Ephemerica

The road from El Calafate, Argentina to Torres del Paine National Park in Chile was mostly kind to us. We had a nice tailwind for the first 100 km eastward out of town, then the winds died down to almost nothing as we started to head westward. We were quite happy not to fight the wind. Our tent, however, had to put up quite a fight as the wind tended to come up at dusk. Luckily for us, the tent has been mostly winning against the wind, though it tends to lose when rain is factored in.

After four days of riding, we arrived at the park and headed straight for the park’s namesake—The Towers of Paine. We camped for the night, then headed up the trail the next morning. The hike itself was nice, but not spectacular. The view at the end, however, was well worth the effort (see picture above). We had seen the Torres from afar as we rode into the park, but were taken aback by their majesty from close up. The glacial lake at their feet was a bonus surprise. We weren’t able to enjoy the views for too long though, as the wind was strong and cold and seemed to be bringing a rain storm with it. That night at camp we were pretty suprised by how sore the hike had made us. We were happy to be biking again the next morning—no pain on the bikes, though we were feeling pretty stiff just walking around.

We rode through the park to Lake Pehoe, where we wanted to catch a catamaran across the lake in order to do a couple more day hikes. April is the low season, however, so the 3 times a day boat was only running once a day. Although there is not an official campsite near the boat dock, the company running the boats didn’t mind if we set up camp there. We were joined by another biker from Japan, Hiro, who we had been running into since we left El Calafate. Our tent sorely lost a battle with the rain and wind that night, so after stuffing our wet air mattresses, sleeping bags and tent into their respective bags, we decided to splurge on the other side of the lake and stay in the refugio. The refugio was well worth the exorbitant amount of money as we lay, tired from an afternoon hike to see the French Glacier, warm and cozy in soft beds, listening to the fierce winds and rain coming down all night.

The next day we hiked to Glacier Grey, which was the least exciting of the glaciers that we have visited so far. We have been told that if you have the time to hike past the viewpoint, for a couple more hours you end up walking next to the glacier, which is fantabulous. Unfortunately for us, that would have added much to much time to our already long day hike, so we turned back after reaching the closest viewpoint. After another night in warm soft cozy beds, we took the ferry back to our bikes and started riding out of the park.

One more soggy night of camping and a day of riding in the rain later, we arrived in Puerto Natales. We spent a couple days in town, warming up, drying out our things, doing errands and drinking hot chocolate. We left town with heavy wet snow that wet the streets, but didn’t stick. The snow didn’t last too long and most of our two days of riding to Punta Arenas turned out to be windy and cold, but partly sunny riding through only the occasional bit of rain or snow. We stopped for the night in Villa Tehuelches only to find that the only place to stay was full. The proprietor told us to ask at the municipal building to see if there was a place we could sleep on the floor. The people we talked to were extremely friendly and showed us to the community center, which was a small house with just one main room and a bathroom. The lady who showed us the way also gave us some firewood for the woodburning stove, so we had a fantastically warm, even hot, evening in the community center.

We arrived in Punta Arenas last night fighting fierce headwinds for the last 20 km or so into town. Today, we found yet another new rim for my bike (it cracked less than 10 km from town) and also new brake pads to prevent it from happening again. This time finding the rim and the mechanic was easy and we should have a new wheel by tomorrow.

Punta Arenas is our last stop on the South American mainland. We take a ferry to the island of Tierra del Fuego and then have only 4-6 days of biking left before hitting the end of the road!

Posted by cindy on April 11th, 2008 | Filed under: Argentina, Chile