We left La Junta in our full wet weather gear – I put my one piece rain suit on for the first time as it was not only still raining on and off but it also was rather chilly with only single digits on the thermometer. The total distance to Chaitén was only 143 km and we followed a valley for a while. We then ascended up quite high when I heard Andrew over the intercom say: “the GoPro just came off while I was holding it” Another lucky save, as the GoPro mount just snapped as Andrew was filming and held the camera to capture the snow covered mountains. We found a place to stop and securely placed the GoPro in my top box. Hence no more video footage for the day. After about -100km the cold usually soaks through no matter how many layers we are wearing. Luckily we found a restaurant on the side of the road and we stopped for late lunch. We continued feeling a bit warmer and came to the intersection where the Parque Nacional Pumalín starts to the right which was one of the places the Argentinian couple in Queulat National Park had told us to be a “must see”. As we had a bit of time before we could check into our hotel in Chaitén and the sun had come out, we decided to head down the dirt road into the National Park for a bit. We came across some thermal pools in the open (not as nice of a setting as the ones we had visited in La Junta), crossed several bridges with impressive mountain streams, rode passed a large recent landslide and saw several waterfalls. We turned around and took some more pictures at the park entrance of the surrounding mountains with impressive glaciers in the distance and then headed into Chaitén to our hotel on the hill up a very washed out driveway. We parked the bikes at a relatively level parking area and went to check in. The lady at reception spoke English to us, explained when breakfast was and handed us the key and said we could pay the next morning. We asked about parking our motorcycles and she said they were save in the carpark but we could bring them up to the back of the hotel – she went to show us and pointed at a very narrow concrete pathway underneath a balcony we could park the bikes – we thanked her and explained that it would be great to have them under cover with the next two days of torrential rain forecasted – she just shook her head and said “why do you need them out of the rain when you ride them in the rain?” and then she walked off not waiting for a reply or showing us to the room. She was really quite abrupt and unfriendly and she was the owner of the hotel.

We managed to park the bikes on the narrow section with a bit of difficulty but they were under cover and out of the worst of the rain für the next two days. I took a few pictures of the stickers I had now accumulated on the bike 😊

The next morning, the heaters were cold in the morning and the power was off – we went downstairs for breakfast with candle light and there were buckets and bowls throughout the hotel catching the rainwater that leaked in. The power came back on by 11:00am and so did the heater in the room which depended on electricity. We paid for our stay while the electricity was working and asked a very friendly lady that was at reception that morning (not the grumpy owner from the day before), if we could book a hot tub for the next day and pay for it. She said no problem just come the next day and pay then – the open air hot tub looked so cool and I was excited to jump into it the next day when it was supposed to rain slightly less.

We spent the day catching up with our blog and meeting two brothers from the USA who also stayed there and were friends of the owner of the hotel “Mi Casa”. We ventured out for dinner and ate grilled salmon and Andrew tried a local beer from Chiloé island called “Chucao” which has the bird of the same name (Chucao Tapaculo – Scelorchilus rubecula) on the label which was the bird we saw on the platform of the lookout in Queulat National Park.

The next morning, the power was off again and only came back on late morning and it started to clear up a little bit so we went downstairs to pay for and arrange a hot tub time – it was the grumpy old lady at reception again who checked us in the day before and she said no hot tub today – you have to book it a day ahead and we told her that we had told the other lady but she insisted it was not possible as there was no staff to heat the tub but we could have it the following day – she very well knew that we were leaving that day 😡. I was quite annoyed as I had been looking forward to the hot tub and the place was costing a lot for what it offered and she was not accommodating at all. Andrew went back to ask her if it would be at all possible to have the hot tub later in the evening and she rudely asked him to speak in Spanish (when she spoke English very well and had been speaking to us in English before). We went for a walk on the signposted walk on their property which turned out to be in very desolate condition with wooden bridges and ladders rotten and broken and not really safe to walk – another disappointment of the place. We then hiked up to the mirador Chaitén which was a paved walkway and in better condition than the gravel roads in town. It ended with a shrine of mother Mary and then a crucifix with a wooden carved Jesus. I found a beautiful Chilean stag beetle (Chiasognathus grantii) on the way and we enjoyed a few glimpses of the view over town and the Pacific Ocean, before the rain set in again.

The last disappointment of Mi Casa was when I tried to have a shower and the water was not even luke warm – the only good thing about the place was the internet and that we could catch up on our blogs and the bikes were under cover but that was not worth the price they charged and then having to put up with the owner’s grumpy attitude was disappointing.

We were booked on the 2pm ferry to Quellón on Chiloé island and were looking forward to leaving Chaitén. We had one more nice salmon dinner in town and then found out that the ferry had been postponed until 1:00am the following day due to bad weather😳.