Marble caves in Río Tranquilo

We actually really liked our campsite. The grass field was really big, we shared it first with some horses and later with some chickens 😊 and the views were pretty amazing.

Nonetheless, it was time for us to move further. So we had to pack our tents again to take the bus to Río Tranquilo. The bus ride took around 3 hours and went mostly over gravel road. That made it very dusty (yes, even in the bus) , but at the same time the landscape around us became really rough and it felt a bit as if we were on the way to the end of the world.

The town of Río Tranquilo seems more touristic than Cerro Castillo (probably because of its main attraction - the marble caves) but the general setup seems very similar. Lots of tiny (sometimes improvised) houses, often combined with offering a home stay, camping or small minimarket. Different than what we read previously, those minimarkets actually have decent quality vegetables and fruits. While the choice is very limited the quality was surprisingly better than what we found in a supermarket in Coyhaique. After searching for a camping that was already open this early in the season, we arrived at a relatively busy (compared to the last one) but nice place.

The sun was really strong and we were actually sweating without hiking for the first time since leaving the desert. Luckily this meant we had a really nice experience on our boat trip to the marble caves. The water was very turquoise, absolutely still and especially when reflecting the sunlight to the marble, it looked very cool.Read more