Back to Coyhaique

Hristo had remembered wrongly that we needed to return the vehicle by 11 am in Coyhaique, so we woke up early and were off from La Casona by 8 am. It was again a perfect day with no clouds. We reached Coyhaique around 10:00 am and went straight to the petrol pump to refill and return the vehicle. It was at the petrol pump that Hristo realized that we had till 1 pm to return the vehicle. At the petrol pump, Melinda tried using her card again and failed yet again 😁 She tried every possible combination of choosing her card as credit, debit, payments in lumpsum or in installments but the transaction didn't go through. By now, this had become a regular sight for us so we laughing about it but the attendants at the petrol pump got very nervous on what we would do 😁😁😁
Eventually, Maria paid for the fuel with her card
Now that we had some time, we drove around outside Coyhaique to find a nice place to have our breakfast. But, nothing was open at this hour, so we drove to the town center and parked there and had our breakfast at our favorite place Chelenko.
Here we got good wifi and we tried to find a way to get over the border into Argentina since our next destination in the plan was El Chalten in Argentina some 800 kms away.
We couldn't find a clear answer so we went to the information center to check there. Here too, we didn't get much information. They told us that the only way to cross the border was to go to Puerto Ibáñez (from where we had come in the morning), then take a ferry on the Lago General Carrera to Chile Choco on the border, then cross over and find buses on the other side. They had absolutely no information about the connectivity in the Argentinan side or if there were any buses. In fact, they didn't even have information regarding the buses on the Chile side even 😲 they just told us to go to the bus station to find out about the buses.
Hristo and Maria went to to the bus station to find out about the buses to Puerto Ibáñez. Here too, they didn't get much information except that the lady at the counter gave them a slip with a number to call for the bus to Puerto Ibáñez. In the meantime, our vehicle was picked up up at the center by the rental company representative. There was no issue so he returned our deposit in cash.
After that, we gave a call to the number we had got from the bus station only to find out that there was only one bus a day at 8 am and that it was connected to the ferry at Puerto Ibáñez at 11 am. We wanted to book our places for the next day bit they wanted to know where to pick us up. We had not anticipated this so we told them to reserve our places and that we would call later to confirm the pickup place.
I started looking for a place to stay for one night and found a nice accommodation with a family, quite near the center (Hostel Puesto Patagon). They had quite good ratings on booking.com so we booked it and went with our bags there. It was a nice little place with bunk beds in 2 rooms on the 1st floor while the family lives on the ground floor. The toiltes and baths too were on the ground floor. We took the opportunity to get our laundry done since they had washing machine and were ready to do our laundry for a nominal charge of 3000 CLP per load. We also updated our pickup with the bus company for the next day.Read more