I had wanted to drive along the Carretera Austral for as long as I’d been seriously planning a trip to Patagonia. The points I wanted to see along the way were rather more fluid. But ever since I’d seen photos of the Marble Caves, I knew I had to see them for real. So driving as far south on the Carretera Austral as Puerto Tranquilo so that I could realise this dream became part of my route plan.
I had decided not to drive any further along the Carretera Austral than Puerto Tranquilo as I had no real desire to drive to the end of the earth. I’d been to the end of the earth several times in the past, I felt my time could be better spent exploring other parts of Patagonia than Villa O’Higgins, a long way from anywhere, not much there when you arrived and a long drive back. But driving as far as Puerto Tranquilo to see the Marble Caves was a necessity for me and I was praying the weather would be good so that I got to see them in all their glorious colours.
I had arrived in Puerto Tranquilo the night before, after driving the 200km from Balmaceda Airport. I had already checked out the location of Bahia Mansa who were 5km out of town and I’d read about in an excellent online review and was now driving back there first thing in the morning to do a tour of the caves. It was best to do a tour in the morning when the light was at its best and also while the weather was still fine.
I had read that if the weather was bad it wasn’t possible to do the boat tour to the Marble Caves and I would have been devastated if I’d travelled all that way and didn’t get to see them. However, I had given myself 2 nights in Puerto Tranquilo, so if the weather had been terrible on the first day, I had a second morning to attempt to see them. In addition, it was the Austral summer and I was a long way south, so I had plenty of daylight which meant it wasn’t necessary to set off anywhere at daybreak to ensure that I wasn’t driving in the dark, which I was trying to avoid on the Carretera Austral. The next day I was driving to Puerto Aisen which was around 300km away and would probably take about 6 hours. So even if I set off at midday from Puerto Tranquilo, it wasn’t going to be an issue.
This morning the weather was perfect. The further south you drove on the Carretera Austral, the worse the road conditions and the drive from the town of Puerto Tranquilo to Bahia Mansa where I was getting the boat from, was on rough gravel until you got to the turn off for the property. Then it was a kilometre of one of the worst roads I’d ever driven on, steep downhill, rutted, hairpin turns. I was praying I wouldn’t meet anything coming in the opposite direction and I was lucky. I parked up and made my way to the little house where the family business operated from.
The Marble Caves are found on Lago General Carrera, a massive freshwater lake fed by glaciers in Northern Patagonia. They are only accessible by boat. There were plenty of companies in Puerto Tranquilo that packed their boats full of tourists and gave limited time at the caves. The fact that I had driven to this small family run business that not many people knew about meant that I only had to share a boat with one couple so it made getting photographs a lot easier as I could move around the boat and we would have a bit more time.
The rock formations that rise out of the lake and have eroded and exposed their beautiful colours, dot all around this part of the lake. Rather than it just being one cave, there are several parts of the rock that form to make caves. Marble Caves is a catch all for the entire area, but there are also individual formations that are worthy of special attention, the Marble Chapel is one, and the most amazing and famous of them all, is the Marble Cathedral.
I walked down to the lake shore and got into a small boat. With just 3 passengers in the boat, we probably didn’t need 2 crew as well, but we got them. We started off by heading to the furthest caves. Described as one of the most isolated natural treasures in the world, the partially submerged caves were formed by over 6000 years of erosion of the lake.
And the marble caves aren’t marble in name only. The rock really is marble. The colours are amazing. Grey, blue, turquoise, white and yellow. When you get to the first lot of caves which are the biggest, the colours aren’t as varied. But this is where the caves are actually large enough for the boat to get into, so you can experience being inside the caves. This is very dependent on the water level and the wind speed. If it’s a very windy day, access to the caves is difficult. On this day there wasn’t much wind whip up the water in the lake. The lack of big waves meant it was a lot easier to manoeuvre the boat into the tight spots inside the caves.
The boat was steered into a few different caves in the main section of the rock and then we headed off to the two isolated rock formations. The larger one was the Marble Cathedral and the smaller one was the Marble Chapel.
We approached the Marble Cathedral first and the colours of the marble here were unbelievable. I’d seen photos in the past and thought the colours must have been enhanced, but when I looked at my photos, the colours really were that vibrant. The marble was blue, not grey, the yellow was bright yellow, not white. This was what I’d driven all this way to see. I was not disappointed. Obviously I was lucky with the weather conditions which meant I saw the colours in all their glory, not only of the marble rock that formed the caves, but also of Lago General Carrera.
I didn’t manage to get all of the photos I wanted despite having my mobile phone camera and my normal digital camera with me before we were moving on to the Marble Chapel. This is a much smaller rock and you can easily see it’s an isolated stack. The colours here aren’t as vibrant, but you can see around the whole rock formation, if the kayakers don’t get in the way!
I was so upset I hadn’t managed to get all my photos at the Marble Cathedral, I asked if we could quickly go back and take another look. This was another advantage of using this family run company and only having 3 passengers in the boat. The other boats that had come from Puerto Tranquilo were completely full and ran to a tight schedule. I wouldn’t have been able to ask them to go back for a second look. I did get a few more photos and, if I’m honest, I got more than enough, although I wasn’t totally satisfied at the time. However, when I looked back at them, I had plenty and some of them had turned out really well.
The driver of the boat asked what I was going to do for the rest of the day and actually, I had no idea! It wasn’t even 11 o’clock yet, so I wasn’t sure what to do for the rest of the day. I’d been so determined I was going to see these marble caves, I’d given myself extra time in case of bad weather and now I’d seen them I had almost an entire day left to explore the area.
As I had my trusty pick up truck, it was suggested that I might like to take the road out of town into Laguna San Rafael National Park to the Valley of the Explorers, where about 50km down the road there were a couple of hiking trails that gave you a view of the valley floor and the surrounding glaciers.
I tried to work out which road I needed to drive down to get to this National Park. I needed to get diesel anyway, so I got directions from the lad who filled my pick up who thankfully spoke good English.
It was a case of starting to drive out of town and then turning left before the bridge and that took you onto Route X78 that basically went to nowhere, but takes you through Valle Exploradores and gives you access to the San Rafael Glacier.
You know you’re on the right road, if after about 6km, you see a series of houses with crosses on the top of them. It’s actually a family cemetery and the houses with the crosses on top are over the graves. Another 6km on and you reach Lago Tranquilo which has a pull off so you can stop, take in the view and take a few photos if you want.
It was a rugged gravel road, but I was starting to enjoy the driving now, even though it was still hard going. But the best part about this road was the scenery. I kept saying it, beautiful Patagonia. After the first pull off where I could stop to take photos and another vehicle stopped briefly, I had the road to myself.
About halfway along the road were Nutria Falls that I had been told about. I took a photo of them and acknowledged that I was now halfway to the hiking trailhead. The scenery was getting ever more spectacular and I now reached the border of Laguna San Rafael National Park. Patagonia is full of remote National Parks.
The glaciers I could see along this route are part of the Patagonian Ice Field, the biggest ice field in the Southern Hemisphere. And before you mention Antarctica is in the Southern Hemisphere, yes it is, I haven’t forgotten Antarctica. But the ice on Antarctica is classed as an ice sheet, far bigger than an ice field. So Patagonia does have the largest ice field in the Southern Hemisphere.
The further I drove, the more beautiful the scenery became. As I was well off the beaten track with only occasional sight of another vehicle, I was able to pull over as often as I wanted, put my phone in its gorilla grip on the bonnet of the pick up truck and stand in the middle of the road to take photographs. I deliberately wanted to stand in the middle of the road because I wanted a photograph of the view I was getting as I was driving along. Every time I rounded a bend the view was even better than before, I pulled the pick up truck over, so if another vehicle did happen to come along they could get past, and posed for a photo.
It’s pretty slow progress when you’re on a narrow, winding, rugged, gravel road, especially if you’re stopping every kilometre or so to take photos. I didn’t want to thrash the pick up truck and risk getting a flat tyre, even though it was a new and sturdy vehicle. I wasn’t in a rush so there was no point in taking unnecessary risks. But this meant it felt like forever before I reached hiking trailhead in the National Park. I parked at the side of the road where there were a lot of other vehicles, but I was told that I had to drive a little further down the road where the office was and I would find the start of the hiking trails. Another kilometre or so and I reached a wooden building where there was a ranger taking fees for the hiking trails.
The Exploradores Glacier viewpoint is located in Exploradores Park. There were 2 trails, you could pay to do just one of them or both of them. I opted to do both, as I always do. The longer one is supposed to be the better one, but I preferred the shorter one. I thought the views were better on the shorter, 600m hike. My recommendation would be, if you only have time to do one, do the shorter trail.
I did the longest hike first which was the Mirador Glaciar Exploradores, the viewpoint to see the Explorers Glacier. This was 1km long out and back and featured a steep climb and a real clamber across some loose rocks at the top to the get to the viewing platform.
The hikes in Chile were hard going. My experience of hiking in the National Parks in the Chilean Lake District was that these hikes were fairly steep, big steps up, muddy and eroded trails. Getting to the viewpoint usually involved a continuous uphill slog. It appeared that Northern Patagonia was the same.
Certainly even though this was a short hike in distance, it was no walk in the park. But the views of the glacier from the viewing platform were spectacular. And as this was so remote, even though I did pass one or two people when I was hiking, it was never going to be crowded and I had the viewing platform entirely to myself. It was pretty windy up there, so I didn’t take any selfies with the gorilla grip. If a big gust of wind knocked my phone off the fence, there was no way I would be able to retrieve it, so I contented myself with photos of the view. There were plenty of photos of me standing in front of the mountains and the glacier in the middle of the road on my drive here.
After taking in the view, I then hiked back to the trailhead and started the second trail which was much shorter, just 300m one way, and took me to an alternative viewpoint. This trail didn’t have much of an elevation gain and wasn’t anywhere near as steep or as high up, but actually I thought the view was better because from here you got a view of the whole valley and river flood plain. And I had the whole thing to myself again.
This had been well worth the drive, I was so pleased with the recommendation I’d received from the boat driver earlier in the day. Now all I had to do was to drive back to Puerto Tranquilo. When you drive back, you get a view from the opposite direction and although I had no plans to keep stopping to take more photos on the way back, I ended up stopping to take more photos on the way back. I had hours and hours of daylight left and there was nothing to race back to Puerto Tranquilo for. I never say never, but the chances of me coming back to this specific area and driving down to Valle Exploradores again were extremely remote, at best. So I might as well make the most of the day and the drive.
If you want to measure whether you’ve had a good day, then how many photos you’ve taken is a good indication. Now we all have digital cameras or phones, everyone takes more photos than they used to when they were using an old fashioned film that needed developing. But I wasn’t a particularly obsessive photographer, I was too impatient to keep stopping and taking photographs, particularly if I was hiking. Sometimes I had to really concentrate on reminding myself to take some photographic reminders, so I wasn’t relying solely on my memory. I was visiting places that a lot of people had never seen, so my own photographs were an important information source.
But today, the scenery had been so fantastic, first with the Marble Caves and then with Valle Exploradores in Laguna San Rafael National Park, I had taken 264 photos! That was an inordinate number of photos for me. That illustrated what a fabulous day this had been. Sometimes if you dream of visiting somewhere for a long time, you can be disappointed when you get there. But Northern Patagonia, a place I’d dreamed of visiting for almost 30 years, had not disappointed. It was constantly exceeding my expectations. Every hour I was out in this amazing wilderness I was exclaiming, “Beautiful Patagonia”.
I travelled on the Carretera Austral in January 2020.
I went on a small motorboat to see the Marble Caves with Bahia Mansa, a small, family company about 5km south of Puerto Tranquilo. To find them, head south along the Carretera Austral out of Puerto Tranquilo until you see a left hand turn with the sign for Bahia Mansa boat tours. I paid approximately £17 for the hour long boat trip with 2 crew and 2 other passengers. This is more expensive than the tours out of Puerto Tranquilo which cost around £10.
I hiked 2 trails in Parque Exploradores to the viewpoints of the Explorers Glacier and Explorers Valley. There is an entrance fee of approximately £4 to access the 2 hiking trails.
Parque Exploradores is approximately 50km from Puerto Tranquilo down Route X78. You can find this route by turning left just before the bridge as you are heading north on the Carretera Austral out of Puerto Tranquilo.
The border of Laguna San Rafael National Park is approximately 32km along route X78 from Puerto Tranquilo. There are more details about the national park on the CONAF website in Spanish.
I stayed at Apart Hotel y Cabanas Valles Exploradores in Puerto Tranquilo. A 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom cabin cost approximately £88 per night. The hotel website is in Spanish but you can use Google translate to see it in English. The hotel is also on various hotel booking websites. I booked through booking.com.
I booked my pick up truck with Keddy by Europcar through an intermediary in the UK. It cost me approximately £52 per day for a 4WD 4 door pick up truck.
I flew to Balmaceda Airport from Puerto Montt with Latam which cost £54 return. Checked luggage and seat reservation are extra.
Read my tips about driving the Carretera Austral
Driving the Carretera Austral – My Tips
Read about my first day of driving on the Carretera Austral
Driving South on the Carretera Austral
Read the three part series about my hike on the W Trek in Torres del Paine
The Lazy Writer’s W Trek – Days 1 & 2
The Lazy Writer’s W Trek – Days 3 & 4
The Lazy Writer’s W Trek – Day 5 & Glacier Grey
Read about my other adventures in Chile
Rafting and Canyoning in Futaleufu
Read about my experience driving the tourist routes on Prince Edward Island
North Cape Coastal Drive Part 1
North Cape Coastal Drive Part 2
Cavendish and the Rotating House of North Rustico
