It was a rainy night and we went into the pizzeria for our breakfast and ordered their coffee and tea as it was too wet to fire up our gas stove and there was no shelter over the picnic table at the campsite so everything was very wet. The sun came out eventually and we used the break between showers to pack up and got most of the camping gear pretty dried out and packed. We eventually left well after lunch wearing full wet weather gear and the dirt road out was in surprisingly good condition after all that rain. We rode into and through Cucao to the National Park entry where we turned around and then stopped for a late lunch in one of the restaurants. We both had fresh hake. We continued to Castro where we had booked in a pink hotel for two nights. We arrived and it just started raining again as we unloaded the bikes which were parked in the open carpark next to the hotel. The hotel looked a bit run down and needs a new coat of paint but it had character and reminded me of the Villa Kunterbunt from Pippi Longstocking (book and movies from Astrid Lindgren which I watched as a child but Andrew had not heard about – so we did watch the movie 😉)

We ventured down the road for dinner to a very nice restaurant and enjoyed pasta dishes. When we returned to our hotel, I had to turn my heated grips off which I had left on (again!!) and from the carpark we could see into the restaurant area of our hotel. One lady sat by herself at a table looking grumpy – when we walked into the hotel she looked at us and grumpily nodded and we worked out it was the grumpy old lady from the hotel Mi Casa in Chaitén. What are the chances??!!😂 And Pat, thanks for introducing me to Fawlty Towers (which I had never heard or seen before – watched a few episodes and Basil was way nicer than the grumpy lady from Chaitén 😂)

The next day was another torrential rain day and after breakfast in the hotel (grumpy Chaitén hotel lady was there muttering something in Spanish to us before leaving), we stayed in our small room with a view over the water and caught up on the blogs. I was just sitting and working on the computer when I felt something crawl on my hand and looked and it was a European wasp 🥺 – I have no idea where it came from?? Possibly was in my clothes bag which we emptied on the bed earlier trying to get the hotel to do a load of laundry for us but they said they don’t do that even though it said they offered laundry service on booking.com 🙁 We got the wasp off my hand on a piece of paper and out through the window- there have been so many of these wasps everywhere -mostly flying around the bike with all the splattered bugs on it and I always worried that I would get stung but luckily that has not happened (yet). And while on the topic of bites and stings, I can report that my spider bite has finally healed without having been to a doctor or antibiotics 👍 And since we could not get our laundry done we hand washed socks, undies and the bottoms of the zip-off pants which had gotten dirty on our epic hike. The heater was good in the room and we got everything dried over the two nights.

The rain cleared a bit in the late afternoon and we walked up the very steep hill into the centre of town and to the San Francisco church – we just managed to get inside before they closed it but were too late for the museum inside the church. One of the altars has a depiction of Arch angel Michael defeating the devil. We took some pictures of the park in Plaza de Armas and the fountain with a statue of the water spirit La Pincoya and the Castro sign.

The town felt scetchy and we returned down the hill to a seafood restaurant for dinner – the good place from the night before was closed so we had to try a new place – I had an amazing pot of stewed mussels with homemade gnocchi and Andrew ate a pork dish with red cabbage and apple stew. When we returned to our room, I talked to my daughter and we had a successful 3 way conversation with the insurance company to sort out CTP insurance for my car back in Australia. Andrew edited the GoPro footage for the next blog and then said he was feeling sick and hastily headed for the bathroom – he emptied all of his stomach contents in 3 sessions – we think the pork was either not fully cooked or off- poor Andrew🥺🤮