We had power for the first time of our stay in the morning and the nice lady was at reception and we explained that our ferry was delayed and if it was possible to stay in the common area until later in the day and she said that the Brazilian guests were in the same situation and no problem for us to stay not in our room but in the common area which was a relief as it was still pouring rain and we did not want to get out in the rain all day and have everything on the bikes saturated. We checked out of our room and decided to stay in the sitting area on the first floor which was next to our room and next to the staircase down to our bikes. We had all our bags there and continued to write our blogs all day as the internet was good and it continued to rain for the third day in a row. Our ferry to Quellón on Chiloé island had been postponed from a 2:00pm departure to a 1:00am departure the following day. We had to be at the ferry terminal by 11:00pm for loading. We started packing our bikes mostly in the dry in the late afternoon and we were both wearing our full wet weather gear and left by 6:30pm in drizzling rain. We rode to the ferry terminal while it was still daylight to check out what the facilities and conditions were like and met a group of 5 Chilean riders who were waiting for the ferry too. We decided to head to town and have our grilled salmon one more time in the same restaurant we had eaten the past two nights as we assumed there would be no food on the ferry and we had not eaten anything all day.

We returned to the ferry terminal by 9:30pm and talked some more to the Chilean riders and found out that there were two ferries scheduled and the first one to arrive would go to Puerto Montt which is where they were heading to. One of them also told us that he hit one of the unpaved gravel sections of the Carretera Austral that appeared unexpectedly at >100km/hr and had a big off but he was able to continue the ride. There were a number of semi trailers and trucks lining up and the first ferry eventually arrived and all the larger vehicles were reversed onto the ferry. Our 5 Chilean motorcycle riders were last to be loaded. The rain had started again and we waited for the arrival of our ferry to Quellón which arrived well after 11:00pm and we had to wait for the vehicles to disembark first. One big 1200GS with two up and heavily loaded rode off and was met by a customs officer on the uphill section of the loading ramp and he lost his footing and dropped the bike – it took 4 people to lift it up and they stood outside and had all their paperwork checked. The loading of the ferry started quickly and there were fewer large trucks to be loaded and motorcycles were again loaded last – it was us and another 3 smaller motorcycles with young guys from Chile. We were instructed to park the bikes perpendicular to the car lanes and workers started strapping them down. The deck hand who started strapping our bikes walked off without them properly secured and we asked the other workers who secured the Chilean’s bikes to look at ours as well – they came and added more straps and started ratcheting Andrew’s bike down from the wrong side (the one opposite where his side stand is) and almost pulled the bike over. We had left port and the ramp was raised up when the bikes were finally secured abd we headed up to the seating area to find a couple in our reserved seats – they reluctantly moved over but just next to us when I had booked the seats to have a free row to ourselves and the lights were turned off and it was pitch dark and very hot inside. I stripped layer after layer until ai was in my singlet and I sat in the tow behind our booked seats – there was plenty of empty seats.

The entire voyage took ~4.5 hours and we arrived at 5:30am in Quellón – we had to disembark first and when we got to the bikes they had already started loosening the tie-down straps and were holding Andrew’s bike to stop it from falling over. It was still very dark when we arrived and everything was very wet but it did not rain. We could not find any open coffee shop snd decided to ride through town to the start of Ruta 5 (the Pan-American highway which goes all the way to Alaska). We found a place to park the bikes at the Punta de Lapas sign and waited another 90 minutes in very wet and cold conditions for the sunrise – there were squalls of rain blowing in from the sea and it was quite a miserable wait – there were only concrete benches which were too cold for me to sit on and Andrew was getting very cold and the rain had soaked through his wet weather gear. When daylight arrived (no sun- still cloudy and rainy), we took some pictures of the iconic monument Hito Cero (the entire area is being renovated) and some information about the flora and fauna and history of the area, and then battled the rush hour and school drop-off traffic through town in the search of a place to have breakfast and warm up. We eventually found a small café called Dahlia and had hot drinks and sweets for breakfast. Feeling slightly warmer, we rode to Chonchi where we fuelled up and stocked up on groceries for our next 3 nights camping. There were still multiple rain showers we rode through and we waited out another bigger deluge undercover at the shopping place before riding along lake Cucao on Ruta W-850 to Cucao. From Cucao we turned left on W-848 and then W-802 which was unsealed and meandered up and down hills and had great ocean views of the roaring Pacific with wild waves crashing onto the rocky headlands.

We arrived at the Refugio camping Costa which is also a Pizzeria and the host Nicolás showed us the campsites – we got to choose as nobody else was camping there that night – as Nicolás explained that usually the people camping there are in the 20-30 year age group and our age group usually took the expensive lodge option 😂😉.

We set up tent while the sun was out and moved everything into the tent before having pizza – we were hungry and tired as it had been a long night and day. We managed to tie our second tarpaulin over the tent as a rain shelter before the heavier rain started. We retired to our comfy tent for an early night and much needed restful sleep.