that now stretched back as far as the road works. Unbelievably, one couple didnt know that you had to have your car registration on your ticket🙄. Another couple who had managed to beat the system and book a ticket on line received an email at about 8.30pm to say that the ferry would be three hours late leaving due to low tides. Oh of course! Why didn’t we know that?
Going back down to the jetty, we could see that the tide had indeed gone out but at 10.00pm! The prospect of an overnight stay in the car was looming but, sure enough at 11.00pm, the ferry revved up its engines, threw on the arc lights to pierce the now pitch black sky, and make dock. Mystifyingly the tide seemed still to be a lot lower than it was at 8.00pm but there wasn’t anyone who thought it a wise thing to point this out.
A lady with a clipboard walked up the line of cars nodding at most to proceed once she had ticked off the registration. Those not on the list were left in the queue looking puzzled. I think that they did get on eventually…
The first ferry journey was all over within half an hour at which point the first car was let off the boat. There only seemed to be one direction to go in but nonetheless, the relief of every single other driver at not having to lead the way was palpable.
There was a tarmac road! But not on our side… With Pauline coping admirably, we kept up with the cars ahead down a 10km track that got worse as we went on. Any question about whether or not the second ferry would be ready and waiting was answered when at about third distance blinding headlights started coming at us from the other direction. By now, the gravel track was impossibly narrow and a terrible leap of faith was required to get through to the second dock.
in fairness it felt as though they were trying to make back time now and the second ferry was quickly loaded and away for the three hour crossing to Hornopirén. We might even have got some sleep had it not been for the people that left their car alarms on. But I guess no one told them so why should they know? Just another piece of osmosis knowledge that skipped past a few people and they were too embarrassed to ask.
Tempers were very much on the tatty side as we looked for our hotel and once we had driven past it, the temper of the driver behind us broke as well as he honked in consternation at our irrational manoeuvres.
More in hope than expectation we stood at the locked gate to our designated hotel pressing the button on a plastic box that looked like it might have once been an intercom. Dogs in packs howled with indignation at having to make a fuss at such an undogly hour and maybe it was this that finally woke our host for, after what seemed like an eternity but was probably only five minutes, the outside lights to the hotel came on and out tottered an old man in a dressing gown, shinny leather cowboy boots and astonishingly large black eye brows.
At 4.30am we sank gratefully into a bed with itchy scratchy sheets, itched and scratched for a while a sank into the oblivion of a long delayed sleep.
It was only three and a half hours later when we were rude,y awakened by our upstairs neighbours who were probably delighted to have the opportunity for revenge of our middle of the night arrival. Once pulled from a dream that was blizzard y about catching the hovercraft to the Isle of Wight, I couldn’t get back to sleep. Pauline was the same although I suspect we weren’t sharing the same dream.
After a poor breakfast of the ubiquitous Jamon y Queso con pan we left for our last three hours on Ruta 9. There was another short ferry crossing to undertake but even the Chileans couldn’t make this too difficult to undertake and once we were over the narrow channel, we were pleased to see that for once luck had been on our side as we drove past a two hour queue of traffic coming in the opposite direction.
The ghastly metropolis of Puerto Montt was quickly bypassed with the help of Google maps (South America is zone D for uk mobile phone operators which means a £6 a day charge when you turn data roaming off but today was a day when £6 was worth every penny). Puerto Varas was still big compared to where we had been for the last month on the road and a very welcome sight for our civilisation hungry bodies and minds.
Particularly welcome was a set of grovelling apologetic messages from South Bound for what had gone wrong including an admission that they had probably left it too late to book the 12.30 ferry. A compensation of a free meal at the hotel was readily accepted and we ate well for the first time in days caring not a jot for the weird looks from Chileans for having a meal at 5.30 in the evening.
We were tucked up like tots by eight and slept soundly until our upstairs neighbours got to their room at 2.00am. I rolled back to a blissful sleep happy in the knowledge that I would be sure to get my own back in the morning.