12/18-The Largest Lake in Chile

Oh, it was a cold one again this morning, not ice like yesterday, but still pretty cold. Skies were blue, but the sun was taking awhile to get to our tents. We just moved the tents to the sun. Once everything was dry, we headed out. Today we were heading to Puerto Río Tranquilo. The scenery today was absolutely stunning! Here…I’ll show you. 

I think this was still the Rio Murte 

More lupine, and a stream. 

Field of yellow flowers. 

Cycling through a tree tunnel. 

We stopped at a cafe for some refreshments. 

Beautiful flowers outside the cafe. 

We had rolls with jam. 

Okay, so the above photos aren’t really anything new, scenery wise. 

The largest lake in Chile. 

It says so on this sign. 

The lake wasn’t the only nice scenery. 

But definitely the largest portion of today’s ride. 

We didn’t have a ton of kms to do today, which was great because we kept stopping to take photos. We also found a place by the lake for lunch. 

Not a bad spot. 

This gato spent our entire lunch break with us. 

As soon as we packed up our chairs, it took off. 

We had 13 kms to go. They were a rather tough, but beautiful 13 kms. 

Photo courtesy of Alex. 





From where the above photo was taken, we could see the road. It looked like a pretty steep hill. We told ourselves it wasn’t going to be as bad as it looked (you know, it always looks worse from a distance). Yeah…we were wrong. It WAS as bad as it looked! 

When the gravel turned to paved, I said, “You know it’s steep when they pave it”. We hit 16% grades!

There were other short, but steep sections (this one was about 10%). Photo courtesy of Markus. 

Finally, we rolled into Rio Tranquilo. This place was quite busy. It’s all about the Marmol here. There are multiple tour companies that take people out to the Marmol. The Marmol are marble rock formations on the lake. We are planning on renting kayaks to go see the Marmol caves. 

It took a few tries, but we found a reasonably priced cabaña. 

It has three bedrooms. The number on the cabaña is 389, therefore keeping with our tradition of staying in cabañas that are #3 (or in this case, have the number 3 in them).

We went to dinner down on the Carretera. 

Nice view (well…not the bus).

We will spend three nights here (2 full days), so we can do our necessary chores, and also do the Marmol tour. 

Here’s one final parting shot. 

Mary’s Little Lamb. I think it was following her to school this day.