An interesting detour from the Carretera led to Caleta Tortel, a  characterful higgledy piggledy coastal village of wooden boardwalks and houses on stilts.

Day dawned brightly in the Río Ňadis valley with the sound of sheep being driven in to the corrals.

We shared our breakfast with the underequipped Scottish cyclist who admitted that he had overstretched himself and was now going to finish in Puerto Montt rather than Santiago. That day he was aiming for Cochrane where he was going to have a rest day – we warned him about the horrible hill which lay ahead of him from the Rio Barrancoso!

We backtracked out of the valley with no less than 6 gates between us and the Carretera. Turning south, we traveled through forested valleys with some ramshackle wooden shacks scattered along the road. Lichen trailed from mossy fence posts and tall trees created an umbriferous canopy along the road.

11 kilometres before the Tortel turning, we found an old wooden jetty on the Río Baker for our picnic lunch – I presume it had once serviced a ferry to Tortel before the road was built in 2003. There was a disused waiting room which had a very useful verandah for cyclists! 

Caleta Tortel 

Sadly our heliophilous days were over: turning onto the X-904 for the 22 km detour to Caleta Tortel, we felt the first drops of rain. The road was perfectly passable but had a lot of deep gravel which slowed us down.

Caleta Tortel is a fairly new kid on the block. Someone who sailed a yacht in these waters 25 years ago told me no one ever went there in those days, whereas now it is one of the major sights on the Carretera, although it only has a permanent population of 300 people. Nestled between the Southern and Northern Ice Fields, 287 miles south of Coyhaique, it has lots of tourist potential.

The first people arrived in the early 1900`s from Chiloé, with their well known wood working skills, then in 1904 the Sociedad Explotadora del Baker (Baker Exploitation Society) started logging in the area.

The village was founded in 1955 to exploit the Ciprés de Las Guaitecas trees (Pilgerodendron) which were found in the area. Prized due to its resistance to decay, the tree is now threatened.

Tortel has possibly contributed to its decline: built largely on stilts on boggy ground it has approximately 7 km of ciprés boardwalk, stairways and jetties. Of course this makes it all incredibly picturesque, if rather knackering, as it does extend onto a hillside.

There is parking at the top of the central hill where you will find a Copec garage and the tourist office. The latter was also closed on our visit but it was easy enough to find one’s way around: we bore left through various houses, cabanas and the town campsite (with platforms for the tents), dropped down to the water’s edge and followed it around.

Things may have changed but on a rainy Saturday in December there seemed to be only lost tourists in evidence with not even a coffee shop to entertain us.

There was one restaurant open. The main entertainment seemed to be sitting in the little shelters spread along the main boardwalk. The town clusters around a big horseshoe bay, with a smaller one to the north, and there were plenty of photo opportunities of charming old docks and houses.

We chatted to a village moggy, climbed to the two miradors in town and panted back up to the carpark. The place to stay appears to be the cosy Entre Hielos Lodge at the top of town. The cabanas on offer looked rather ordinary on the whole.

We backtracked 9 km to camp in a grassy meadow on the edge of the Río Baker which, having followed it from Puerto Bertrand, was now nearing its end at Tortel in a rather dirtier state. As is usually the case when one finds a place with a superb view, the weather was gray and rather miserable. 

Lookout Walk

Things were rather brighter the next day so we seized the opportunity to explore the lookouts above the town. The route is clearly marked on Maps Me and is roughly 6 km long.

Departing on boardwalks next to the parking area, we ascended a long stairway up the hillside. This then turned into narrow boardwalks which led us over marshy ground to the first viewpoint from where we had a fantastic view over Tortel Bay and the mouth of the Baker River where it splits into channels before entering the sea.

One island in its mouth has become known as La Isla de los Muertos (Island of the Dead) as it has a curious collection of wooden crosses dating back to 1906, memorializing 120 workers from the Sociedad Explotadora del Baker days.

There seems to be various stories about the island and the 33 remaining wooden crosses, only one of which actually has a name on it. Although it has been said that they were poisoned to avoid paying wages, it is more likely that the Chiloé workers died of scurvy due to poor provisions. The survivors were picked up by a passing ship in 1906.

It is possible to join a boat trip from Tortel to visit the island. Other trips of rather longer duration and considerably more expense can also be organized to the Jorge Montt glacier on the Southern Ice Field or the Steffen Glacier on the Northern Ice Field.

Those of a more sensible mien might turn around at this point and go back the same way. We decided to continue to the next lookout at Cerro Vígia, discovering that the boardwalk ran out rapidly and we had to paddle through a couple of minor bogs to reach the shelter which gave us a bird’s eye view over the town.

The path then carried on over the top of the hill for another couple of kilometres. In between skirting swamps and mud, we were able to enjoy a wonderful scene of the bay, until finally the path dropped down the hillside at the furthermost reaches of town and regained a narrow boardwalk.

Muddy but unbowed, we finally reached the main walkways, checking out the playa in what appeared a more workman-like end of town. A neat little pagoda above the sand cried out for a coffee shop and provided a shady seat. Sadly the beach was not actually recommended for bathing and seemed pretty abandoned anyway but it was actually a pleasantly peaceful spot.

The following couple of kilometres back to the main end of town revealed classic Caleta Tortel scenes: wide easy boardwalks with jetties on the seaward side and higgledy piggeldy housing on the landward. If one were being unkind one could say some areas rather resembled an Indian slum dwelling, but then even those have a certain ramshackle charm.

Large wooden plazas provided seats and statues celebrating the native input, whilst the water and the mountains gave the scene an idiosyncratic appeal.

A friendly cat, who was obviously no stranger to the delights of walking on boardwalks or their handrails, kept us company for a while as we wound around the various bays. We finally said reluctant goodbyes to Puss and moved on – we only had 150 km to go to Villa O’Higgins and the end of the Carretera.