Sixty Degrees of Latitude…

First presented in preview form here Sixty Degrees of Latitude is here at last and available to order. 132 pages of interesting photography, printed on a very high quality ‘lustre’ finish paper.  It is not a travelog as such, nor is it exclusively street photography. Rather it is just a look at some of the places in between on my cycle journey through the Andes. Of course I’d be very happy if you all ordered a copy.. and you “should”* if you like interesting photography… or are interested in South America.. or bicycles and travel by bike.. and especially if you enjoyed reading this blog as I pedalled my way along through the Andes ;-)

You can preview the book in full below and order directly here

“A journey by bicycle following the spine of the Andes from a latitude of approximately 5 degrees north in Colombia to 55 degrees south at the tip of Tierra del Fuego. These are some of the places in between.”

Sixty Degrees of Latitude by Mike Hayes | Make Your Own Book

Granted it is not dirt cheap, such is the cost of print on demand, but it is a very high quality book and to put it in context.. for £25 you can go and buy 70 pages of rather dull (in my humble opinion of course ;-) photography in the form of Moby’s new book.. because he is Moby.. or you can have this instead <hint>.

cheero!

to El Chalten & the land of the gloriously shagged… (American truck)

I lost my lucky hat… the one that, when I wear it, has women falling at my feet… <cough>.  I lost it in the gale of wind crossing Lago O’Higgins on the boat. But it’s OK, being well prepared as always I have a back-up hat, a woolly one from home in Cornwall. Given its origins I may well find it to be attractive to birdshit instead :-)

Villa O'Higgins... a wet afternoon

Villa O'Higgins

I was happy to stay in Villa O’Higgins as long as necessary, it was a great place and with access to a woodburning oven I baked fresh bread.. perfect for a cold and stormy day. The weather eased enough for the boat depart on Thursday, but earlier than the usual time so it was a hideously early start, riding the very last 7km of the Carretera Austral to the lake in a light rain at stupid o’clock in the morning.

the boat to Candelario Mansilla... look at all those bikes! This crossing is very much a cyclist bottleneck

It is a 2 1/2hr journey south down the lake and a hideously expensive one at that. With the sole concession on the lake and with a steady trickle of tourists on package tours wanting to see glaciers and the like the price has been jacked up from 12,000 pesos just a couple of years ago to 40,000 now.. US$80. But they did offer a free paper cup of coffee, instant of course….

The rain cleared shortly after departure and it was enjoyable ride down the lake provided one did not think too much about the somewhat alarming list to starboard and the rather knackered, mostly deflated zodiac hanging limply over the stern…

leaving Chile by the back door...

We, as in Nina, myself and another cyclist, Patrick, left the boat at the slipway and stunningly situated immigration post known as Candelario Mansilla. With passports stamped we were off. 17km of steep, loose, stony track through the mountains to the border with Argentina followed by another 7km of nicely tight and technical singletrack in a forest.. this section was fantastic and frustrating in equal measure. Some nice twisty, rocky and rooty sections to test bike handling skills… interesting on a fully loaded bike.. but also sections ankle deep in stinking, oozing mud and to finish sections of sunken trail, maybe 2 feet deep and not wide enough for panniers to fit through. A lot of lifting and hauling. I managed to ride about 90% of it but wrenched my shoulder badly flying over the handlebars while trying to ride one section I should probably not have even attempted. It will need attention when I get home I think but there you go, occupational hazard despite which it was a lot of fun.

bridges needed a little attention...

...or in some cases a lot of attention. It was a 5ft drop to the river..

terrific, traffic free riding :-)

.. and so a return to Argentina. Patrick says 'cheese'...

I rode the whole section  maybe a little too aggressively getting myself and my bike filthy in the process… Nina showed up at the northern end of Lago Desierto about 40 minutes after I did looking absolutely pristine… women, how do they do that? Patrick was a little slower again, handicapped on the rough stuff by his drop handlebars and relatively skinny 700C rubber.

singletrack...

Lago Desierto.. Fitzroy sadly hiding in the cloud at the southern end.

It was pleasant dozing in the sun by the Argentine immigration shack while waiting for the boat to the southern end of the lake. When it arrived it turned out to be a tour boat so when it finally departed at 7pm it wasn’t a case of straight down the lake, rather a lot of faffing and messing about at the edges of the lake while the tourists on board climbed and elbowed their way over other to take pictures of a couple of very average, and very small waterfalls.

mm, quite nice here, evening views riding south from Lago Desierto

Back on dry land and back firmly in tourist land. Los Glaciares is Argentinas most popular national park. There is a camp ground near where the boat landed but being holiday season it looked hideous with kids running around so we rode a few km further and camped in the peaceful forest much to the bemusement of the occupants a passing tourist bus that stopped to look at a nearby waterfall. Honestly you’d think some folk had never seen feral cyclists… or waterfalls for that matter.

cool bridges on the road south to El Chalten

When he’s not riding Patrick fights forest fires back home in his native Canada so it was no suprise he was keen to make a big campfire, and one that he managed to revive again for breakfast. It was much appreciated, the morning dawned very cold and cloudy so it was nice to warm toes and dry wet shoes over breakfast :-) Amazingly Patrick works with the helicopter pilot that dropped myself and 3 friends deep into the Purcell Mountains, BC, for a wild climbing expedition back in 2001. Small world :-)

another cold, bleak morning. Great place to ride though :-)

From camp to El Chalten… 37km or rough dirt road. Quite beautiful and with a fresh tailwind. El Chalten itself is a small town of about 3000 people in a fabulously windswept location. The last few km into town we flew over the ripio at 50km/hr with a screaming gale at our backs :-)

Argentine ripio. No different to Chilean but this morning I found it hurt more than the Carretera. Tiredness perhaps or memory of being beaten up by many many km of the stuff in the north of Argentina

to El Chalten

Thanks to it’s location El Chalten is also the trekking capital of Argentina. If the town has a soundtrack it is the tap tap tap of trekking poles on the pavement. Zip-off trousers and shiny North Face branded gear much in evidence here… The town only really ‘started’ about 25yrs ago. It is a strange mix of outback scruff and modern tourist facility. Small buildings sprout from the scrubby landscape and the town has quite a collection of battered old caravans firmly tied down against the wind. It feels quite strange to be back on the tourist trail but the excellent bakeries and reasonably well stocked supermarkets are quite welcome. There is no bank but there is an ATM… empty of money 99% of the time. Strangely the Argentinians have not cottoned on to the fact that lack of ready cash is throttling the local economy.

the great cliffs of Cerro Torre hiding in the clouds...

out for a hike :-)

I bumped into Kevin the motorcyclist again here. He’s good company, we got quite drunk on some fine, dark Argentine ale :-)

El Chalten... caravans tethered in the wind

El Chalten

So, as I write I have been here 2 days. Today is a much needed rest day, I have a significant sleep debt and my hands, face, feet and so on are raw and bleeding thanks to the cold, the alternating dry & wet and the wind so I need to start getting that healed. Yesterday was a terrific 5hr hike up to Cerro Torre and tomorrow I will do the same to Fitzroy, 8hrs away. Nina and Patrick leave town tomorrow but I have company yet in the form of Ennis & Dina who made it here yesterday after taking an extended boat ride to the O’Higgins glacier :-)

Hurrah! Argentina, the land of the gloriously shagged American pickup

I am certain it is just fatigue, motivation to ride is low today. I suspect however may be partly the thought of returning to Argentinas ruta 40. Last ridden long ago in the north I think the stretches ahead of me maybe just as arid and difficult, albeit somewhat colder… I am hanging on to the thought that some decent stretches of it, in theory, should be blessed with fresh tailwinds :-)

.. and the not so shagged. This one was for sale... now there is temptation ;-)

Jedi cat & the end of the Carretera Austral

Surely cows need to sleep too? It was a question I asked myself many times while camped on a farm one night out from Cochrane. Throughout the night, like a foghorn going off and with the same mechanical regularity. Every 5 seconds or so a great bellow that not even my earplugs could attenuate. Still, it was not all bad.. a night in a beautiful spot on the banks of a river, oven-fresh bread courtesy of ‘farmers wife’ and a terrific chunk of BBQ’d chicken to take with me on the road next day.

Cochrane.. weathered.

sadly Chile lacks Argentinas fantastic old American cars and pickups. Just boring but functional Japanese stuff in evidence

I had needed an extra day of rest in Cochrane, feeling quite run down with a bit of a sore throat. The Carretera and its consistently difficult surfaces and weather was slowly wearing me down… but no matter, Cochrane was a fine place to hang out, muy tranquilo.. nothing much in town to look at as such.. except perhaps the ‘supermarket’.. stocking the usual limited selection of foodstuffs it was nevertheless reassuring to know that, should it be necessary, one could pick up a handgun or rifle along with a selection of truck tyres with the weekly grocery shop.

fine views on the road southwest from Cochrane. This pic so needs a cyclist in it...

Leaving town I met Kevin the motorcyclist from New Jersey. He was just in the business of rolling up his bivy by the side of the road where he’d spent the night. He had been on the road for 2 years from home, ridden all the way down, taking his time, exploring all the little places in-between. Having had so much time to think, accumulate baggage and so on he said he was increasingly keen to trade his well-worn and battered motorcycle for the “simple, elegant purity of a bicycle” (his words!)… his offer of a trade was only half joking but I said if he could wait until Ushuaia, he is headed that way too eventually, I might be persuaded to sell him mine ;-)

it could have been a fine descent but the headwind was so strong and the surface so soft I pedalled hard all the way down. At just 15km/hr..

It was a slow day out of Cochrane, reluctant legs as always after more than a day off, a lot of climbing and a fresh headwind so I camped early, turning west off the Carretera after 48km to ride another 3km along a wooded track to reach the aforementioned farm. Arriving at 2pm gave me lots of time to slob out in the shade with some reading and multiple mugs of tea :-)

mmm, thank you Farmers Wife .. :-)

The afternoon of rest paid off, my legs were in much better shape in the morning. It was a beautiful day for riding too.. warm in the sunshine with a pleasantly chill wind coming down from the icecaps to the west. A headwind but not too vicious. Ideal for the final 89km to Tortel but the headwind and poor state of the ripio meant I needed 7 1/2 hrs to get there.. 5 1/2hrs riding time.

coffee brewing...

a fine day to ride

a rare sighting of a road grading machine. It makes bugger all difference, just redistributes the rocks...

Leaving the rainshadow of the icecap the terrain turned back to thick rainforest, humid in the afternoon heat. The final 20km or so followed along the banks of the Rio Baker, small settlements in the wilderness on the opposite bank of the very full, somnolent river combined with the heat & humidity gave the scenery something of a Heart of Darkness feel.

descending with the Rio Baker

small farms along the banks of the river

Met a friendly Dutchman (aren’t they all?!) on arrival and went off for a terrific slab of local salmon and a number of beers. Peter was hitch-hiking his way north. It had taken him 4 days just to get out of Villa O’Higgins…

Tortel

Tortel then,.. a remarkable place. A village of houses perched on the steep sides of a series of rocky bays. The location is incredible, the sole reason for the place is the Cypress that grows on the mountainsides in the area. Between 1954 and 2003 the only access was by sea or air. A spur off the Carretera Austral connected it to the rest of Chile in 2003.

Tortel

There are no streets as such rather the hillsides and waterfronts are covered with a tracery of wooden walkways. The entire town is built from the same fragrant cypress which gives the town its reason to be. One wonders how frequently house fires occur.. There is a firestation.. a small red hut on the hillside with a small wooden motorboat, red hoses coiled on the cabin roof, moored below.

Tortel

Tortel

Tortel

Tortel, muy tranquilo

Tortel... the solution to a herb and vegetable garden when you live on a cliff

an engine waiting for a boat.. or a boat waiting for an engine..?

It rained during the day I spent exploring, the clouds came down thick over the enormous snow-capped cliffs behind the village and great waterfalls, cascading thousands of feet down the almost sheer rock faces, sprang into being where none were before. Beautiful.

Tortel

Tortel

Tortel.. the vuillage spreads around a few bays, all connected by cedar boardwalks

cypress logs are ripped into boards using a chainsaw on a slider.

old & new... fresh & weathered...

Tortel

Tortel

From Tortel the road crosses a steep mountain pass, following the Rio Vagabundo, to Puerto Yungay 50km later. Puerto Yungay barely registers on the map.. a couple of huts and a slipway.

the road to P.Yungay

a heck of an engineering job, the road is carved out of the mountains

I arrived, along with Ennio and Dina that I first met on New Year in good time for the third and last ferry of the day at 6pm.

P.Yungay.. some huts and a goalpost..

a pile of Lego bricks in P.Yungay.. the ferry is a free ride as a fundamental connection on the Carretera

Alonside the slipway there is a small kiosco run by a precocious 8yr old and her mellow father. The first thing the little girl, whose name completely escaped me, said to me was “como se dice ‘once’ en Ingles”. “Eleven” I said. She proudly counted to eleven in English before introducing me to the first of her pets… a long suffering shaggy dog decked out in a pair of pink tracksuit bottoms.. the creature had very much an air of having given up protesting such treatment long ago as it shuffled around the yard between periods of dozing in the shade. The second pet I suspect will be long suffering but at present is too young. A fluffy little grey kitten with a sneeze. The third had neither trousers nor a sneeze… a tiny blue hummingbird, dead since it flew into the window, housed in a little nest above the wall clock. She told me she was the only little girl in the village  as I sipped at my coffee and watched an upturned icecream tub with little grey paws shuffle across the floor. Yup, the kitten is in for a ‘busy’ time…

el gato Jedi..

An hour later on a cold, bleak evening the ferry dropped us and the one motorvehicle on board at a remote slipway. We camped for the night just one km further on at the top of another, disused slipway.

bleak...

my artfully distressed and weathered kitchen windbreak. No doubt if I could get it to London someone would pay a wedge for that so they could use it at Glastonbury ;-)

just so you know whose house this is...

The final 100km of the Carretera Austral are a suitably wild and woolly ending. A fabulous, albeit rough  mountain track that carves it’s way through a wonderful wilderness of forests, sub-alpine scrub and dark, windswept lakes in the shadow of snowcapped peaks.

heavy traffic on the Carretera

initially alongside the Rio Bravo...

.. with the occasional farm carved out of the forest..

.. before climbing steeply...

... & climbing some more...

.. into the misty mountains

Some very steep climbs along the way test the legs but reward the effort with terrific views. It is a very quiet stretch, I saw just 2 vehicles all day.. and a few horses and the giant hares that are everywhere down here. For lunch I sat on some old bridge timbers while watching the antics of a small rock from within the shelter of my rainjacket.

spectacular breaks in the cloud after lunch

& some excellent dead trees

I park my bike with pride...

I had 70km under my wheels for the day when I experienced an overwhelming desire to sit by a windswept lake with tea and cake.. very English… so I wedged my tent in the shelter behind a large rock and sat out on a rock in the gale with a brew and the homemade cake I bought from the chap at Puerto Yungay. Possibly the most expensive cake in the world. I ate it all of course.

wind-streaked highland lakes

a small patch of shelter for the night

.. and a fine view to wake up to :-)

The final 30km into Villa O’Higgins in patchy rain were ace. I met a Kiwi couple on bikes heading north so swapped all their Argentine pesos for a wedge of Chilean ones. Found my legs too and steamed the last 10km at 30km/hr, flying over the rocks and corrugations. It felt good.
Villa O’Higgins is the end of the road, and it feels it too. The Carretera reached here in 2000. Prior to that time the few hundred inhabitants traded in Argentine pesos. Strictly speaking the Carretera ends 7km further south on the shores of Lago O’Higgins, the deepest lake in the entire Americas… 836m at it’s deepest point.

remote.. Villa O'Higgins

Villa O'Higgins

For motorised traffic there is no option but to turn around and head back at least as far as Cochrane… haha! For the cyclist or those on foot however there is a more interesting option for getting into Argentina… somewhat dependent on the weather I am waiting here now for a day or two, along with Ennis & Dina, and kiwi Nina for the gales to abate…. No bad thing, I enjoy days filled with copious quantities of bugger all. Also time for the glue to cure on my cycling shoes. Glued in Bolivia after a hammering I may have been better off buying new but decided to take my chances… and take some glue as well :-)

So, there you have it.. the Carretera Austral, 1200km long plus detours. 1000km of dirt and about 200 of asphalt. Brilliant.

Villa O'Higgins

Villa O'Higgins

p.s in case you are wondering a word may be in order about the O’Higgins chap whose name graces many streets, towns and lakes here in Chile. In short he was the leader who, along with Jose San Martin, freed Chile from the rule of the Spanish during the War of Independence. If you wish to know more of course then point your browser at Wikipedia as usual ;-)

Villa O'Higgins

Los Exploradores and other places..

Somewhat stupidly I never really expected Patagonia to do heat.. proper, intense, stuffy heat that causes your eyes to fill with sweat on the climbs and leaves the taste of flinty dust in your mouth as you ride. But it does and it does it well. The last 7 days have seen a spell of almost unbroken sunshine and increasing heat day by day. The last couple of evenings I’ve watched from my tent with a sense of anticipation as storm clouds threatened to the east.. but each time they come to nothing and the next morning dawns hotter and more sultry than the one before. Remarkably the last 2 days have not seen even a breath of wind…. indeed it is preferable to heavy rain and cold… but for the the bugs. They like the heat. Big, chunky flies with a set of jaws that will go through thin cycling clothing with ease. I have never come across such aggressive creatures that appear to positively relish a drop of bug repellent on their meat. They follow their meals on wheels at remarkably high speeds and on the climbs one can watch the shadows of hundreds of the little beasties following in your slipstream. But don’t let that put you off visiting :-)

the track west past the impossibly blue Lago Tranquilo

Anyway, I digress… from Rio Tranquilo then I pointed my wheels west up into the Valle de los Exploradores… It was a slow day at an average of barely 11km/hr The track is in poor condition and the cold wind was fresh from the west but I barely noticed either of those things. The scenery was wonderful.. and wonderfully empty. All day while riding I saw one person and he was a friendly old chap on horseback. Perfect. The night before a bus of Israeli backpackers had arrived in Rio Tranquilo.. in a place so small they are hard to ignore, indeed in packs their behaviour often has more in common with the flies, an angry sort of buzz that is always there. All over S America there are some establishments with signs saying “no Israelis”. Oh if I could have a cycling jersey that said “no flies please”.

mmmm... montañas :-)

Anyway, the track wound its way west through ever more spectacular scenery, past waterfalls and below hanging glaciers gleaming in the sun. I sat and ate a lunch of bread and avocadoes by a terrific waterfall cascading down a granite cliff while a pair of enormous Condors circled lazily overhead in a crystal blue sky. There are pumas in these forests too though I doubt one will ever show itself.

as the valley narrowed the road got better and better... in a manner of speaking, the surface was terrible :-)

some of the finest riding for a long time

waterfalls line the track

and many small wooden bridges. The plan is, eventually, to take this road all the way to the Bahia Exloradores and Parque Laguna San Rafael... whether it is ever completed remains to be seen...

many hanging glaciers along the way

44km up the valley I came to the house of an enthusiastically friendly German couple, Katrin and Tomas who have been living out there in the wilderness for 10 years with a couple of spare rooms for guests that make the effort to head out that way. The live a sustainable lifestyle and they even have a 10KW water turbine in one of the streams cascading down the cliffs behind their house. They proved to be engaging company so I pitched my tent in a small clearing in the rainforest behind their house before continuing west on my bike to the Exploradores glacier and a fine view of the edge of the San Valentin section of the permanent icecap.

further west towards the icecap

I took my stove and a fruitloaf with me so at 5pm I sat looking out over the glacier with a very English mug of tea and slab of cake brought from Rio Tranquilo… ah, who am I kidding, I ate the whole cake.

the Exploradores Glacier comes down from the San Valentin icecap

That evening my stove remained cold… the prospect of a delicious homecooked dinner of slow cooked lamb and potatoes cooked by Katrin was too good to ignore :-)

rainforest camp

Tomas & Katrins wilderness gaff

In no hurry to head back to the Carretera I spent a lazy morning exploring the local area on bike and foot before moving camp further west along the valley to a sublime spot where, in the warm sun, a swim before dinner seemed a fine idea. It was a very short swim. The lake is fed by the glaciers. It felt good though as did the evening as I sat by my driftwood fire and watched the sun set behind the peaks and glaciers to the west.

some exploring without baggage..

a fine place to camp

The plan was to wake up to a fabulous view of the snowy peaks to the west bathed in early morning sunlight… Typically however the cloud was down around the mountains, its cold, damp tendrils wrapped themselves around me as I thought “oh sod it I’ll swim anyway”. It was just 7am but when I’m hungry I get restless, and it is light from 4.30am at the moment. It was ‘refreshing’.

a cold and cloudy morning

On my way back east down the valley I called in on Tomas and Katrin to say farewell and thanks for the good grub but mother in law answered the door, both of them were in bed with a fever :-( So with no further reason to linger and with the wind at my back I got on with the business of enjoying the ride.

a difficult surface

As I moved east I left the cloud behind and arrived back in Rio Tranquilo in time for a late lunch in glorious sunshine. While I wolfed down empanadas at a cafe a local chap enthusiastically told me about the fishing out west where I had been. Salmon as large as 30kg he said… huge fish. Dubious as it sounds I had met a German chap fishing here a few days earlier an he showed me photos of salmon he’d caught well over 20kg… so 30kg.. believable I think. That’s the size of a sheep, would certainly fill the freezer nicely :-)

New Years Eve. No-one in Rio Tranquilo had Cerveza Austral, just this. One learns to endure such hardship when travelling by bike. It´s not a bad beer really.

On the way through Rio Tranquilo, outside the grocery store, I spotted a fleet of 4 familiar looking bicycles with Rohloff hubs and the butterfly bars favoured by Euro cyclists. It was the Swiss gang I’d met on the boat from Chaiten 3 weeks earlier. They were buying beer for New Years Eve, something I had quite forgotten about. They said “oh we are camped 1km south by the beach, you should join us”. So I did. Instant New Years party. Hurrah! Had this been Argentina of course meat for the BBQ would have been easy to come by. In Rio Tranquilo however not even the carniceria had anything more substantial than miserable little paper thin hamburgers wrapped in plastic. Ugh. I had cleverly dumped mine, along with the bread, avocadoes and so on by my tent while I took my beer down to the beach. With the fire glowing and ready for cooking I went back to my tent to find a telepathic cat enjoying the thawing burgers. Telepathic because the moment I swore quietly and thought about skinning and cooking it instead of burgers it scarpered.

the early hours of 2011 looked like this...

2011 dawned absolutely windless, cloudless and already hot when I rolled out relatively late at 10.30am. I’d had a rough night with streaming nose.. a head cold and nothing to do with beer… so when, after just 44km, I came to the suspension bridge across the straits where the clear waters of Lago Carrera pour at a rate of knots into Lago Bertrand I decided to camp on the tiny pebble beach below the bridge.

Lago Carrera looking improbably coloured in places...!

With very little traffic on the Carretera it was a peaceful night. Until 3am when someone thought it a good idea to ride a horse across the metal deck plates of the bridge. The weird and awful racket woke me up, I got out my tent in a daze thinking the world was going to end until I eventually realised what was going on :-)

a cool camp with nice swimming

camp kitchen

bracing cables for the bridge useful for drying clothes :-)

Awake at 6 with the sun streaming into my tent I was on the road at 8am in the relative cool so it was a nice ride to Puerto Bertrand and a cafe in the forest with decent coffee and kuchen too good to resist… Most expensive cake stop in the world though I think at about £8 for coffee and cake.

another fabulous morning. Already hot by 9am

I met familiar cyclists again on this stretch. The Carretera brings together cyclists journeying from all over South America, concentrates them into one southerly bottle neck like grains of sand in an hourglass :-)

Puerto Bertrand

Puerto Bertrand

Beyond Puerto Bertrand there are few places to camp and it turned into a proper climbing day. There are three successive climbs of around 600m each with no respite. All steep with grades up to around 20% on a very difficult surface… soft and heavily corrugated. The heat was intense with no wind and there was possibility to camp and no water so I just put my head down and hammered all the way to Cochrane.

cyclists disappear in the dust

Hard climbing suits me but I still felt a bit funny when I arrived at 4.30pm.. a litre of chocolate milk, an icecream and finally a cold beer sorted that out :-)

these signs are bad. For some reason this one appeared after 6km of climbing, perhaps just to remind one that the road is hard

whereas these ones are good... especially if equipped with a hover car as this one appears to indicate....

hot and dusty, the final welcome descent towards Cochrane

Cochrane is another one of those frontier sort of places. Feels a bit like Las Lajas in Argentina.. in the rainshadow of the icecap to the west it is hot, dusty and a little bit scruffy with very little life evident when I rolled into town.

Cochrane

in Cochrane, on a Sunday, fast food is very, very slow...

I’ve only been here about 18hrs and already stitched up. I took a cheap room in a little hospedaje. The chap of the house, a laid back sort, said “yeah, wash your clothes in the kitchen, no problem.” So I did.. or rather I got halfway through before the lady of the house walked in, one of those small, wrinkled but determined types, and gave me a proper ear bending… I was consigned to an old bucket in the dusty yard for the remainder.

Happy New Year and thanks for reading in 2010!

Cochrane... a happening place

Costa Rica…. (or not ;-)

I lay in my tent listening to the rain pattering on the fly and huge gusts of wind tearing through the forest like cannon balls… each one followed moments later by a violent shudder in my tent as it flexed heavily in the wind. I watched my breath mist in the cold air above my sleeping bag and thought “Why am I not in Costa Rica..?” It was the day before Christmas…

the road from Coyhaique

I did not leave Coyhaique until the morning of the 23rd, the fault of a pair of tall Australian girls that moved into my room on the evening of the 21st. I’d just polished off a number of late afternoon beers with my German friends & planned an early night ready to hit the road on the morning of the 22nd. It was not to be. They proved excellent company with tales of their visit to Antarctica and it was a late night. The necessary coffee the next morning lasted until midday so that was pretty much that for the day :-)

the road to Cerro Castillo.. stunning but oh so windy...

When I did get on my bike to leave my legs were feeling pretty dead… another late night and a number of Cerveza Australs in a bar in town. Christmas :-) My bike was heavy too, I had taken the opportunity of the last good supermarket for a long time to stock up for a few days. As we parted ways I distinctly remember saying “ah, should be an easy day – the road is surfaced for the next 100km (the last of the paving until beyond the end of the Carretera) and I don’t think there is too much in the way of climbing”… So at 3pm, legs complaining from having climbed for 15km into the teeth of a gale I’d had enough after just 63km.

mmmm :-)

I camped by a wild lake in the Reserva Nacional Cerro Castillo, not quite a national park but a protected region nevertheless.. probably just as well, south of Coyhaique the hillsides have undergone massive deforestation in the interests of cattle grazing… the giant bones of dead trees litter the hillsides slowly bleaching in the weather. The reserve however is quite beautiful with tall snow covered peaks, thick forest and rushing rivers.

fabulous hairpins... going down in my case :-)

I said “camped”.. “tried to camp” might have been more appropriate. The trees by the lake offered some reasonable shelter, certainly the best around, but not always enough for the heaviest gusts. As I carefully staked the flysheet out a great gust barrelled in, tore the tent out of my hands and wrapped it around a nearby barbed wire fence with predictably dire consequences… I swore… barbed wire.. Wilderness. The middle of nowhere.. and someone sees fit to stick a barbed bloody wire fence in. Stupid. I got the tent pitched eventually but not without it being flattened a couple of times while I got the extra guy lines in. I have since bent the poles back into shape best I can but they still look a bit funny… It took me an hour to patch the holes in the fly and it was not long before I had the chance to find out of my repairs were waterproof. I cooked dinner contendedly huddled in a lean-to provided by the forestry service watching raindrops hiss on the logs in my fire.

Cerro Castillo

I didn’t get a lot of sleep that night and despite a couple of mugs of strong coffee with breakfast my legs felt utterly empty as I rolled away from my camp in a light rain shower. After an initial downhill I grovelled uphill for another 18km or so into storm force winds, being blown right off the road on a number of occasions, before the road finally turned downwards properly through spectacular scenery and some fun hairpins to the little pueblo of Cerro Castillo. I had only ridden 35km. It felt like 135.

Cerro Castillo

One of the reasons I’m not in Costa Rica of course is that the intensity of life, the intensity of emotion that  goes with difficult riding in wild places is addictive. I’d been feeling pretty low as I battled the gales but when a friendly chap in Cerro Castillo put a beer and a large plate of chicken and potatoes in front of me as I sat looking out at the snow covered peaks I could not have been happier. It is a marvellous and addictive drug. I felt fantastic.. ignoring the dull ache in my legs of course. I didn’t have it in me to continue fighting the winds with tired legs that afternoon so I decided to stick around, rest my legs and tidy up the repairs on my tent. I took a room in a bright green house with ceiling and doorways better suited to hobbits.. I have bruises.

Cerro Castillo

Cerro Castillo was a terrific place… picturesquely ramshackle with streets a blend of rubble and wind-blown sand and a friendly bunch of locals. I chatted in chileno-spanglish to some guys on the highway for a while, they were trying to hitch with little success back to their homes for Christmas. Sensibly they had a box of wine to pass the time with.

most of these tiny hamlets have a decent communications array.. for the folk living out of town VHF radio is the only means of communication

For dinner I ate a burger with a huge mountain view from a joint on the highway fabricated from two old buses welded together with a grill and some seats installed.

Cerro Castillo

dining Cerro Castillo style

Christmas morning.. as hoped for I had an awesome sleep and felt much refreshed but sadly my other Christmas wish was not granted, the wind was still raging outside. At breakfast my host told me what I already knew.. I had 70km of dirt road directly into the wind before the road turned south towards Bahia Murta at 100km.. Happy Christmas he said :-)

from the road out of Cerro Castillo. Patagonia does booming great views very well... when it isn't raining ;-)

Rolling west out of Cerro Castillo at 9.30, tyre pressures dropped for the dirt, I mentally prepared for a tough day. I figured if I could make 60km I would be happy.. either that or simply stop around 4pm. The first few km were very difficult, uphill on a heavily cambered surface so loose and corrugated as to resemble a beach. The wind was so fierce and traction so lacking that gusts simply blew me sideways, tyres skidding in the dirt. I made 6km in the first hour… but knowing that even the shittiest road has to get better at some point I simply got my head down and kept the pedals spinning as best I could… The scenery was fabulous.

remarkable colouration in some of the lakes and rivers

My average speed just about sneaked into double figures (km/hr) for the day mainly due to the forested sections offering some respite from the wind and later on as the weather became damp the surface changed from loose corrugations to a nice hardpacked damp clay along the Rio Ibanez valley.

the track/road is just visible to the right of this pic

more weather approaching from the west in the Rio Ibanez valley

After lunch the road climbed for hours away from the valley, high into the clouds just below the lying snow.. it was a wild and lonely stretch, all day I had seen just two pickups and woken an old sheperd dozing by the side of the track :-)

descending to the Rio Murta

From the top of the pass I enjoyed a fast and winding descent into the brooding Rio Murta valley… it is the kind of place that feels as if the sun never shines. By 4pm I had just about made 70km so stopped and made camp on the banks of the Rio Murta.

the Rio Murta

A stunning spot I was briefly tempted to camp out on the gravel flood plain itself in full view of the mist covered mountains.. but thought better of it and instead chose the shelter of the trees. With tent up and tea brewing it was time to open my Christmas present… all the way from home, thanks Mum  :-)

Chocolate Santa had been well wrapped, only his feet were a little crushed :-)

I dozed for an hour in my tent before dinner.. with iPod on shuffle the first track was Apertura from the Motorcycle Diaries.. highly appropriate, gives me goosebumps.

Christmas Day evening, the view from my camp

An awesome day of riding and an awesome way to spend Christmas. No turkey or xmas pud for dinner sadly but I was quite proud of my cheese risotto followed by oranges, chocolate and another mug of tea that I enjoyed sitting in a light rain on a great old tree trunk by the river :-)
It rained heavily all night.. the flood plain was under an inch of water when I crawled out of my tent. Good decision ;-)

in Bahia Murta

It was just 38km along the river to the tiny village of Bahia Murta on the shores of Lago General Carrera, at 1000sq.km I think the second largest lake in South America. The village was dead.

more weather coming ;-)

I knocked on the door of a place with a sign saying “comida”. The lady looked surprised to see me but said if I was happy to wait she could cook lunch for me. So I sat with a beer watching a tethered horse eating one of her rosebushes from across the fence. Lunch was awesome, a great slab of fried meat with chips, salad and bread all swimming in oil, salt and chilli sauce :-) Yum.

a curious onlooker.. Bahia Murta

So it was thus fuelled, perhaps inappropriately for cycling, that I headed back out to the Carretera from Bahia Murta only to spot a pair of familiar German bicycles in the garden of a little hosteria…

the road from Bahia Murta, with friends again

We rode just another 12km before pitching tents in a stunning wild spot on the shores of the lake with a great waterfall cascading off the cliffs behind. Here it was possible to enjoy the novel sensation of being rained upon without getting wet. The rain swept down off the mountains all afternoon but the combined sun and wind evaporated the moisture at such a rate we were never more than slightly damp.

resting legs in front of the camp at Lago General Carrera. It is raining in this picture...

That changed once the sun went down behind the mountains and we ate dinner by a fire on the beach with our backs to the rain and wind.  ”It’s an awesome life” I thought as I crawled into my sleeping bag at 9 “good job I didn’t go to Costa Rica instead”. It would not be Patagonia without the wind, the rain and the cold.  ;-)

it looked inviting... but it is bollock-achingly cold

la vida es buena

a fabulously wild sky :-)

.. and for breakfast.. a rainbow :-)

but then the sun came out and for once it was dry when breaking camp. This has to be one of my best wild camp spots ever

Feeling somewhat buggered by the hard riding from Cerro Castillo the onwards plan was simply to break camp late and cruise the 20km along the lakeshore as slowly as possible to the pueblo of Rio Tranquilo. This stretch I think was the most stunning stretch of riding I have enjoyed anywhere. Ever. The layers of blues in the lake, distant mountains and sky and, where sheltered from the omnipresent gales, the air thick with the scent of the abundant wildflowers. The microclimate here on the western edge of the lake is much drier than in the surrounding mountains and valleys. The sun shone all day, I grabbed the opportunity for some context riding pics :-)

Rio Tranquilo lives up to it’s a name, a small grid of houses by a beach with a great wall of snowcapped peaks all around. Something like 500 people live here, the remoteness means everything costs the proverbial limb or two, certainly pricier than the average European country, and most folk carry VHF radios rather than mobiles.

Rio Tranquilo

when the sun shines here it is truly magnificent but I have also grown to appreciate the moodiness of the wet days, those are special too

A day off here is in order to rest legs, make use of the glacially slow internet connection and so on. I have a bed in a little yellow corrugated house where the curtains are tied back during the day with forks stuck in the rough-hewn windowframes and my bike is round the back with the chickens :-)

Rio Tranquilo has a stop sign. Possibly the only one within 200km :-)

My occasional companions have continued on south but we will meet again. For me.. from here I plan to leave the Carretera Austral for a few days and head west on a track that goes out towards the Bahia San Rafael…  it’s a dead end and a wild one at that but with time on my side there is no reason not to go and have a look :-)

Rio Tranquilo

Rio Tranquilo

Rio Tranquilo

Rio Tranquilo.. the supermarket..

.. and the church. About all there is to the place along with a few houses..

.. and a few cafes like this one where for dinner I sat next to a dead cow under the telly. The TV soaps really are that bad :-)

Feliz Navidad and all that..

I shall wish you all Happy Christmas now in case, as seems likely, I don’t get another chance.. I hope you have a terrific time. I shall be on the road I have decided, it seems highly likely I will be able to link up with my German friends.. but if not it does not matter, I shall be surrounded by mountains and glaciers and all that kind of stuff.. so I shall be happy, even if it is raining… I shall also have a bottle of whisky with me on my bike. Too much sugar in rum I have decided to ensure a good nights sleep :-)

Coyhaique has been a pleasant place to enjoy some decent coffee, plenty of beer and conversation. In contrast to the surrounding areas it is a surprisingly normal feeling place..  I may be able to stay another day, in two minds.. my skin has not completely healed so half of me wants to get that fixed so that the sweat and rain and wind doesn’t make it worse again.. but I am also excited about the road ahead.. will decide in the morning. Buenas noches!

a rare and welcome glimpse of sparkly blue skies on midsummers day :-)

Coyhaique

Coyhaique

Coyhaique.. normal enough to have little yellow school buses..

.. and stray supermarket trolleys

...little white vans with white van men..

.. and the FBI.. I mean PDI. They are taught to hold their hands like that at PDI school

but despite all that normal stuff it is still a very picturesque little town

.. with plenty of beer.. for planning purposes

a Coyhaique … en bicicleta bajo la lluvia

“And as he drove on, the rain clouds dragged down the sky after him for, though he did not know it, Rob McKenna was a Rain God. All he knew was that his working days were miserable and he had a succession of lousy holidays. All the clouds knew was that they loved him and wanted to be near him, to cherish him and water him.“

Rain. I always think of Rob McKenna and the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy as I watch the spray coming from my front wheel.. however I am not miserable about rain as Rob was. There are many good things about riding in the rain like not needing to plaster ones-self in sunscreen and… umm…. well anyway, you don’t need sunscreen.

Puerto Puyuhuapi

…”never known a night like it..” the weather was wild with gale-force southerly winds and torrential rain during my second evening in Puyuhuapi. Handily my camping pitch came with access to a friendly little house with a very yellow dining room where, for a dinner of meat and bean stew, I sat at a rough-hewn bench and watched a very 1970′s pair of crooners in wedding attire – bearded man in white suit, lady, sadly not bearded, in wedding dress – singing some awful routine on telly. All I could think was how nicely the generally blue shade of the TV screen contrasted with the rough yellow painted panelling of the room :-) It was a rough night, very pleased I brought my Mountain Equipment tent rather than the flyweight Force Ten.

P.Puyuhuapi - fish farming

The storm blew itself out overnight and I pedalled out of town on a perfectly still morning. For about 30km the rough track wound its way along the shores of the fjord before heading up towards the climb of the day. It was one of those days when raingear is on and off all day… but mostly on.

along the road somewhere

The climb to the pass itself was a very loose, rutted affair – quite hard going but quite beautiful as the track switchbacked it’s way upwards through the dripping rainforest, past waterfalls and all the time in view of hanging glaciers and snow covered peaks amongst the swirling clouds.

some of that giant rhubarby stuff. Edible I have been told... mmm, would it go with tuna and rice?

As I climbed the rain got heavier and eventually turned to wet snow, it was pretty miserable up on the pass itself.. icy cold, wet and windy.

on the climb..

The descent was welcome, quite fun on a very steep, loose and rocky surface but sadly it didn’t escape the rain… which got heavier and heavier for a while before suddenly giving way to bright, blustery sunshine. The river valley in which I was riding which had been dark, cold and depressing was all of a sudden sparkling with greens, yellows and blues :-)

heavy skies

I’d met a German couple cycling in the rain, they were knackered and I was thinking of calling it a day after 90km anyway so I waited for them to catch up on a bridge near where I’d spotted some camping potential in the trees. There was a wicked little beach alongside the rather wild looking river that would have made a fantastically picturesque camping spot but being fully exposed to the strong winds and rain squalls it made sense to take to the shelter of the trees instead. The spot was on private land near a characterful old wooden house with chickens in the garden and a small vegetable plot.. no-one was home so, as it was raining again, we decided to pitch tents anyway and wait to see if anyone showed up.

the rivers hereabouts are a wonderful shade of blue

We had just got a fire going to dry out socks and so on when an inscrutable old chap in  frayed tweed coat and flat cap turned up with a machete in one hand and an axe in the other… mmm, could not tell at all what he was thinking as I said hello… he muttered something incomprehensible and turned & stomped up to the house. “Ooops” I thought but 5 minutes later he came back with a wheelbarrow full of logs for our fire :-)

smoking socks for dinner... you know like explorers of old would eat their boot leather.. we have coolmax. sophistication.

Another wet night, it was still lashing down and only 2 or 3 degs C at breakfast. My new friends decided to have a pre-ride cigarette so I left them rolling damp papers as I pedalled off for the short climb up to the miniature little pueblo of Villa Amengual. Tried to buy bread there in the village shop.. but failed, bought chocolate biscuits instead.

a particularly bleak stretch of carretera

Had already decided to do a short day of just 65km or so to the village of Manihuales leaving just another 80 or 90km or so to Coyhaique the following day. It rained the whole way but at least the wind was at my back much of the way. As I pedalled I watched snow moving in curtains across the peaks around me.. despite the cold in my feet and the rain it was quite atmospheric.. until one muddy stretch of about 30km of one of the most miserably awful bits of road I’ve seen outside of Bolivia.. with a couple of Argentine exceptions. That is not a complaint by the way, just a statement of fact.. muddy, gritty, rocky, heavily potholed and corrugated.. there was no respite.. but the final 20km into Manihuales turned out to be asphalted.. and with a generally downhill trend. Magic. Arrived in time for a late lunch of pork rib and potatoes at a cafe on the highway.

Manihuales

Manihuales itself is a small and friendly village running along the Carretera for about 500m. It felt special when I arrived… nestled among high mountain peaks with their attendant bad weather all around the village itself seemed to have its own little ray of sunshine bringing out the colours in the wildflowers. To the east and west the wall of the mountains with tops shrouded in swirling cloud and snow, to the north and south just the darkness of heavy weather. I took a room for the night, an opportunity to dry out a wet tent and get the damp out of everything else.

Manihuales Gomeria... "the tyre bloke"

I stayed in a room with delightfully uneven and creaky wooden floors above a cafe where, when I wheeled my bike around the back, the man of the house was gutting the biggest salmon I have ever seen… twice the size of the wild salmon generally seen back in the UK. The fishing is good around here…

the owner of this place clearly likes his fish...

Leaving Manihuales after a slightly weird breakfast of coffee and a very pink but very tasty slab of cheesecake I had half an hour or so to enjoy the fantastic wildflowers in the river valley going south before the weather closed in. Again.

along the road south of Manihuales

It rained with a vengeance so as there was nothing to be seen through the heavy rain and mist I simply put my head down and caned it for Coyhaique.. made the 90 far from flat km in just over 4hrs, and arrived very wet and worn out. It had to be done, as much to keep warm as anything :-)

the valley just south of Manihuales

The wind today was from the southwest.. as always seems to be the case when the weather is bad… it makes sense, the cold and stormy southern ocean is down that way. When the weather is fine it comes from the north west. So as far as riding goes… today I had a cross-headwind but it makes little difference in reality, the valleys are so convoluted the wind bounces around all over the place so in one valley there’ll be an arse of a headwind but an hour later you can be racing along with a howling wind at your back.

yet another river :-)

On the road to Coyhaique the only time the wind really mattered.. on the long climb that starts about 15km north of town, I had a tailwind. Most welcome.. I also fell into an area of apparent rainshadow – the peaks and valleys all around disappeared into misty darkness but for the duration of the climb I had hazy sunshine and was able to take raingear off for a while and dry out in the cold wind.

Coyhaique

At first glance Coyhaique looks a pleasant little town. I will stop 3 nights or so… the constant rain and wind is not kind to eczema prone skin so I have some healing to do there, and I am looking fwd to a couple of days R&R. I found a very nice little hostel but sadly in this internet age with “backpackers” booking everything in advance should I wish to stay longer I will be kicked out after 3 nights regardless. Humph :-|

Coyhaique

Oh, I just thought of some other good things about rain…particularly heavy rain. It washes days worth of muddy shite out of your cycling shoes and all the waterfalls cascading down the cliffs here are rather beautiful. There you go, always a silver lining :-)

I have also learned something about the Carretera Austral… when someone says to you “oh the forecast is for better weather tomorrow“.. ignore them. They are making it up.

Chaiten y la Carretera Austral

< a couple of caveats before I get on with the narrative.. it’s quite a long one so I hope you’re sitting comfortably.. and one or two of the photos might not appeal to the squeamish or those of a vegetarian disposition… >

the ferry to Chaiten

Post-apocalyptic Chaiten, 2 1/2 years ago a town of around 4000 people in the shadow of a volcano thought to be dead, its last eruption happened some 9000 years ago. In May 2008 the volcano erupted once again prompting a mass evacuation by ship, burying the town in a thick layer of ash and sending torrents of mud through it’s heart. Now the town has been abandoned by the government and most of its inhabitants. Apparently 400 or so people remain although walking around the place it is hard to believe that number is more than 100. The streets still carry a layer of ash in which footprints are few and far between, frequently the only signs of life are the sparrows.

no light, no water, no help... the locals are proud of their town

It is a truly fascinating place with a unique atmosphere. The locals are proud of their ruined town and are fighting for the government to reverse their decision to abandon and restore at least basic services… and from what I saw in the local paper on Chiloe recently with some small success.

The boat from Quellon to Chaiten had an advertised departure of 2400hrs, hard to understand then why the folk in the ticket office told me to be at the port, 3km from town, at 1600 with my bike… There on the cold and windy quayside I met an Austrian couple with a rented pickup/campervan also wondering the same thing. We sheltered from the heavy rain squalls in the back of their van with beers from their 12v refrigerator. By and by a few more folk started showing up.. as, happily, did the ship. Not unexpectedly 4 other cyclists showed up to make the connection to the start of the Carretera Austral, all from Switzerland. Under the direction of the friendly crew We had the privilege of riding onto the ship before the motor vehicles :-) Having embarked all the passengers with vehicles we cast off and steamed 20 minutes to sit at anchor off Quellon.

dramatic evening skies over Quellon

Killing time onboard I think was preferable to killing time in Quellon, especially given the stormy weather. It was around 11pm I think that foot passengers embarked so we must have moved back to the port while I was dozing. It wasn’t until around 2am that the ship finally throttled up her engines and headed out to sea. I was lying across a row of seats fast asleep and dreaming at the time the heavy growl of the engines became part of my subconscious adventure and eventually woke me up.

dawn... cold!

During the approach to Chaiten dawn arrived with an icy blast, no more than 1 or 2 degs C on deck and fresh snow was visible on the forested hills above town. It was 7am Saturday morning when I rolled off the ship, tyres crunching the fringes of ice in the puddles. The Swiss set off south immediately while I stayed in town for the day as I particularly wanted to explore with my camera and I do enjoy the atmosphere of these places.

Chaiten has just a slipway near the beach with shallow approaches. The RIB was used to take mooring ropes ashore and the ship carefully winched herself in

a few Chaiten photos follow before the rest of my ramblings for this post…

 

Chaiten: a pair of the locals..

I had planned to leave after just one day, but when a rather lovely French girl says to you in a lilting accent on a cold and rainy Sunday morning “oh you should stay, we will kill the sheep and have a BBQ” what are you going to do? Put raingear on and ride away to spend the day alone in the rain and mud…? no, didnt think so.. I also am quite fond of unashamedly carnivorous women although I am somewhat ashamed at my lack of conviction when it comes to riding ;-)

meet Dolly..

Alexandra and her brother, who looks just like Homer Simpson when he has his hat on, and another friend.. all fantastic folk, arrived on the same boat as I did, we met on Saturday afternoon and proceeded to enjoy a laid back few hours of beer, wine, Pisco and conversation in the sun before heading out late to find something to eat. It was around midnight when we left to find our way back to the hospedaje.. with only a limited supply of electricity in Chaiten only on between the hours of 9pm and 12pm it was eery walking back through the desolate streets with only the light of a thin crescent moon to guide our way. Shadows of dogs silently running through the streets only betrayed themselves with a volley of barks and growls if we came too close. Despite the vocals the local dogs are a cowardly bunch, turn on them with a bark of your own and they run away pretty quick, whether on foot or bicycle.

Sunday morning

So to the sheep, purchased on Saturday afternoon it was immediately christened Dolly by Alexandra despite the fact that it was clearly a chap… cohones grandes you see. It spent its final afternoon in the yard, mostly hiding amongst the weeds behind the obligatory battered pickup…

Dolly picked up some pretty bad habits in life and wouldn't have lasted much longer anyway

So Dolly gurgled and twitched his last at around 10am Sunday morning and our host showed off his butchery skills as the carcass, genty steaming in the cold, damp air was prepared for the spit. By 2pm Dolly was ready for dinner. I had been out and sorted us with a few bottles of wine early so spent most of the day in a mildly inebriated state. It takes a long time to BBQ a sheep.

<standing by for hate mail> preferable to buying anonymous shrink wrapped stuff at the supermarket

Having spent much of the morning sitting in the woodshed out of the rain but in the thick of the smoke I was a little concerned that riding out of town the next morning I would have every dog in the area on my wheel, not to mention a few vultures as an aerial escort… While eating there was a line of black vultures on the roof slowly moving closer to the fleece which had been draped over the back of the pickup.. and a few dogs waiting expectantly on the track beyond the yard fence.

the first of the four-legged vultures

It was a good meal with us and our hosts family sat by the woodburner, followed by a few hours siesta. A most agreeable Sunday. I shall think of it is as my early Christmas dinner should I find myself in my tent eating rice and tuna on the 25th :-)

leaving Chaiten

Monday then I rolled out of Chaiten in a light and freezing cold drizzle but by the time the asphalt ended after 30km the sun was breaking through, things were warming up nicely and joy of joys.. a tailwind :-)

the air down here is cold but the sun, when it breaks through, is strong and hot

Shortly after passing the Yelcho glacier, amongst some rather nice scenery, I met an Australian couple on bikes, Jeff & Rose, some 14 months into their world trip. Having chatted a while and shared the obligatory packet of bicuits I took off to climb the next pass. It was a given I’d be quicker, their bikes were pretty heavily laden whereas I can easily lift mine with one hand, even with 3 days food on board.

I think every cyclist that ever passed this way has a variation on this photo. The DC3 made an emergency landing here many years ago, before the Carretera Austral existed. It could not be recovered and rumour has it someone lived in it for a number of years..

water stop. Such a contrast to the deserts of Argentina, water everywhere down here.. and soo sweet.

this will help keep the scenery fetishists happy ;-)

and this one.. this is Lago Yelcho

It was wicked descent on loose dirt to the little village of Villa Santa Lucia. About 3 or 4km south of the village and just off the road there is a small grassy patch by the river. Surrounded by snow capped peaks glittering in the sun it made a pretty nice place to camp. My new Antipodean friends joined me later in the afternoon and we enjoyed an excellent evening of conversation, with apple pie and cream (theirs) for dessert and polishing off my last half litre of rum as daylight finally faded completely around 10.30pm :-)

along the road.. a nice place to ride

the view from the tent, a nice place to camp

I did a lot of faffing next morning, partly due to getting up late and partly just being lazy, Jeff & Rose were on the road well before I was, I didn’t get going ’till just before 10.. I caught them fairly early on but then had to turn back a few km to find my windshell that I had lazily stowed under one of the straps of my rear pannier rather than putting it away properly… stupid. Back down the road I met the Swiss gang.. happily with my jacket :-)

Jeff & Rose helpfully wore bright jerseys this day..

The last I saw of Jeff and Rose was at the tiny community of Villa Vanguardia.. a row of 4 or 5 immaculate wooden houses tucked away in the mountain wilderness. We enjoyed misshapen icecreams and picked up some bread there before agreeing we would try and meet at a camping area inside the national park just south of La Junta. They had been excellent company the night before so I was looking forward to that.

Villa Vanguardia

The road turned out to be difficult going however, very loose and stony, quite a lot of climbing and a fresh southerly wind to contend with. They never made it.. and neither did I. La Junta looked an uninspiring collection of prefab flavoured houses stretched out along a wide and boring piece of dirt highway. I stopped briefly at 3.30 to get some fruit and a litre of chocolate milk (the best recovery drink around these parts) for later on. By 5.30 I had only made another 25km and had been looking for somewhere to pitch my tent for around an hour.

sawmill campsite

The land on this stretch of highway, although unpopulated, was all fenced off with barbed wire into ‘parcelas’ for sale or grazing with no easy access to water.  Eventually I passed a little sawmill, a one-man operation with a stony track leading down to the river. The chap there was friendly and said I could camp in his yard.

Although not quite as stunning as the night before as camping spots go it was pretty nice.. miles from anywhere, no dead dogs or cows lying around, plenty of water in the fast flowing river, logs to sit on, no dust or mud thanks to the layer of pebbles and backed by 1000ft high forested cliffs :-) I tried to make myself useful when the guys van wouldn’t start, giving him a number of pushes.. sadly all to no avail, he sat out on the road for an hour before a ride came along while I sat on one of his logs and ate my risotto…

ate breakfast in a light, misty rain watching the cloud swirl around the mountains

Just a short ride of 25km, less than expected, through the national park the next morning to the little pueblo of Puerto Puyuhuapi, located at the head of one of the convoluted inlets or fjords that characterise this part of the world.

Puerto Puyuhuapi

The character of the Carretera Austral changed yet again for this stretch, just a single vehicle width of stony, potholed track heavily overgrown with trees and stands of the giant rhubard that seems to grow everywhere down here. Thanks to a tip from a helpful reader (cheers!) as I write these last few sentences I’m camped in the garden of a little yellow house. It’s nice, despite being barely a trickle of hot water the shower felt awesome and I sorted myself out with a big plate of steak, eggs and chips for dinner.. and beer of course.. oh, and icecream.

Puerto Puyuhuapi

Puerto Puyuhuapi

I am having a day off here too, Puerto Puyuhuapi strikes that perfect balance, for me, of tranquility and life. Travelling alone means when I stop for a day I like to be somewhere with people, good food and so on.

the Puerto Puyuhuapi mob...

Best of all… after a bit of a rocky start and at last away from the relatively dull asphalt and tourism of the lakes this journey now makes complete sense :-)

Puerto Puyuhuapi

home in Puerto Puyuhuapi. Grass is growing on the roof and the door has an ingenious locking mechanism, operated from outside by a string through a hole. At night the string is retracted. Brilliant.