Back to Rio Tranquilo and off North

We returned from the glacier, removed our gaiters and cramp ons before continuing back on the path over the boulders and the forest back to the starting point of the trek. Here our van was waiting to take us back to Puerto Rio Tranquilo. On the way, we had to stop and wait for almost 2 hours for some road work going on in the National Park.
We reached Puerto Rio Tranquilo quite late in the evening because of the delay. Here, we had our food and were off heading North with no booking for the night. The paln was to find some cabaña on the way and stay there overnight. We wanted to do the Cerro Castillo trek the next day so we wanted to be as near as possible to Villa Cerro Castillo (the nearest village). Here again we gave a ride to 4 people from Germany but we weren't sure how far we would go since we told them we would stop at the first cabaña we saw after dark. We drove very slowly in the lower gears with the 4x4 setting over the slippery gravel road. Despite that, the vehicle continued to roll and pitch at every turn over 40 kms per hour. Our hitch hikers had changed vehicles by now and gone with another coming from behind going all the way to Villa Cerro Castillo. Around 12 pm, I felt extremely tired and we hadn't found any place to stay. Hristo took over the driving and we continued North. I slept a while in the back seat. Eventually, we reached Villa Cerro Castillo. There we parked the vehicle. I stayed in it while the rest 3 went around to find a place to stay. Despite having woken up a few cabaña owners, they didn't find anything available. There had been extremely strong winds in Cerro Castillo the previous day and the rangers had to go in to evacuate the hills. A lot of these people were now in Villa Cerro Castillo. We tried calling some other places we found on Maps.me but none was available. We drove around 10 kms up North towards Puerto Ibáñez and stopped at every cabaña sign and woke up the owners but found nothing available.
Eventually, we found cabaña sign at La Casona hostel and restaurant marked on Maps.me. It was totally dark there. Melinda and Hristo went to check it. After knocking and tapping for 5 min, there was still no response. That's when Melinda heard snoring from inside so she was sure there was someone inside and started knocking harder and louder. Eventually, the lady running the place woke up and surprise... surprise... She had rooms for 4 available 😁
What a relief that was!! We eventually got a place to sleep at around 1:30 am and we slept like babies after that.Read more