On the way up to the Villarica summit. 

Its an amazing experience to be feeling as fit as you’ve ever been, riding your bike because you just love to ride it (and happening through some of the most gorgeous scenery in the world), while also being incredibly excited about the prospect of going home in less than a month. Its the best of both worlds really…. we were enjoying everything without feeling sad that it was coming to an end soon. After 3 years living outside of Australia it was hard to believe we’d be back and enjoying the simple pleasures of an Australian lifestyle and catching up with family and friends we missed so much.

Meanwhile, we began the third leg of our trip in Esquel, Argentina and the goal was to head north to Mendoza, as far as we could get in the time but without missing out on any of that really speccy part of Argentina. We’d just had a week break from the bike up in Lima for my friend Mel’s wedding to a Peruvian man which was fun and quite a cultural experience with dancing horses (I’m not kidding), ice sculptures, an 8 piece gospel style choir and plenty of pisco sours of course. Those Peruvians really go all out.

We set of from Esquel towards a little town called Trevelin where we stopped for the night to wait for the weather to get a bit better at a gorgeous little hostel called Casa Verde. Besides having cool loft-style rooms (some with ladders - so cool), the hostel mascot was a beautiful black labrador who latched onto us and followed us whenever we went out. He even waited for us outside the restaurant where we had lunch. Trevelin is a town known for its strong welsh heritage from the influx of welsh settlers to the Chubut province in Argentina back in the 19th Century. Welsh is still spoken, there are all these people walking around with dark red hair and there are welsh teahouses everywhere and it would have been almost criminal not to go for afternoon tea and a huge selection of tasty jams and bread, scones and tea in huge quantities.

When we left the next day on our bikes our new best friend followed us… which became a bit of a problem the further out of town we got. Ignoring my attempts to send him home with ‘a casa, a casa’ in my most growly voice he followed us for over 15kms, keeping up with us at speeds averaging about 18kms/h and we just couldn’t lose him. Eventually we got pretty worried and ended up having to throw rocks at the poor thing to make him go home (I was too soft but Mick did) since I think he would have followed us to Mendoza. I was heartbroken but eventually he turned around.

We spent the next 3 days in Los Alerces national park which was spectacular. Thick forests of huge Alerce trees of which some are apparently up to 2500 years old bordered huge lakes of shades from turquoise to dark green. The weather was hot and sunny and we enjoyed having a few dips and washes in the crystal clear lakes…. much easier to take these days the further north we got. The roads were still steep but less rocky and anyway after some of the roads on the Carretera Austral it was a piece of cake.

New method of bike parking

A beautiful day for a dip

Or a fish

Can you believe the colour of this river?

Mick kicking back on a rocky beach.

We came out of the park and headed back out into the rolling foothills where it was almost a relief to be able to take in some long views as we had been travelling so long in thick forest and rugged country that sometimes felt a little claustrophobic.

We passed the very dead town of Cholila, but only a few kms up the road encountered a cute little restaurant/teahouse where a very old lady and he daughter served us a wonderful meal and even better desert. They were also of welsh heritage and he family had owned that little place for over 100 years. It didn’t look like it had changed much.

While we were having lunch the old lady started telling us about a property nearby that apparently Butch Cassidy (and the Sundance kid?, and some other bloke apparently….) owned for about 2 years before allegedly they robbed a bank in Esqueland had to go on the run again (I checked this out later and apparently its all true). So she gave us directions to the property and since it was more or less on our way we decided to stop in and have a look. It was pretty cool actually, a young kid from the police station house nearby showed us around and gave us a bit of a history lesson (and wasn’t charging a fee, amazing). The boy was followed around by about 10 kittens too which were quite cute and kept me very amused. Anyway it was interesting even though we knew almost nothing about Butch Cassidy…

Mel at butch’s old house (partly restored)

The entrance

With an armful of kittens

We rode to the next major town of El Bolson over a couple of days through pretty countryside, notable mostly because of the thousands of perfectly ripened blackberries along the side of the road which we regularly stopped and feasted on. El Bolson is a really nice place, the equivalent in population demographic to Byron Bay, or Nimbin at times…. Its the Argentine home of the ‘alternative lifestyle’ with lots of people happily walking around off their heads but a great vibe and particularly good for bike tourists since there are big markets most days selling all sorts of fresh organic veggies, fruit and jams and stuff…. yumm. And the best ice cream in Argentina hands down.

We continued north towards Bariloche over some high passes where we climbed over 1500m vertical in one day over 90kms which left us pretty exhausted. We came into Bariloche from the southern side of the city which was interesting because it was the first time we had seen the ‘real’ Bariloche outside of the touristy areas. We had been there twice before but always arrived by plane or bus. It was a shock firstly because it was the first major city in Argentina we had ridden in through the poor outskirts where there were no services, lots of pollution and basic housing in mud huts and run-down shacks. We had seen it a lot where we were living up north in Tucuman but it was the first time in Patagonia and shocking in Bariloche which is generally perceived as one of the well-to-do touristy cities of Argentina. The difference in prosperity between the center of town and the southern outskirts was a real eye opener. In the end we decided not to stop for the night, instead had a restaurant lunch and a bottle of wine which got us all fired up to get going out of the city and back to the bush.

Mel trying to hang out with the big boys at a restaurant near Villa de la Angostura.

In the next week we rode through more gorgeous scenery on the Ruta de los Siete Lagos (7 lakes road) but truth be told it was much of the same sorts of beautiful lakes, forest and rivers we had seen so much of back in Chile, but less wild with more tourists so it was hard to appreciate the scenery as much as we had. Even though it was lovely scenery we found ourselves longing for some open country. We made some great camps though where Mick caught a BIG trout which was the best fish I have ever eaten, redder and richer even than fresh pacific salmon in Canada. The guy at a kiosk near where we were camping that sold fishing stuff assured us that it was perfectly legal….

The catch

The cooking

The eating

The aptly named Lago Espejo (Mirror lake).

We arrived in the beautiful town of San Martin de los Andes, known for being a playground for the rich in Argentina. For all that and some bad raps from other bike tourists we didn’t find it overly expensive (well no more so than the rest of Patagonia) and it was certainly very clean and pretty town in a spectacular setting. We splurged on a cheap hotel after many days in the tent and met up by chance with some other bike tourists, a couple from Montreal for a night out on the town.

The next day feeling like about 2 cents each we made a radical decision to hire a car and go back to Chile, the reason being that we were to keen to see and climb a big active volcano that we had been told about near Pucon. We wouldn’t have time to ride there and the bus was full. We also knew that they only climbed when the weather was clear and after checking our super-duper weather prediction website we decided our only window was the next day. So we left our bikes and gear at the hotel and took off over the border back to Chile. The border crossing was a spectacular road which passed right by the awesome Volcan Lanin at 4000m. We also drove through massive groves of the strange looking ancient monkey puzzle trees.

Our ‘window’ day was perfect, no wind and clear skies (the day before and the day after they did cancel the climbs). We were lucky enough to choose a good experienced guide and had a small group of 4 young fit people. We cheated a bit by taking a ski lift up for the first couple of hundred meters (but there was really no option and would have been the boring part anyway) before starting on our 1000m vertical climb. The first part was pretty easy and the guide kept a pretty slow but steady pace, even so we were the lead group. It was a bit disconcerting to see some ruins of old ski lift infrastructure which was destroyed by lava flows in the 80s, along with about 15 people (not on the ski mountain though), reminding us it was very much an active volcano which was ‘due’ to erupt at any time now. When we got to the steep snow/ice slopes we donned crampons which made things much easier and less nerve-wracking looking down the steep snow slopes which continued down the mountain for several hundred meters and often ended in piles of sharp rocks. Some of the other teams behind us went up by kicking their shoes into the guides steps which was tut-tutted by our guide, who did look much more experienced and besides, it was a lot faster with the crampons as well as safer.

Our first view of the volcano.

On the way up

Pretty steep

The views climbing up were magnificent and it was great not to feel to much strain on the body after all the riding. Near the top we scrambled over just-hardened lava, probably only a few months old and in the coolest flow patterns, all twisted up and cracked. I was excited and couldn’t resist picking up a couple of samples (they were very light!) of the youngest rocks I’d ever seen. They looked a lot like slag from a smelter actually. At the top we braved the noxious sulphur gases to get as close as possible to the edge of the crater and catch a glimpse of the lava boiling up inside but unfortunately the lava was just out of sight, although we could hear it clearly crashing around like a violent ocean beneath. Sometimes it shoots right up out of the crater 100s of meters and often its easily seen in the crater but we were a bit unlucky on the day. We were forced back a bit from the edge because of the gases (the smell almost made us nostalgic for Mount Isa!) and got a chance to savour the amazing views from the top where you could see at least 4 other big volcanoes rising between big blue lakes and patchwork patterns of green fields.

Mel taking in the view

View from the top

Us on the edge of the crater.

And looking down into it.

Mick living on the edge with the awesome Volcan Lanin in the background.

Another look into the crater.

The way down was the really fun part. We could slide down most of the steep snow slopes on our bums in slippery grooves worn by others gone before us over the year like big winding slippery dips. We were given extra slidey rain pants and given instructions on how to slow down and stop with the ice axe. Mick went first and seeing the difficulty he had in keeping control and slowing down I started to get a bit worried. The second person down was an american girl in our group, Ruth, who seemed to forget all she was told about using the ice axe, sliding headfirst at high speed towards a very bad looking head first landing against a pile of sharp volcanic rocks. Mick was screaming out to her to dig her axe in and tried to catch her as she came hurtling past but she was way too fast. At the last moment she dug her axe in and somehow managed to right herself feet first and although she still had a pretty rough landing she was ok minus a few bruises. After this display I was even more worried but went down anyway but making bloody sure I was in control. It was great fun and we did a few more slopes, sliding and boot skiing (I was mostly on my butt as I can not boot ski for the life of me) most of the way down and were all getting pretty good at the sliding by the time we got down to the bottom. It was only later that we heard how many people get seriously injured coming down that way…. Almost one nasty injury every day, and even if you count that up to 400 people can be on the mountain each day climbing that’s still pretty risky!

Looking down the first of the big slippery dips.

And sliding down

Thats an old burnt out ski lift station in the background, destroyed by a lava flow, pretty freaky. 

The next day we were going to make our way slowly back to Argentina via some cool national parks but after hearing by chance that our good friends Phil and Jess (who we had met a number of times on the Carretera Austral and kept in touch with) would be arriving to Pucon that night we stayed another day and did a bit of local car touring instead. We caught up with Phil and Jess for beers and lots of chatting and merrymaking that night at a pub, even after they had just been robbed on the bus, losing passports and camera … troopers. 

After the change of scenery (seeing it from a car window) for a few days we returned to Argentina and got on the bikes to head north. After the side trip we knew that there was no way we were going to make it all the way to Mendoza on the bikes in time to catch our flight home so we decided to end the trip in the city of Neuquen, the largest city to the south of Mendoza. It was about 500kms away and from there we could get a bus to Mendoza so that we’d have almost a week to get everything sorted out before leaving Argentina for good. 

The last few days of riding were magnificent. It was nice to come out of the thick forest and into the drier mountains with long views. It was hot enough for shorts and singlets cycling and we were feeling great on the bikes. We rode on mostly sealed roads with almost no traffic, bush camped along the banks of big clear rivers and swam in the afternoons to wash and cool off. Even some big hill climbs and steep passes couldn’t dampen our fun, we powered up and rolled down until the last day where we were out of the mountains and riding on almost flat pampa towards Neuquen. We were so keen to finish that we pushed out 190kms on the last day, even while dodging the worst traffic we’d seen (a truck actually grazed me coming into the city, luckily not too fast) and arrived in Neuquen at the reasonable hour of 5pm to promptly find a bar and have some well deserved celebratory end-of-ride beers!

The winding road up to the pass

Micks excited

Micks bike computer showing the 3500kms we cycled.

Mels computer showing the 190km last day

Well deserved beers to celebrate the end.

Micks dodgy bike rack, held on with rope, duct tape and zippy ties at the end.

The broken rack.

Our last week in Argentina was spent in our favourite city, Mendoza, reminding us of all we were really going to miss about living here and travelling in general. We stayed at a great hostel (hostel Lao, highly recommended) with its really laid back atmosphere and great people. We couldn’t stay off the bikes and ended up doing a winery tour by bike with a few friends, getting wobblier as the day went on and having a terrifying ride back to the hostel in the dark along the busy freeway. We enjoyed walking through the many parks and plazas, ate huge steaks in our favourite restaurants and finished off the night before leaving with a great big traditional Argie asado at the hostel. There couldn’t have been a better way to leave. 

Winery tour by bike

Mick helping cook the hostel asado.

Finally we got on our flight home, and the first leg to Santiago from Mendoza we were treated to spectacular views of the Andes on sunset, Aconcagua jutting out above the rest reflecting the pink colours of the sky. We’ll miss those mountains. But I think we’ll be back someday.

Aconcagua

But back to where we left off in Coyhaique…..

After a few much needed rest days in the big town of Coyhaique we hit the Carretera again which continued to impress us with spectacular scenery and perfect weather, all the more enjoyable with over 100kms of smooth bitumen.

One day was such a perfect example of a great day riding the Carretera that I just have to describe it…

We wake up as the day starts to get bright at about 7.30am. Mick crawls out of his sleeping bag into the freezing air, gets dressed and steps outside to make breakfast and coffee – our favourite breakfast of muesli and yogurt. Meanwhile I pack up the stuff inside the tent and almost exactly when I am finished Mick brings over a cup of steaming hot coffee. While trying to ignore the lumpy bits from the permanently indissolvable powdered milk we leisurly drink the coffees and scoff the cereal before packing all the stuff onto the bikes and getting away by 9am.

On the nice smooth road we coast down by the side of the fast flowing Simpson River, getting occasional glimpses of churning whitewater along the way. We’re in a steep sided valley and the 200m+ high cliff above the road feels like its hanging way out over our heads. A headwind whips in our faces but with the nice road and slight downhill it hardly slows us down below 20km/h. We pass at least 2 big waterfalls gushing down the cliff that lightly spray us as we pass. Then we exit the steep valley into a lush area of green farmland spreading out from the sides of the river with the thickly forested mountain sides retreating from the edges of the water but becoming all the more impressive as we can now take in their full granduer with a wider perspective.

Ever on the lookout for food, Mick spots some juicy ripe red frambuesas (rasberries) in a huge patch just off the side of the road as we whizz by and calls out to me… we both come to a quick halt and run over to start raiding the bushes like we haven’t eaten in a week. Morning tea never tasted so good a half hour later when we stop at a little wooden bus stop for a cup of black tea and a feast of the rasberries that I managed to save in a zip-lock bag between mouthfulls by the side of the road.

Mmmmm…. wild rasberries!

Soon after smoko we turn off onto another smooth sealed road which followed an even more beautiful river up another valley. As we’d swung around to the northeast the constant patagonian westerly got behind us and was gently pushing us up the road. As the day progressed everything seemed to get more vivid – they were the same types of evergreen pine trees along the side of the road but they seemed bigger, bushier and a more intense green lit by the sun in the dark green valley. And more types and colours of flowers than I’d ever seen before…..  the cutest hanging pink and purple bell-like ones, white daisies, little cute blue ones and bright yellow ‘pom pom’ style and they completely covered ever clear patch of ground between the trees. The scent of the trees and the flowers gave the air a constant perfume through the whole valley.

We passed rambling wooden farmhouses and roughly fenced yards filled with a few very contented looking fat cattle. We passed one little disused hut where the wooden roof had fallen in and was rotting away and the forest was retaking it – tall pink and yellow flowers pushing up through the rotten roof and green vines climbing the walls.

We stopped for lunch where the road crossed the sweet river and there was a perfect sandy beach to spread out on in the sun. Mick dived into the river for a rapid cool-off swim (beautiful warm day but still a snow-melt river!).

One, two, three….

… and swim back to the edge quickly.

Then tried his luck with the clearly visible trout but they were a bit too wily this time… meanwhile I had an hour siesta on the beach….

Back on the bikes the road continued much the same, up and down by the river with little uphill climbs where we got just a bit out of breath before the next thrilling no-breaks downhill run.

We arrived at the little town of Mañuales mid afternoon. We had been intending to stay there and had already done 70kms, a good days effort but we were still keen to keep on riding so we stopped in and grabbed some bread, fruit and a 6-pack of beers with a bush camp in mind. Finally by 6pm the bitumen ran out and we arrived at the rocky gravel road and with no desire to cycle it we looked for a spot to camp. Luckily there was also a sweet river nearby, of course. So we found a semi-sheltered flat grassy spot in the middle of some stands of native bamboo with a beautiful view to the mountains. Downed the beers, cooked some pasta, watched the sunset and crawled into the tent to be asleep in 20 seconds.

Just another day in paradise……

The end of the day beer.

Well if all that sounds too good to be true you’ll be happy to know that the weather turned shite…. as its prone to do, for the next 4 days or so. For the first time though we got really really wet, and really really cold. The waterproofs worked for a while but the rain was relentless. Our shoes totally filled with water and the toes went numb. Once it really bucketted for about 1/2 an hour, just like a tropical north queensland rainstorm…. except that it was only about 3 degrees. We climbed a steep road up to a high pass, about 700m straight up but we were actually glad for the warmth the hard work gave us. Then came the 700m downhill run, by the bottom we were almost frozen. It was the coldest either of us have ever felt.

Very very wet. Yeah yeah… its what the Carretera Austral is really famous for, I shouldn’t complain.

Fortunately that night we happened upon a welcoming CONAF parks campsite near a beautiful glaciar called Ventisquero Colgante.

The view of the glaciar as we approached the campsite.

The next day was still a bit wet but we decided to hike up for a better view of the glacier…

And what a view…

Just in case you missed it….. the big waterfall is over 300m high to give an idea of the scale!

Just a little down the road we found the cutest little fishing villiage called Puyhuapi (sp?) which we couldn’t leave it was so gorgeous and with such friendly people. At the camping place we stayed at by the lake, ‘La Sirena’ the nice lady owner came asking us if she could help dry out all of our clothes by hanging them over her wood fired stove. It was such a lovely place and they even have these cut little cabins with a dirt floor to put the tent in with a little stove in an alcove to the side (although ours hadn’t been installed yet…). Weird but cute. The husband came over and stoked a big fire for us to get warm by while his son chopped us some more firewood. Very hard to leave….

Bayside (hard toi believe its actually the pacific ocean) at Puyhuapi

Typical village scene.

We spent our very tranquilo day wandering about the cute town and eating lemon pie. There was a sign at the place where we were camping for a boat cruise on the bay so we decided to take them up on it. The mum and dad weren’t around so the son took us out which was great, except that he was only about 12…. well maybe 14 at the most! We figured that was the way things were done here then and were only slightly worried when he couldn’t start the boat, then didn’t seem too sure about where he was going, even though he was supposed to be taking us to the ‘secret fishing spot’. Needless to say we didn’t catch too much but it was fun and then the puzzle was slightly resolved at the end of the day when we arrived back to find the mum and dad of our ‘guide’ standing about with their hands on their hips with expressions varying from angry to bemused…. obviously our enterprising little fellow hadn’t bothered to check with his parents first! No wonder he was keen to pocket our money while we were still on the boat!  

Mick and our little guide.

The view from our camping area and the little boat we went out on.

It was hard to leave the little place but we finally managed it, even though we only got about 15kms down the road before a perfectly placed restaurant turned up at exactly lunchtime. We couldn’t pass it up and after some great tucker and a bottle of wine were off on our way all the more merrier. It doesn’t take us much to get pretty tipsy these days so the next 40kms or so passed in a bit of a haze but it was fun!

Riding out of Puyhuapi

We found another sweet spot off the road to camp that night while Mick did a spot of fishing and landed us a perfect pan-sized brown trout which we put in foil and cooked over the fire in the usual way, what a life.

This is what I do while mick fishes in the arvo.

He he gotcha! ….a little afternoon nudy swim in the river.

Brown trout about to be in my belly.

We finally turned off the lovely Carretera Austral a few days later, up onto the road that would take us over a pass through the Andes once again and back into Argentina. We followed a spectacular river up the valley, called the Rio Futaleufú, or as its popularly known with the hard core kayakers and rafters, ’The Fu’. It appears that it is one of the top four white water rivers in the world, with lots of class 5+ rapids, but it must surely be the most beautiful of them. The water was the most spectacular deep blue with foaming white where it charged its way down huge drops that were not quite waterfalls but the churning water definitely inspired a lot of respect.

After a tough day of climbing up the valley we finally arrived at the town of Futaleufú. At a top camping spot we met up with another bicycling couple – Andreas and James. They were an odd couple.

James (left), Mick and Andreas (Andrew really ok) cooking up a storm.

These guys were such hard core touring bikers that this is what their cutlery looked like. 

We were a bit too scared to try the ‘solid class 5 + rapids’ so we took a kayaking course instead with James and Andrew on the more gentle Rio Epsolon which was fun. Tackled some ‘solid class 2′ rapids and got very waterlogged in every orifice as we tried out some eskimo roll techniques, not to mention dizzy and freezing cold (no wetsuits) but a good time was had by all.

Somehow we got stuck in ‘the Fu’ for about 4 days (there was a rainstorm for a day in there which gave us some excuse) but we can’t remember too much about it….. something about lots and lots of beer, wine, card games and drawing a comic series about a guy named ‘The Wedge’ (based on a real Canadian guide who was so top-heavy he actually looked like a wedge), The Ditch and various other characters…

And this is how the night ended up.

Somehow we pulled ourselves away from ‘The Fu’ before we all settled down and bought houses there, it was that sort of place…

After an easy ride back over what must be the lowest Andes pass, we were back in Argentina and looking forward to our first big juicy steak in a while. Viva Argentina!

Sorry this is such a long post but there is so much to tell…. like how I’m soooo sick of eating fresh trout …. not! 

The Careterra Austral is a road (very loosely termed) that was built in Chile during the reign of General Pinochet to try to connect about 1200kms of small fishing and farming communities in the south of Chile to the populated areas to the north. It passes through the wettest area in the world outside of the tropìcs, through thickly forested, steep and mountanous terrain, around startling blue lakes and clear running rivers flush with trout and salmon. We have now completed 600kms of the road, from a little known Arg-Chile border crossing in the south involving 2 lake crossings and a thin hiking trail, to what seems like the thriving mertropolis of Coyhaique (a small town by any other standards but the biggest one we have seen in a while). Adventures along the way include…

• Getting stranded in the middle of no-mans-land between the Chilean and Argentine border for 4 days after missing an infrequent ferry.
• Fresh trout roasted on the fire for dinner with wildberry sauce- much better than the usual pasta!
• Getting a ride on a seriously dodgy south-asian style fishing boat for a 3.5 hour trip through the maze of fjords in southern Chile in the pitch dark.
• Refining the Patagonian howling monkey shower technique.
• Mick playing hairdresser by hacking into my hair with his leatherman

After the month break with the family we picked up our bikes again in El Chalten. Luckily the guy looking after them hadn’t sold them as he’d offerered to do, but our plans suffered a bit of a setback when we found out that the ferry which normally runs across Lago del Desierto, the first stage of a long border crossing between Argentina and Chile, was out of service. Actually as we found out, the boat was working just fine but the captain had decided to take a break from running this regular twice per day ferry and evidently there was no one else to drive the boat. Not as surprising as you might think in Argentina so we did the usual roll of the eyes, shrug and I spent the day trying to organise something or anyone else to take us across as we only had two days to meet a twice-per-week ferry on the Chilean side, but all without much luck except for the suggestion that maybe there would be a boat on Saturday (the same day as the other ferry that we had to meet was leaving). We figured it was defintely worth a try – it would be a long detour to the next border crossing north and we didn’t want to miss out on the scenery in the southern part of the Careterra. The chances of lugging our fully loaded bikes on a steep and tiny hiking track around the lake seemed to range from ‘impossible’ to ‘possible but extremely difficult’ but it was our last resort.

We set off on the road to Lago del Desierto feeling good to be back on the bike. For the first 10kms. After than we were cursing the break as our butts bounced against the seats and our legs started to burn. Where had all that muscle we’d built up gone?! Waay too many parrillas and cakes over christmas. Anyway, it was a good way to break the butts back in quickly on the 35 kms of deeply corrugated dirt road.

Setting off again from El Chaltén.

We arrived at about midday and had no luck trying to cajole the only person on the lake with a boat into giving us a lift. OK, it was a little inflatable boat for fly-fishing and it would have been a tight squeeze and I guess we weren’t anywhere near as lucrative a business as his overweight gringo fly fisherman he took out that day, but it was worth the try. We ended up camping there anyway and were just psyching ourselves up the next Saturday morning for some seriously hard work going around the lake when we had a stroke of luck - a tour boat was operating at 10.30am and they agreed to take us across. The day was absolutely beautiful, clear skies and we crossed the gorgeous deep green-blue waters of the lake with the striking view of Mount FitzRoy in the background.

Mick waiting on the litle dock for a boat.

View from the boat crossing the lake to FitzRoy and Cerro Torre.

The magnificent Cerro FitzRoy. 

The awesome view as we finally arrived at the other side of the lake.

By the time we were stamped through at the Argentinian border post at the other side of the lake it was after midday and we were told the next ferry crossing could not wait for us past 5pm. So we had 5 hours to cover the approximately 20kms of no-mans-land between the Argentinian and Chilean border posts. Sounds easy? Unfortunately for us it took us 5 hours to cover the first 6 kilometers…. The track was just that, a thin hiking trail through the low mountain pass, but steep, rutted and rooted with many fallen trees and swamps which made pushing the fully loaded bikes almost impossible. Aparrently in German there is a word that means ‘bike-trekking’, well this was defintely that!  In the end we happened upon a system of taking off the front panniers and loading them on the back of the bikes and using a rope like a harness to help eachother pull the bikes up the really steep parts. We realised we were never going to make the other ferry about half way through the track (only 3kms taken us 2 hours!) so we relaxed and had a bit of fun anyway. A bit of hairy single-track through the woods with some steep drop offs to the side saw me nearly go flying off a cliff and Micks encounter with a poorly placed stump saw one of his back panniers completely ripped off. But a quick fix with some zippy ties, which I might say are still holding today, and we were off again. In the end it was really fun, and we expected it anyway – that border crossing is pretty notorious for being challenging with the bikes, and we arrived at the edge of the huge Lago O’Higgins on the Chilean side at nearly 7pm, way after the ferry had departed.

Mel working to get the bike up a steep ascent on the trail.

Mick pointing out the trail at the actual border. For some reason after the 6km of thin trail on the Argentine side it widens to a road (quite ridable!) on the Chilean side.

The bridge on this river was washed away so it was time to get the feet wet!

So we took account of our surroundings, our home for the next 4 days until the next ferry arrived. There wasn’t much there. A farmhouse with a few yards was the closest thing to civilisation (somewhat hopefully labeled a ‘Hosteria’ on maps and the few bits of information we could find). The family there was very nice – they let us camp on a lovely flat bit of grass near their little weather station above the house and yards and offered us water whenever we needed it. When we arrived the old lady of the house who lived with her son (who’s father for some strange reason lived about 10kms away up the side of the lake) gave us some tea and bread. They were the only people around besides 2 Caribineros (Chilean army police) at the tiny border post just up the road. But above all the scenery was absolutely spectacular – a huge turquoise lake where we looked over to the dry mountainous Argentine side on the east from our campsite while behind us and to the west there were steep craggy black snowcapped mountains in Chile. As we rode in we rode beside a beautiful powerful but clear running river that cut a big gorge through the mountain side and Micks eyes lit up at the thought of a few days trout fishing. In the end we were not too worried about being stuck for a few more days R and R!

The weather station/ clothesline tentsite next to the lake.

View from the campsite at sunset.

We celebrated my 27th birthday 2 days later and it would be hard to imagine a better one.  We walked down to where the sweet river (called Rio Obstaculo due to its banks being cliffs) came into the lake and tried our luck at a bit of fishing – mick with his fly rod and me with a little hook, string and line. We turned up on the wrong side of the river and after seeing Mick struggle to get across the rapids I had no faith that I’d be able to cross without getting swept away into the lake. I decided that my only way to the other side was going to be swimming across one of the less turbulent pools which provided mick with lots of amusement as I gingerly slipped into the icy cold water and then made a mad dash for the other side in about 5 strokes and jumped out yelping. There is a video but it will not be posted! I must admit that I wasn’t particularly hopeful about the fishing, knowing micks past luck with trout fishing and with my lamentable lack of equipment but happily I was proved wrong almost immediately when Mick hooked a good sized rainbow trout, and then continued to reel them in through the afternoon. I even managed to catch a little one on my bit of string (so I don’t think they were the most wily fish around)! We were having a great time and we ended up throwing quite a few fish back and still taking 5 perfect sized trout back to the camp.

First fish of the day!

A nice spot to fish

The catch

That night we had a feast of fresh trout cooked on the fire with homemade butter (kindly donated by the old lady at the farmhouse) and lemon. I made a sauce from the abundant wild strawberries, calafate berries (strong and slightly sour local berries) and some other yummy berries that were conveniently scatterred all around the campsite. It was delicious. All I can say is, wow, what a birthday.

On the second day of us being stuck the most random guy walked into our camp with nothing but a tiny backpack. Now that might not seem so strange anywhere else but here we were in the middle of absolutely nowhere somewhere between Chile and Argentina, not exactly a place you can just turn up to. He was a chilean guy who for lack of funds decided to try to cross the border ‘home’ since he didn’t have enough money to catch a bus the other way. I gave him  full credit for travelling so light at first, until it became apparent that he was really quite a silly bugger and also never stopped talking. Somehow he thought that he’d be able to ‘catch a ride’ to Chile across the lake even though everyone had told him that the ferry only ran twice per week. He became our ever present ‘Chilean Chimer’. I mean the guy had nothing, luckily he was able to borrow a tent from the kind people at the house. We ended up feeding him every night as obviously the wild berries were not going to be enough for 3 days. Crazy crazy bastard.

So we spent the other days in much the same fashion – reading, fishing, walking around, picking berries and eating fresh trout. Mick helped out the guys on the farm mark a few calves which he found were pretty much bulls and it was all very messy and disorganised but really quite amusing with the old father who could hardly walk with his slightly fitter son and mick trying to wrestle the poor animal down.

Mick catching some more trout from the lake…. yummmm

Mick and our chilean chimer.

Well finally the boat to Chile did arrive and we were almost sad to leave but excited to finally get to the Careterra also, as well as leave our friendly chimer who was also understandably excited to be finally leaving. A whole bunch of people arrived during the day to our formerly deserted site who were actually organised enough to make the ferry, including a bunch of bike tourists who we were to see frequently along the Careterra. We met a british couple who were doing a bunch of hiking along the same route as us that we talked with most of the hours it took the ferry to get to Villa O’Higgins. In the spirit of all of his previous craziness our chilean chimer sold his camera to someone else on the boat which still had all of his photos on it and then asked me if I could send him my photos of Torres del Paine….weird!!

We were finally on the bike again the next morning, slightly hungover from a little red wine binge with our new british friends the night before, but excited to be underway again nonetheless. The first few days were all everyone says of the road – almost no cars, no people and very very beautiful. It was a pretty good road, with some steep hills but gorgeous views and 2 perfect sunny days. Waterfalls constantly gushed above us and under the road, some so big they sprayed us with mist as we rode past . We camped the night in a mosquito ridden but pretty spot in the rainforest near a perfectly clear deep stream. We also saw huemel (an endangered Patagonian deer) and a huge condor flew so close to us as we came to the top of one of the hills, amazing.

Mick loving the Careterra.

We arrived at the ferry crossing to Puerto Yungay but found that unfortunately the ferry was out of service due to the fact that one of the crew was on strike. How typical. So we waited around until finally a whole bunch of locals in a minibus turned up who’d organised some transport in a very decrepid looking fishing boat. This seemed very lucky for us until we also found that somehow our chilean chimer had found his way onto the minibus also and he promptly came bounding over with kisses and hugs and asking us for some food since apparently he hadn’t eaten since 2pm! Well neither had we but being nice we gave him the last of our cookies which he gobbled down in front of us while talking excitedly…. as always.

Unfortunately the boat wasn’t big enough for everybody but they did offer to come back for us which was nice, especially considering they were doing it for free. We waited with 2 other bike tourists from Switzerland and of course our chimer who also offerred to wait for the second trip (big sigh). When the boat finally returned it was almost 9pm. The crossing to Puerto Yungay took almost an hour and then the boat crew offerred to take us to Caleta Tortel, which we wanted to go to anyway, meaning that we wouldn’t have to double back on the road and it would save us a day. Perfect. Except of course that chimer also thought this was a good idea.

Well it all seemed like a good idea at the time but darkness fell quickly after and we realised that we were stuck on a very rickety fishing boat for 2 more hours on the ocean with no lights at all and a crew drinking wine out of a skin goon bag. Well there was really nothing for it but to try to go to sleep on the damp benches, dinnerless and cookieless (the chimer was having a grand old time drinking up the front with the crew, but at least leaving us alone!) and hope that the guys knew the narrow waterways pretty well. It was pitch black. 

The boat, chimer in foreground.

Caleta Tortel is a little fishing village that has only had road access for 2 years. Due to this there are no streets, only wooden boardwalks winding around the bays and through the (steep) hills at the edge of the water where the town is. It is famous (in Chile…) for this and also the wet climate and flora and fauna in the lush rainforest surrounding it. We had heard that it was a really cool place, but somehow not really asked any more about it so we knew nothing of this before we arrived. We finally made it to Calita Tortel alive and well, but then we began to realise the extent of our mistake when we asked one of the guys on the boat where we could camp and he looked at us strangely and said ‘You could camp at the beach around the side of town but the tide comes up a lot, and there are a lot of stairs to get there’. Ouch, stairs, a loaded-up touring bikers’ nightmare! This was obviously not feasible at 12.30am. We couldn’t see a lot when we arrived, (funny about that in the middle of the night) so it was all a bit silly as we lugged our bikes up and around the boardwalks and over lots of stairs while one of the guys from the boat kindly tried to find accommodation for us in some sort of hostal or hospedaje but everything was full. This was not turning out to be a good night. Finally we had to camp on the only small flat piece of ground in the whole town, just near where we had docked at the main plaza. We were just happy to have a few sardines on crackers and crawl into the tent at last. Our luck was really down that night though since almost as soon as we had finally crashed out we found that this spot was obviously the hangout for all the youngsters after the bars closed. We huddled in the tent while all around us was the sounds of drunken partying (who would have thought this quiet little town would be hopping at this hour?!), too tired to care too much and at last falling asleep.

We took a rest day to see the town the next day which was very pretty. It rained a bit and we decided to get a room in a hospedaje and save ourselves another sleepless night. It was a much needed relax and the place was certainly very cool with all the boardwalks. Trouble was it was full of stairs, lots and lots. The next morning it took us over 2 hours just to get our bikes and all our gear out to the road since unfortunately we had been dropped off on the other side of the rather spread-out town, carring the bikes up over what seemed like thousands of stairs to get out. Oh well, it was a lesson learnt (maybe a little more research on some of these places first?!) and a nice place to visit anyway.

Caleta Tortel

On one of the many boardwalks at Caleta Tortel

 We continued on up the Careterra, it continued to be spectacular and we got some good kilometers on the clock so that we arrived in Cochrane, the next ‘major’ town a couple of days later feeling good. We met up with our british friends there for a bit of an asado and some more vino of course but decided to continue riding the next day since we were feeling so good.

Drinking water is not hard to find around here.

Typical view on the Careterra Austral.

A nice camp site.

In the next few days we camped in beautiful spots by clear blue rivers and rode past amazing turquoise lakes. We had some pretty funny moments like when we developed the Patagonian Howling Monkey Shower technique which consists of the following steps…

1. get naked

2. other person tips bucket full of freezing cold glacial meltwater over your head and you howl, a lot.

3. very quickly lather up all over your body and hair with soap

4. other person tips another bucket of extremely cold water over your head to wash off the suds and you howl again.

5. run over to the fire and try to warm shivering frozen body back up.

Sounds like fun huh?! I must admit that Mick didn’t really howl as much as me, luckily there is no one around for kms. And actually we are starting to get used to it now.

Another inspired moment Mick decided that the haircut I had got in Buenos Aires by some ‘stylist’ really was looking like a mullet so he started snipping bits off with his scissors on his leatherman. I wasn’t really taking too much notice until he kept on going and I said ‘well mick if you are going to cut my hair at least don’t cut above the hairline’ but it was too late…. Mick started making little ‘hmmm’ noises of concern as he realised that he was actually not too good at cutting hair and I put my hand up to the back of my head to feel some rather large chunks of hair missing. Uh oh, not good. I started to get a bit upset now and Mick started to try to repair the back of my hair but it was really not working and he decided to leave it for the proffessionals to try to fix when we arrived at the next major town…. in 5 days time! His assurances of ‘don’t worry sweetie it doesn’t look that bad, I like it better’ and ‘it just looks like you have a really bad haircut at the back’ didn’t really help much, nor the thought that I am suppossed to be getting married in 3 months time! Sorry mum! Oh well I got over it and a nice old lady hairdresser fixed it up in Coyhaique (amongst much tut tutting about how I let my boyfriend go anywhere near my head with a pair of scissors!).

2 awesome rivers combining into one. 

Mel holding her head after the cut, lucky it was a beautiful day to make things better!

Mel on the gravelly Careterra

We spent another rest day in a little town called Puerto Tranquilo on the stunning Lago Carerra where we took a tour out to see a huge glacier. It in a beautiful, lush green valley surrounded by craggy mountains and hanging glaciers, spectacular!

The glacier

Then Mick went down for a spot of fishing on the lake and came back with this sweet rainbow trout for dinner!

Yes I am covering my hair.

We continued on north to Coyhaique with some wickedly steep road but almost 100kms of smooth pavement, our bums were loving it.

Climbing up to a pass near Cerro Castillo.

Mick with the end of the beautiful blue Lago General Carerra in the background.

We finally arrived in Coyhaique after battling some tough headwinds which almost made me nostalgic for Tierra del Fuego, but not quite. It seemed like a huge city after all the time in the sticks, we were quite blown away by the selection of food in the supermarkets and all the people. We have decided to continue camping in the towns also which is much better value and its been really good weather (sooo lucky) up to this point.

A few other tips from the road:

Best fire-up song to listen to while hill climbing - ‘Storm Coming’ by Gnarls Barkley (man you can’t stop me with that on!).

Best meal on the road – Potato and Carrot Stew, made from stock cube, taters, carrots, onions (where available) and garlic with my special blend of spices from my little ‘spice wheel’ including chilean aliño (mixed spices and herbs) with a handful of rice cooked in the stew. Sooo much better than the previous pasta and tomato staple!

Priorities for places to camp (prority 1 and any other combination is enough) -

1. ground big enough for tent.

2. flat.

3. water source.

4. out of sight of the road (most difficult, usually not achieved).

5. sheltered area for wind protection, or in the case of much of the careterra, enough wind so that there are not so many bugs.

6. something to sit on.

7. place and wood for fire

8. Toilet and shower (hot is very very good)

8. Some sort of roof, tables etc like proper camping site.

Anyway, hope that gives you a bit more insight into our life over the past month or so. Will update again soon. Chao!

The El Calafate area is not really made for the backpacker or bike tourist, its all very expensive and difficult to see the sights without getting on a tour. That said, you could sit and watch the glacier for hours. We were lucky enough to watch some huge bits calve off from the face and create some nice big waves. Quite addictive really, we didn’t want to leave.

Mick by a sea of ice bergs – he wasn’t thinking of jumping in this time!

Mick by the expanse of the Perito Moreno Glacier.

The awesome and very unstable face of the glacier.

A piece of ice crashing off the face.

There was very little to hold us too long in El Calafate, the town itself being without much character, bloody windy (surprise) and quite expensive. We resisted making a house call to the President of Argentina, ‘El Penguino’ Kirchner, although we were keen to see how big his nose really is.

Our first day back on the road was, literally, a breeze. We flew those 40kms with the wind to the El Chalten turnoff where we had lunched a few days before totally exhausted. This time we got there in about 1.5 hours, awesome stuff when that wind is behind you. We turned north onto a recently paved road and the wind stayed kind to us by staying just behind, although mostly sideways. We had fun swerving all over the deserted road to get that really big gust right at our backs for a bit. Found a wonderful camping spot that evening – like it had been made for the bike tourist. It was a flat grassed area right next to a beautiful river, almost totally enclosed by tall poplar trees and so one of the most sheltered places we had (or would) camp. Mick tried his luck again with the trout in the river but of course returned saying that there was no trout in the river – too silty. Uh huh.

The perfect camp.

We cycled through the rolling barren hills the next day, following the lovely Rio La Leona and generally having a pretty good time although the road changed to gravel soon enough. Just as our foe the wind was starting to really pick up again just before lunch (yes there is a pattern emerging here but no we were not motivated enough to start at 4am!) we came across a conveniently situated ‘Parador’, roughly translated as good place to stop and have a beer and cakes. Well we didn’t really know they had cakes but the beer sign was proudly displayed which was enough for us and the cakes inside were an added bonus. Anyone who says cakes and beer don’t go together has not been riding through Patagonia. There was chocolate cake, dulce de leche (caramel) cake, Lemon pie, orange pie, and apricot pie, banana cake (yummm) and ricotta cake! Amazing selection in the middle of absolutely nowhere and we weren’t complaining. We even had to tuck a few pieces away for later.

Riding around the bottom of the Lago Argentino

On sugar highs we pushed into the wind for another 10kms or so until lo and behold there was another pub! Well even considering the stop previously we were more than ready to have another break, and what do you think they had inside…. cakes! Hmmm, well by now Dad was saying he might have had enough cakes so we settled on empanadas and beer for lunch instead and Mick and I schnavelled another couple of bits of banana cake away in our panniers for a rainy day.

Well unfortunately there didn’t seem to be any more surprise pubs that day and as we turned west we got hit by the wind again pretty hard and after a few hours of pushing on and not getting too far we had to stop and camp. Problem was there was absolutely nowhere around to camp – everywhere exposed, barren rolling hillsides with only the very occasional shrub. We wouldn’t be able to get anywhere away from the raod anyway so we decided to camp behind a road cutting which was slightly sheltered and sort of flat, there being a nice soft layer of windblown sand on the ground. Definitely our worst choice of camp but the best available, even if the dead guanaco just near our spot wouldn’t have said the same.

Our sandy dusty camsite behind the road cutting.

The road into El Chalten is really beautiful, following the edge of the Lago Viedma (another huge glacial lake) and before long we could see the face of the huge Glacier Viedma. The mountains ahead continued to grow and as some of the clouds lifted we got partially veiled views of the Mount Fitzroy massif, at 3400m and very impressive.

The views nearing El Chalten.

We couldn’t quite make the town that night and we settled on a little camp site just at the national park border. We had plenty of food anyway and it was a good little spot with some level ground, the large paw prints (puma?) around us notwithstanding.

A nice moon rising behind Mick at ‘Puma’ Camp

The next morning Mick woke early and took some great photos of Mount Fitzroy at sunrise which fired us up, especially since it was only about 12kms into town. By 10am we arrived to the town, a really cute little village in a deep valley shadowed by Fitzroy. We settled into a cute little hostel for a few days, Albergue Patagonia, who’s owners were nice enough to store our bikes for the next month while we were away with the parents. I got over a bad head cold in a couple of days of rest and then we did a relatively easy 3 day hike in the park where we took in Fitzroy and Cerro Torre. We were lucky again with the weather, after one rainy day we had clear views of both Fitzroy and Cerro Torre, which we heard was really rare. Mick and I were beginning to believe that Dad was our weather lucky charm, even the wind had been managable most of the time he was with us (well at least we hadn’t had to walk the bikes!). Some pics of Los Glaciares Nat Park around El Chalten…

Dad elated to be arriving in El Chalten, finishing his part of the bike trip!

Mount Fitzroy at sunrise from the camp.

Hiking with Mount Fitzroy clear in the background.

The beautiful view of Micks shoes from Laguna de los Tres in the park.

Cerro Torre almost uncovered…

The BEST views in days apparently!

Captain Mick and his vessel near Puerto Natales.

The view over the town from the Lookout.

Dad out on his first practice ride with all of his gear.

It was so hard to leave the tranquillo Puerto Natales that we didn’t make a start on the next leg of the ride until after 3pm the next day…. after not being able to pass on some thin and crusty pizza for lunch first…. Hmm it was definitely time to get back on the bike!

Dad got a nice and easy first taste of bike touring that afternoon with what to us could be described as a light breeze, and sometimes at our backs (would probably be described as strong winds everywhere else in the world). The road north of Puerto Natales to the Chilean Border station at Cerro Castillo (also the turnoff to Torres del Paine) is about 65 kms and is currently being repaved in long stretches. We asked the workmen nicely if we could ride on the almost completed paved stretches, and it being a friday arvo they seemed very happy to wave us on, so we had a 30km paved bike lane to ourselves while the cars and buses were stuck on the dirt bypasses - great stuff! All we had to look out for was the random 1m droppoffs, bits of steel sticking through the road and a couple of snoozing workmen who got a bit of a fright as we hurtled past! Oh, and we weren’t going to be camping anywhere around there either….. some nasty leftovers of border disputes between the Chileans and the Argies put a stop to Micks idea of a camp and fishing at a pretty little lake we passed.

Maybe not such a good camp spot….

He just had to…..

We were almost at the Cerro Castillo junction when we spotted one of the little shelters built for sheep herders and passing travellers. Not knowing what sort of camping was available at Castillo we decided to stop and set up there, since we could use the little shelter as a wind break for the tents and cook inside. My initial hantavirus concerns were pushed aside quite quickly when we found it even had a little wood fired stove inside so we were toasty warm. You know you’re having a good day when you find an unopened can of premium Dutch beer, called ‘Polar’ something, laying on the side of the road in almost pristine condition. It went down a treat that night with spag bowl and the chilean cask wine that dad had got a serious taste for in the past week and insisted he carry along…thanks Dad!

The first camp site behind the little shelter.

After coffee and a second brekkie (hey we are bike tourers again!) at a cafe in Cerro Castillo we crossed a little pass over the barren mountains with some great views back to Torres del Paine. After the Argie border station we knew we were back in Argentina, the land of consistent inconsistency, when both maps we had showed completely different roads that we had to turn off on leading from the border, and there was only one little road to turn off on going in the right direction, which had no sign of course. After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing we finally got the info from a passing tour bus that a new paved road had been built but that the turnoff was 10kms up the (wrong way on the map) road. we could have taken the dirt road which would have got us there in twice the time, but instead we had an unexpected bonus of 30kms of beautiful new paved road, and even better the wind at our backs. Ahh it was good – averaging 25km/h with absolutely no effort. We even stopped into a pub-turned-road construction site for lunch were we were able to buy some Quilmes beer tinnies from some very weathered-looking workers to wash down the sandwiches. Life was good.

Riding over the pass in the desert.

After a few more kms of heavenly riding we had to turn north onto a gravelly and rocky dirt road. About 30kms more and the bums had had it so we camped at a great little spot with a clear spring and a flat green meadow just by the road (amazing since we were  riding through barren desert).

Mel and Mick doing the dirt with style. 

A great camp site by the road

The next day we had only ridden for a couple of hours when we spotted a lovely spot by a clear running stream with trout that we could see below the bridge. Well Mick of course was off with his fly rod for an hour or so while Dad and I sunned ourselves by the river. It was good to be alive. Micks poor excuses about the wrong size fly done with with we started off again but the wind hit us hard as we started to turn west again towards El Calafate. Dad had his first taste of it and it wasn’t much to his liking, especially as soon we were off the deserted dirt road and onto smooth but heavily trafficked highway. Swerving about in the wind trying to keep your balance when the gusts hit sideways while some more impolite argie truck drivers give you about a metre of space is slightly unnerving at first. After our experience in Tierra del Fuego Mick and I had learnt to take our little part of the road and not bother about getting right to the edge - they would come just as close if not closer…. you had to teach these people to respect the bike! Ha ha.

Sweet rest stop by the river

We stopped for lunch at a little house at a road junction who’s purpose wasn’t very clear – called a ‘Puesto Fijo’, which translates as something like ‘fixed point’. Anyway there was a funny little old guy there who seemed to just enjoy a bit of a chat and was used to bike tourists passing through. We got some water and stayed for a few rounds of Yerba Mate (addictive argentine tea). He also gave us some advice that fired us up – apparently there was a pub about 30kms down the road at a beautiful river where you could camp and have some beers for cheap. Right, we were off!

Of course we should have learnt by now not to trust directions and distances from the Argies, even if he was a ‘fixed point’. After 30km of very hard slog against an ever increasing gale we were in the middle of absolutely nowhere, on a barren tableland with not a tree in sight let alone a pub! Since we were getting short of water and hadn’t seen any since we left lunch, while Dads knee was locking up after really pushing it into the wind, we had to make camp in the barren hills somewhere. Where the fence was down on a paddock we pushed our bikes through and part way up a small hill where there was some small flattish dirt areas. It wasn’t much shelter from the road or the wind but it was all we had and a little cattle dam near the road even provided an emergency water source if we really needed it. On the other hand there was a beautiful view to the distant mountains and we were all to tired to worry anyway.

Our little camp in the barren hills…. where is the pub??!!

The morning saw us in better spirits, helped by greatly eased winds. We rode along the barren tableland for a while before a long descent into the beautiful Rio Negro Valley where we could see one of the many fingers of the brilliant turquoise coloured Lago Argentina (the biggest lake in Argentina). It was a sweet ride down until about half way when El Viento started up again and we had to start pushing the pedalling down… quite a pity really. On the other hand we could see the pub a little ways from the bottom of the valley which cheered us up greatly, even though it was only 10 in the morning (seemed like a very good day for a beer stop). At the bottom of the descent the wind was seriously howling, as strong as we had felt it since Tierra del Fuego but we struggled on to that little oasis until we threw our bikes down (gently) at the doorway.

It didn’t seem to bad at first that the pub wasn’t open, after all it was 10.45am and they didn’t even seem to be up yet, but we were happy to wait a bit, counting our beers and thinking of what sort of stuff they might have for lunch (we were running low) since the guy at Cerrito had told us they did a mean steak. The last few days had taken their toll and since the wind kept on blowing itself up we were starting to think that maybe we could stay here the night, have a shower and get the last 60km or so to Calafate in the morning when the winds were lighter (so we hoped). People started moving around in the bar at about 11.00 which I took as a good sign… obviously they were going to open at 12pm, and fair enough, in Argentina everything gets up late.

The lady inside gave me a half wave but still the door didn’t open. At 5 past 12 we were starting to get a little impatient, the guys were defintely around and they had opened the curtains to the restaurant area so I gave them a little knock. Again the lady saw me and gave me a brush off with her hand which I took to mean ‘wait a minute you impatient bike tourist’. So we waited until 12.30 by which time I at least wanted to talk to them to ask for water as we were totally out so I rapped on the window again. Finally an old grumpy looking fellow came to the door, opened it about 5cm and said ‘We are closed, go away’ and slammed the door shut. I couldn’t believe it – they knew we had been there the whole time and were waiting for them. I had to knock again since we were seriously out of water and I could see some big bottles on the bar counter which I wanted to buy from them and this time he really looked mad when he came back and he almost shouted at me – ‘We are closed for renovations! For EVERYBODY!’ Before he shut the door again I managed to get across that we needed some water, so he went inside, grabbed a big open bottle from the counter and thrust it at us and said “Have this, its  your present and theres more water in the river out there”, and not in a very giving way I might add. Well, that was it for me I was so angry since now we would defintely have to ride to El Calafate since there was no where else in between, the wind was screaming down the valley and the mean old bastard was just, well, mean! Never in the whole time we had been in Argentina had we met anyone who wasn’t really kind and hospitable to travellers, especially on bikes so it was a bit of a shock. Nothing to do about it though so it was back on the bikes (me cursing him all the bad Karma possible) and into the wind towards Calafate. Moral of the story – Don’t count your beers until they are frothing on the table before you.

We briefly sheltered in a drain for a meagre lunch at the junction to El Chalten. We were totally exhauted already but still had 40kms to go into the ever ingreasing gale so it was back up to it. Dads knee was getting really bad and Mick and I tried to take some of the wind from him – we had a good system of all of us in a line with the front man taking all the wind for 1km before changing back. We finally arrived in El Calafate just before 7pm, all 3 of us absolutely exhausted although even Dad worked through his knee pain (he wouldn’t hear of a lift into town) and at the end he was pretty good, tough bastard! Found a hostel quickly, chugged down about 4 bottles of beer and a few steaks and fell into bed. Very happy to be in Calafate.

After meeting Dad in Punta Arenas we decided it would be a good option to head straight up to Puerto Natales by bus so that we’d have a little more time to do some of the trekking in the park. I guess its cheating on the ride a bit but we thought it was worth it. Kinda lucky really since the weather on the bus ride up was terrible – really windy (surprise surprise) and we drove through a blizzard for an hour as well. Dad also got a good introduction to the south american way of doing things – since the windscreen wipers on the bus didn’t work the ‘conductor’ guy had to get out into the snow every 5 minutes to clean the windscreen off by hand. It was quite a slow trip.

We stayed a couple of days in Puerto Natales, a nice little backpacker-oriented town, settled on the 5 day, 4 night ‘W’ trek and hired some backpacks before heading up to the park by bus, leaving the bikes in Puerto Natales. After crossing an incredibly blue lake by catamaran we started off for a 4 hour or so hike up to a beautiful little campsite right next to the enormous grey glacier. It was so close you could hear the ice chunks periodically calving from the glacier into the lake.

Salto Grande (The Big Falls)

View of the park from the ferry across Lago Pehoe

The Grey Glacier from just near our campsite

The Grey Glacier from the trail

Dad loving it.

The second day we hiked back along Lago Grey the way we had come before heading on to Campamento Italiano. The views just kept getting better and better as we rounded the edge of the Valle Frances until we came face to face with the spectacular and huge Cerro Frances guarding the entrance to the valley. We were treated to another fantastic vista at the campsite as the sun finally broke through for the first time and the clouds disappeared. An enormous glacier wound its way down from the peak almost to the campsite and the snow whipping off the top of the mountain silhouetted against the sunset was magic.

A cool view to the Cuernos del Paine on the second day of the hike.

Dad and I on the bridge leading top Campamento Italiano

Mick soaking up a bit of sunshine at the campsite with Cerro Frances in the background.

The third day of the hike the weather gods smiled on us and we had a whole day to explore the unbelievable Valle Frances with no wind under a blue sky. It was amazing, possibly a one per month kind of day in Patagonia at that time of year (from our experience anyway) and we took full advantage of it by spending hours in the valley. The day was so fantastic that it was almost impossible to take it in – it was all a bit too big! The Valle Frances is almost completely ringed by high jagged mountains and steep spires on 3 sides and with a view out to impossibly aqua-blue glacial lakes out of the other. We followed the Rio Frances up as it tumbled down the valley over rapids and waterfalls with the high mountains on all sides and stopping to watch the almost continual avalanches from the faces and cornices of the glacier on Cerro Frances. It was mesmerising. We even had enough energy (since we had left our packs at the campsite) to climb up higher than the trail to a saddle between 2 huge peaks for the best views and had fun boot-skiing on the snow slopes all the way back down. Anyway, the photos speak for themselves….

Mick hiking beneath Cerro Frances under blue skies.

The view south down the valley.

View to the north of the valley

View to the west of the valley

View down the valley from the saddle we climbed to.

View to the east from the saddle. Mick sitting in front.

Dad having fun coming down the snow slope.

Unfortunately we had to keep on going to the next campsite that day or we would have spent more time there at Campamento Italiano, it was defintely the most spectacular part of the park. We had to walk another 3 hours or so to the next camp though which was quite exhausting after all the time in the valley and made for a long day. It was still so warm that on the way to Camp Los Cuernos Mick just had to have a dip in the glacial lake, crazy bastard!

Mick feeling quite cool coming out of the lake.

Beers at the albergue went down a treat when we finally arrived at Campamento Los Cuernos. They were pricey but it was worth it…. a very good way to finish a spectacular day.

We rounded the last U of the W the next day as the weather turned awful again – the wind coming out of the deep valley we walked up towards the ‘torres’ of the Torres del Paine was hammerring and bringing some not-so-refreshing small stinging pellets of rainy snowy stuff. We decided to call it a day at the Camp Chileno where we set up the tent as best we could in the gale and took shelter in the Albergue. Turns out they had some of our favourite boxed chilean wine too so it wasn’t such a bad afternoon! We decided to leave the trek up to the Torres until the next day and settled back with a couple of boxes. Best decision we ever made since the next morning dawned clear and warm and there was hardly anyone around on the trail since it was too early for day-trippers. After a short steep hike we were greeted with the awesome sight of the Torres del Paine.

Warming the legs in the morning sun in front of that view.

The awesome Torres del Paine.

On the way back down out of the valley we had a very ‘Lord of the Rings’ moment as this huge shodow swooped over us on the trail. Looked up and saw an enormous condor only about 5m away, it must have had at least 4m wingspan. Quite an ugly bird up close really but sooo big!

We finished off the hike with an easy walk out of the valley although the weather started to come in again. In all we were really lucky with the weather. I think though if we had the chance we would have spent 6 day in the park (5 nights) rather that 5 since we would have had more time to explore and not had to push the trek for 15-25kms per day. Well worth every effort though.