We continued south along the western shore of Lago Carrera this morning to the exceptionally small town of El Maiten and a road junction. Right is to Villa O'Higgins and the end of the Carretera Austral and left is to Chili Chico and the Argentine border. We are going right, but will be back as the O'Higgins road is a deadend.

After El Maiten we followed the shores of Lago Bertrand for a few kms to Puerto Bertrand and then the mighty Rio Baker. This river drains Lago Carrera and through it a huge area of Patagonia (26,487 square km). At this point in its travels it is relatively narrow, extremely fast, turquoise in color and as we would see over the next miles has cut some impressive canyons.

Just before the town of Cochrane there is a fine view from the road of the junction of the Baker with the Rio Chucabuco. We got really lucky at this point in the road as we came upon a small herd of Guanaco, another of the four members of the camelid family (Llama, Alpacha, Vicuna, and Guanaco). This was a real treat as these are only found in Patagonia.

The township of Cochrane is a supply center for the area and is likely to become a booming construction town if plans for hydro electricity development in Patagonia go ahead. It had a really interesting general store. Not only could we buy food, assorted hardware items, and clothing but if we had wanted we could have got one of a number of outboard motors, a range of gasoline generators, and if we had a team of oxen and wanted to do some heavy hauling we could have bought a harness including the wooden neck halter. It is a different world down here that is for sure.