November 22, 2025
Route 265-KM36 to Puerto Bertrand
The sign shortly after setting out today has Cochrane 110 km. The next sizeable place where I plan to stop a day or two, but still a ways to go, while the road once again is uphill and there is no let up in the traffic with each vehicle leaving me in a fog of brownish-grey dust. The day hot.
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Famished, I reach the sizeable village of Puerto Guadal gone 11.30 and having seen a signboard for a restuarant on the way in, I was looking forward to a substancial meal which wasn't rice nor tuna, or packet soup. However, the restuarant was not open, though the door opened with a pull of a string that undid the latch, but the young woman inside confirmed they weren't open but said there is another place around the corner, which I found to be shut too.
In the end I bought bread, ham and a few other items in a light blue corner shop I passed on the way to the second shut place, then lunched sat on a bench by a kids skate park.
The afternoon is hotter and the traffic the same. I reached the end of the 265 halfway up a hill, going left onto route 7, or Carretera Austral, from where the sign has Puerto Bertrand 17 km, which I take as reasonable to aim for. However, on the way, I decided to push my bike under pine trees out off the sun for half an hour while drinking cool water filled from a vertical stream trickling down a kilometre back.
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I descend steeply to Puerto Bertrand by the side of namesake lake at 17 hrs where I buy a cold beer from the only shop and drink it sat on a bench out front. And later, push the Kona along the lake shore and camp out of view behind a clump of scrubs.
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