It started a couple of months ago. I was visiting Chile for a few months so me and two of my best friends decided we wanted to take a roadtrip to the south. After talking about it and looking at our options, we chose Chaiten as our destination.
This town is named after a volcano that sits nearby, which almost destroyed it with an eruption in 2008 – one of the biggest eruptions in the country’s history. The whole place was evacuated, but the people refused to find a new place to start again and came back to rebuild the town when the eruption was over.
We started our 5-days-long trip on a saturday, around 4 in the morning in order to avoid traffic. Our first stop was Saltos del Laja. This place consists on 4 waterfalls in the La Laja river, which runs through the Bio Bio region.
As the road goes south, you start seeing beautiful forests, national parks, lakes and volcanos. We drove around the Llanquihue lake, next to the Osorno volcano, for some photos.
It took us 18 hours until we reached our first days destination: a little town called Hornopiren. From here, we started the next morning our day number 2, early morning taking the ferry.
Hornopiren is located on the first part of Carretera Austral, a part dirt – part paved road that drives from Puerto Montt to Villa O’Higgins, surrounded by amazing landscapes.
Along with the ferry ride came more beautiful landscapes, mountains, different kinds of birds and a kind of dolphin that we could not identify. This lasted around 3 hours until we reached Leptepu. We had to leave that ferry and drive about 15 minutes to our next ferry, in Fiordo Largo. That last one would take us to Caleta Gonzalo where the road continues.
After arriving to Caleta Gonzalo, we drove a few kilometers looking for some natural hot springs that a lady told us about, and we found them. Right next to the road. We took a bath and later stopped to walk some paths among 3.000-years-old trees. It was dark already when we finally arrived to Chaiten.
The main idea of the roadtrip was to hike up to the top (or crater) of the volcano. It’s still active, but not dangerous to get there. So early in the morning we headed to where the path begins, and walked about 2 hours up the Chaiten. The view from up there was nothing but spectacular. The top of this volcano consists on a big crater and two huge domes inside.
We spent a couple of hours up there. Shot some photos, flew the drone around and inside of the crater, and shot some tips for a side project Camaradictos.
After that amazing day, our journey was concluded. We could only spend the afternoon having some rest and getting ready for our drive back, which began the next day.
It was two more days of ferries and road, this time with some rain, and our only photo stop was at the Malleco viaduct. We were tired, but happy.
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