Chaitén and Playa Santa Barbara

So far we have always been fine with 'we are here now, what's next?!'. Yes, until now, north of Chaitén you can only continue by ferry, which is booked out a week in advance because it is currently the peak holiday season (summer). So we here have forced vacation and have to kill 7 days. This is almost the longest stay in the same place for us. Chaitén itself, with its 5000 inhabitants, doesn't have much to offer, but it is located in the middle of the Pumalin National Park, so now we have enough time to really do ALL the hikes here.

Finding a suitable place to sleep was quite difficult. We are here in the middle of the Chilean rainforest where you can't just drive to a free spot because there simply isn't one. The campsites are gardens of residents and are also more geared towards tent camping.

10 kilometers behind Chaitén there is Playa Santa Barbara, which we had already given up on mentally because our car doesn't get along with sand quite well. But when we arrived, the fear was completely unfounded. At the beautiful bay with black sand, there are many solid grassy areas and gravel parking lots, as well as toilets and showers, and it's all free, BINGO! Since the place is not such a secret anymore, we met many other travelers here, by car or by tent, and many with German or Swiss license plates, so it's not as exotic as we thought it would be.

In the evenings, we were visited by black Chilean dolphins who were hunting for dinner in the bay. They have a very interesting hunting method: they jump out of the water in formation along the bay, creating vibrations when they splash back into the water, which drive the fish towards the beach, then they shoot through the water and catch the fish. We were able to observe this spectacle in the evenings. After the dolphins had gone, sea lions came and ate the leftovers. In addition, the panorama with the black sand, the rainforest, and the hill behind it was really beautiful! Through binoculars, we were also able to spot a whale that surfaced to take a breath, but it didn't show more than that.