Day 48 - 22 Jan.2012 - Puerto Aisén

There are only few better ways than awaking by sunrays and the gentle noise of waves splashing at the beach of the lake. We got up at about 8ish and got ready for breakfast with seawiew. We left the camping “Pudu” and continued our way along the Carretera Austral north. At the petrol station, which is just as the village’s name, Puerto Tranquilo – quiet, we filled up our car with diesel and off we went along the dusty gravel roads. Most of the Carretera Austral is still gravel road. Which on one hand is not so nice and comfortable to travel on, but it might on the other hand be a real blessing as fewer tourists are willing to come this way. If the whole Carretera Austral would be paved, it might be busier as well.
Our today’s destination was Coihaique. To our surprise, the last 100 km were then indeed paved, and it was a real pleasure to dive on. We stopped at the supermarket, this time a proper one and bought provisions for another night of camping - today’s menu was grilled chicken breasts with cucumber salad and bread - and set off to look for a campsite. At the tourist info we got a list of 4 potential options.
It is quite interesting what people define as campsite. A piece of grass in somebody’s back garden qualifies. After having discarded all four of them, we decided to continue our way in search for a nicer campsite out of town. We ended up driving all the way to Puerto Aiseen and still haven’t found any camping.
At the end, and after some searching we found a really lovely camping “Quincho La Pancha” some 7 km out of town into a valley, which is shared by a local community.