First of all, we finally arrived in Ushuaia yesterday! Woohoo!!! Now for how we got here…

We spent a couple of days in Punta Arenas resting and waiting for Cindy’s bike to be repaired. Punta Arenas has a nice downtown area, with a couple of museums, the best of which was the former mansion of a sheep rancher, which is now open to the public. The museum featured the original furnishings of the house, as well as exhibits on the history of Southern Patagonia. We also visited the famous large cemetery in town, which has everything from small graves (think high-rise projects for dead people) to large mausoleums. Finally, we picked up Cindy’s bike and then early the next day, loaded up the bikes and rode out to the ferry terminal.

We had nice weather for crossing the Strait of Magellan, although by the end of the 2.5 hr ride, we were both wishing that we had taken some anti-seasick meds. Since the boat didn’t arrive until after 12 pm, we decided rather than hit the road right away, we would spend the night in the town of Porvenir. Porvenir is supposed to be a cute, sleepy town—and it is, but on Sundays, it’s a little too sleepy. We couldn’t find much to eat other than a few empanadas, bread and cheese we bought from a panaderia. The next day we headed west toward the Argentine half of Tierra del Fuego. Although we were traveling on ripio, the road was quite good. And of course, we had GREAT tailwinds the whole way. On top of it all, we were spurred on by the knowledge that we only had two more days of riding on ripio, and the rest of the road to Ushuaia was paved. Our first day out of Porvenir, we were treated to beautiful views along the shore of Bahia Inutil (Useless Bay). Luckily, when it came time for us to camp, we found a small empty shelter along the side of the road where we could get some protection from the wind. The next day was a short day, crossing over into Argentina and then staying the night in San Sebastian.

From San Sebastian, we rode to Rio Grande, which is the largest town on the Argentinian part of the island. Although we were no longer traveling directly with the wind, we still had pretty good winds for most of the day. We were lucky enough to have a place to stay in Rio Grande—our Couchsurfing friend Mariana that we met in Costa Rica grew up in Rio Grande, and her father Oscar still lives here. Oscar and his family took us in, and we had a big asado (always a sign that you are back in Argentina). We had lots of interesting conversations, and learned a lot about life here on the island, which revolves mostly around four things: oil, electronics, sheep, and trout. Oscar took us on a tour of the electronics factory where he has worked for the last 20-some years supervising the construction of televisions for the rest of the country. After taking a rest day (and eating very well), we decided it was time to push on.

The next place we planned to stop in was the town of Tolhuin. We started out fighting the wind as we headed west to the point where we crossed the Rio Grande. After that, we continued to have good wind until about 40 km outside of Tolhuin, when it turned in our faces. It was right about there that we really noticed a sudden change in scenery, with flat grassy plains giving way to heavily forested hills. At around noon, we were riding down the road when we heard somebody yell our names from the side of the road. It was our biker friend Hiro, whom we had lost touch with after Puerto Natales. He was staying in an estancia (sheep ranch) near the highway with Luis, a Peruvian biker he had met on the road. We told them the story we had heard about a famous panaderia in Tolhuin, La Union, where the owner would sometimes house traveling cyclists (Veronika and Roger, and the 3 American women had stayed in the bakery), and decided to meet there later in the day. Well, it seemed as though the owner wasn’t around, so we didn’t get the free place to stay. But we did end up renting a cabaña together for the night.

The next day, we all left separately, not sure whether or not we would make it the 110 km to Ushuaia in one or two days. We knew there was a lot of climbing (over 1000 m elevation gain), and that we would be heading west, into the direction of the prevailing winds, so the difficulty factor was a bit unknown. The ride ended up not being as hard as we had thought—the climbs were not particularly long or steep (with the exception of the 10 km up to Garibaldi Pass), and the trees/mountains protected us from the winds most of the day. But the ride was made more exciting by the fact that about an hour into the day, I discovered that the rim of MY back tire had cracked, in the same way that both of Cindy’s had before. I was really hoping that my wheel wouldn’t explode when we decended from the pass at 50 km/hr! Most of the day was overcast and dry, but we nevertheless had beautiful scenery, surrounded by snow-covered mountains and forests turning fall colors, with amazing shades of red, yellow and orange. However, as we got about 20 km outside of Ushuaia, we got caught in the rain one last time. We arrived in town about an hour before sundown, and ran into the first warm hostel we could find

We are going to stay here a few more days, and do some of the touristy things there are to do here, like a boat tour of the Beagle Canal. Our friend Mariana has a cousin that lives in Ushuaia, so we are going to see about spending some time with her while we are here as well. Then we’ll begin the LONG bus ride up to Buenos Aires.

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!

Although there is no evidence that the virus is potentially harmful to humans, be aware that this salmon is sold at retailers like Costco and Safeway, among others. But I’m sure that all the readers of this blog already know that they should only buy wild-caught salmon (courtesy of Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch)….

With a little help from the local authorities in Cochrane, we were able to get connected with a truck driver named Miguel who makes weekly runs delivering goods and livestock between Coyhaique, Cochrane, and Villa O’Higgins. When we talked to him at the beginning of the week, he thought he would have space, and he was happy to take us and the bikes for free (even though we offered to pay…I think he enjoyed the company), but he wouldn’t be arriving in Villa O’Higgins until late Friday night. We were a little nervous about it since the ferry crossing to El Chalten, Argentina would begin at 8 AM the next day, but we didn’t have too many other options. We managed to make it to O’Higgins, purchase tickets, and catch the ferry, although we were almost the last persons to arrive at the dock (it was a 8 km ride from Villa O’Higgins). When we got there, we were happy to see several other bikers on board, including our friends Veronika and Roger again! We were also happy to get a few hours of rest on the boat before our trekking began.

The route between Lago O’Higgins in Chile, and the Lago del Desierto in Argentina was a 22 km hike. The only hitch was that you only had 4.5 hrs to do it if you wanted to catch the last boat of the day across Lago del Desierto. We thought that the time constraints wouldn’t be a problem for us on bikes, especially if we paid to have a horse carry our bags for us. Unfortunately, the trail was quite difficult in places (especially the last 6 km), and well, we just don’t have a lot of experience or skill at mountain biking. So we ended up walking the bikes quite a bit, which slowed us down. But we arrived at the dock just as the horses were arriving with the bags. We hurriedly went through Argentinian immigration, and took the boat to the south end of Lago del Desierto. We stayed the night at a campground near the lake, and then finished the short ride to El Chalten the next day.

El Chalten is known mostly as the launching point for hikes into the northern part of Los Glaciares National Park, where the famous peaks of Cerro Torre and Fitz Roy are. It should also be known as one of the most expensive places in Argentina where ATM and credit cards are largely useless. Due to poor planning on our part, we didn’t bring enough Argentinian currency with us to make it to the next town with an ATM (El Calafate). Luckily for us, we had some extra dollars stashed around that we could exchange, as well as having access to the Bank of Veronika and Roger, who are much better at planning ahead than we are The weather around El Chalten is quite changeable this time of year, but we lucked out and the next day in town was relatively clear. We hiked up to Laguna Torre, and the views of Fitz Roy and the glacier up there were impressive. The next day was a bit rainy in the morning, so we decided to postpone leaving for a day. But we knew that we could only stay in El Chalten for so long with our limited funds, so we planned to strike out the next day, rain or shine.

This was our first time really riding out in the flat pampas of Argentina, where the wind is incredibly fierce. Between El Chalten and El Calafate, we experienced everything: tailwinds pushing us so that we were cruising at over 30 km/h, sidewinds that threatened to push us into traffic, and headwinds that slowed us to around 10 km/h. It’s just something we’re going to have to get used to though…after reading the blog of our three biker gal friends from the US, we know that it’s only gonna get worse. Anyway, the most exciting part of the ride was that the sidewall of the rim on Cindy’s rear wheel cracked about 50 km outside of El Calafate. Ideally, we would have bailed and taken a bus at this point, but since there wasn’t much traffic on the road, we decided to push it and have her just ride without using her rear brake. As we were mostly heading into the wind at this point, we weren’t really going fast enough to warrant using it anyway…

Thus began our search for a replacement. There is only one bike mechanic in El Calafate, and they didn’t have any 32-hole rims (apparently 36 spokes is more common). We were willing to buy a whole wheel as replacement, but there wasn’t a really good option there. So we decided that we’d hop a bus to the nearest large town, Rio Gallegos (about 4.5 hrs away by bus). Thankfully, there are 3 bike stores here (although only 2 bike mechanics), and we were able to procure a replacement rim (Mavic, no less!) from one store, and have it installed at another store. The “new” wheel still looks and feels strong, and the guy we bought the rim from even insisted that the new rim was even better than the old one (but good luck finding info about discontinued models on the Mavic website). All we really care about is that it’s strong enough to last another 1000 km or so to Ushuaia.

To backtrack slightly, while we were waiting in El Calafate for a bus to Rio Gallegos, we visited the premier feature of the southern part of Los Glaciares National Park, the Perito Moreno glacier (pictured above). Rather than bus out to the glacier and do a DIY tour, we decide to go with an “alternative tour” package through the agency that works through the Hostel del Glaciar in El Calafate. The tour took a less traveled road that allowed some additional wildlife viewing opportunities, but was nothing particularly special. However, getting to see the constantly changing face of the glacier up close and personal was really amazing. The glacier (which advances 2 meters daily!) is now occluding the two lakes on either side of it; this means that it is only a matter of time before the water breaks back through the ice—it should be a spectacular sight for those who are lucky enough to be there to see it.

Back to the present—we are bussing back to El Calafate tomorrow (where the bikes and most of our bags are), and barring catastrophe, we should be back on the road again in a few days, with our next destination being the border (again?) and the Torres del Paine national park in Chile.

Sorry to have been out of touch so long…we are getting into more and more remote areas of Patagonia, and thus internet access has been extremely limited. Anyway, on with the saga!

We arrived in El Bolson after a long day’s ride, found a hostel, and then we prepared ourselves for a rest day the following day on account of it was my birthday! We happened to be there for the bi-weekly artisan fair; the most interesting part of the fair for us wasn’t the crafts, but the giant waffles being served with heaps of fruit and cream. From El Bolson, we had the choice of continuing to the Chilean border through the Los Alerces National Park (beautiful, but unpaved road) or along Ruta 40 (not so beautiful, but paved). We figured we would have plenty of opportunity to ride on the ripio when we got into Chile, and the prospect of saving a day on the pavement sealed the deal for us. The most interesting thing that happened to us was that we were acosted by a guanaco (a deer-like critter related to llamas) who was uncharacteristically forward about wanting some food during one of our snack stops. About halfway between El Bolson and Esquel there was a police station on the highway, where the police were nice enough to let us camp underneath some trees with access to water. We’ve really been enjoying the fact that most of the water in the streams down here is safe to drink, although we still end up carrying quite a bit of water because I’m paranoid about running out.

After leaving the Chilean border town of Futaleufu, we headed east to connect with the Carretera Austral. Within a few hours of riding through the town of Santa Lucia, I had broken off the last remaining rack mount eyelet on the left side of my bike (which is the side that I tend to carry the most water on, naturally). We decided at this point to try to hitch a ride to the next town, La Junta, since the rack was more or less unusable. After a couple of hours trying to flag a ride, a bus full of Germans came past and stopped. Their tour guide, an Austrian hostel owner from Pucon, said that he couldn’t take us or the bikes, but he could take our bags and drop them off at the police station in town, which would allow us to ride the bikes unloaded. We decided that we should take him up on his offer and started riding. Within 20 min, we saw a pickup going past and decided to ask for a lift. The guy said yes, and soon the truck was again barreling down the highway with us and the bikes in back (getting heavily covered in dirt, I might add). We waved to the bus full of Germans as we passed them, and met them at the gas station at the entrance to La Junta, where we recovered our bags. After asking around, and assuring everyone that inquired that yes, my bike is made of steel and not aluminum, we found a welder who was able to weld the rack mount back on the bike. The next day, we were off again, and I was going a bit slower over the washboard roads now, since we really didn’t have any idea how long the weld repair was going to last.

Our plan after leaving La Junta was to make it to the Queulat National Park entrance south of Puyuhuapi, but the quick arrival of a rain storm caused us to pull up short and pitch our tent on the side of the road next to the office of a salmon farming company. The next day we rode the last 10 km to get us to the park, where there were supposed to be amazing views of a large glacier feeding a giant waterfall. As we pulled into our campsite, we saw that in the site next to us were three bikers that we later learned were three brothers who live in Santiago, but were biking down the Carretera Austral back to their parents’ home in Coyhaique. They were contemplating leaving that afternoon, but the continuing rain, road closures due to construction, and a big climb that lay ahead made them decide to leave early the next morning. We were glad they stayed; the five of us spent the rest of the day drinking mate, getting to know each other, and trying to keep dry and warm in our little camping shelters. The next morning we all planned to leave together at 8:30 AM to try to get out of the construction zone before the road was closed, but by morning the rain had gotten even worse. And in the back of our minds was the repair job on my rack mounts, and what would happen to us should the rack fail in the middle of a storm, on top of a mountain. We took the cautious route and decided we would wait until the roads opened in the afternoon, double back north 20 km to the town of Puyuhuapi, and then bus forward to Coyhaique, where we might be able to find a more permanent solution to my bike problem.

The Chilenos left the next morning as planned, and we tried to keep ourselves and our tent as dry as possible under our meager shelter until the roads reopened. Right before the roads opened, there was a brief respite in the rain, so we decided to go visit the visitor’s center at the park. There we ran into a US/Chilena couple visiting from California to do some scouting for future sea kayak trips. We noticed that they had rented a pickup, and sheepishly asked where they were going. They were heading south, and although not all the way to Coyhaique, they offered to at least get us past the monster hill that loomed ahead. We decided it was better to continue south for the time being, so we took the ride. When we got to the bottom of the hill and parted ways from our saviours, we found two of the Chileno brothers (one had decided to turn back and take a bus like we had originally planned) and three women cyclists from the US huddled together under a bus shelter trying to dry out a bit. After a small reunion and some introductions, the weather seemed to break a bit, so we continued on together to the next town, some 30 km away, where finally we would be back on paved roads for a few days.

Our cycling posse rode together for the next two days to Coyhaique, and we were quite the sight to behold, being such a large group touring together. I wasn’t the only one whose bike had suffered the effects of the ripio; one of the women (Jude, from Oregon) had her rear deraileur shaken apart, and had to ride the rest of the way in one gear! The boys had called ahead and gotten the OK from Mom & Dad to bring their new friends to their home a few kilometers south of town. When we arrived, Dad fired up the Mr. Beef gas grill and we were extremely well fed. The hospitality and generosity the family showed for us (including the third brother, who had returned by bus before us) was amazing. The next night, all the gringos offered to cook dinner for the family as a show of appreciation. Cindy and I contributed our chili and cornbread, which was rounded out by garlic bread, pear salad, peaches and cream for dessert, and of course, lots of beer and wine. It seemed to be a huge success, and we fulfilled another request for the cornbread recipe. We had originally planned on leaving the next day, but we felt so much at home that we couldn’t resist staying one more day (we had to help eat the leftover chili, of course!). Finally, the five North Americans rolled on down the road south. We rode with the girls for another day and a half before they took a turnoff to bus ahead to stay on their schedule for arriving in Ushuaia.

After riding through Villa Cerro Castillo, the pavement gave way to gravel again. This part of the Carretera Austral is also amazingly scenic (can’t wait to post pictures), but the hills are super steep (up to 15% grade and higher), so the cycling has been difficult for us. Our daily progress is really dependent on the quality of the roads, which has varied from smooth, nearly-paved surfaces to deep gravel where we can’t ride even the flat parts, let alone the hills. The ironic part is that the deep gravel appears where they have just done maintenance on the road to improve it for the cars! Within a few days of leaving Coyhaique, we ran into our friends Veronika and Roger again. We haven’t been riding together (they are much faster than us on the ripio), but we were more or less on the same schedule, so we had dinner together a few nights in a row. Finally we arrived in Cochrane (where we are now), where we had planned to spend a well deserved (we think) rest day. But moving forward is a bit problematic. We had planned to ride 3-4 more days to Villa O’Higgins and then take a boat over to El Chalten, Argentina. However, the boat only runs on Saturdays at this time of year (tourist season is waning), so timing is crucial. The steep hills took their toll on my knee, and we were hoping to take a bus to Villa O’Higgins to give it a rest. Unfortunately, the buses are usually too full to take our bikes. So unless we can find another ride to Villa O’Higgins, we’ll probably miss the next boat and give my knee some time to rest in Cochrane. At least we can catch up on some Internet time here

Oops, forgot to finish the story about the destroyed bicycles. I was able to find a bike shop that was able to weld on completely new rack mounts on both sides of my bike. The mechanic said it was “super fuerte” and wasn’t going to break. That solved my problem, but a few days later, one of the rack mounts on Cindy’s bike broke as well! We moved her rack to the second set of mounts and tried to get hers welded today as well, but the welder here in Cochrane says he can’t do it. Hopefully it will last until we get to a bigger town on the Argentine side. The moral of the story is: touring bikes need to have rack mounts that go through the frame, not these cheap little eyelets that break all the time! If I had only known…

After a week of riding long days down freeway 5, we were excited to turn eastward towards the Chilean lakes district. Our first stop was in the town of Villarica, where we stayed at the Torre Suiza (Swiss Tower) hostel. The Torre is run by a Swiss couple who, after traveling for 2 years by bike through Asia, arrived at the southern most city of the Americas biked northward, then decided to stop biking after arriving in Villarica. Not suprisingly, their clientel includes many touring cyclists. Our stay coincided with that of two Swiss cyclists, Pascal and Rebecca, who are working their way north. We spent a rest day (much needed after two weeks of riding hard and only 2 days off) visiting some nearby lakes with the Swiss and another day walking around town, reading and working on the bikes.

From Villarica, we continued eastward towards the Argentine border. This meant leaving the smooth, fast asphalt roads for the slow and bumpy ripio.

The first day (last one on asphalt) from Villarica we headed south to Lican Ray, then east past the town of Panguipulli. We found a nice beach campsite on the eastside of Lago Panguipulli. When we arrived, the beach was full of Chileans sunning themselves and swimming in the water. In the evening, however, we shared the beach with only one other tent which housed a retired couple who had been coming to this beach for twenty years and were less happy about the road being paved than we were. The pavement, as it does, had made their secluded beach hideaway into a popluar day trip.

Our intentions were good starting out on the ripio

road towards Puerto Fuy. It didn’t take walking the bike up more than three extremely steep, gravely hills though, before I was feeling defeated. Luckily, a nice older gentleman in a pickup truck sensed my frustration and offered us a lift. He was going to our destination so we were happy to accept the ride. He spoke perfect English, with what seemed to be a German accent, though he said he was from Chile. We had a nice conversation about his kids, who love camping, his business in Santiago and his hazelnut farm. We arrived in Puerto Fuy in no time at all. From Puerto Fuy we would take a ferry across Lago Pirihueco, then ride over the HuaHum pass into Argentina. We checked into the ferry and found that one would be leaving at 8am the next morning, then rested up for the next day’s ride. The ride across the lake was beautiful, with very little development outside of the two towns on either end of the ferry allowing for a pristine lake surrounded by hills full of trees.

After disembarking, we decided we would push on and try to make it to San Martin de los Andes, a ski/lake resort town in Argentina. It ended up being a hilly, tough ride, but a nice long downhill/flat section at the end allowed us to reach San Martin before sunset. We hadn’t made reservations (as we usually don’t) and were not too happy to find all the hotels with cheap rooms either booked or charging several times what our guidebooks told us. Being too tired to bike to the campsite, we settled for the cheapest room we could find. We then stuffed ourselves on all-you-can-eat grilled meats and salads. The next morning we moved to the campground, then explored the town. San Martin is a very cozy little village, with a definite ski town feel. It is very touristy, but we enjoyed the atmosphere.

From San Martin, we decided to take the scenic, seven lakes route to the town of Bariloche. The ride took us three days, the first and third were mostly paved and very scenic, passing many great lake views. The second day however, was over another jarring ripio road, making for a very slow day. We had better get used to the ripio

soon, though, because the further south we go, the less pavement we will encounter.

Bariloche, another ski/lake resort town, is less cozy and quaint than San Martin, but they do have melt-in-your-mouth chocolate and yummy ice cream. We decided to take an extra long rest here to rest from our push to get here and to prepare for the road ahead. Mostly, though because I wanted a day where we had absolutely no obligations—no need to get groceries, laundry, or work on the blog or bikes. So I greatly enjoyed a day of sleeping in, wandering around town sampling the chocolates and reading. We also had a nice, non-loaded bike ride around the “circuito chico” near town. Then for dinner, we met up with Veronika, our German cycling friend who arrived in town that day. She and her friend (who met her in Santiago) are taking a bit of a different route for the next couple days, but we should see them again soon. If we both stick to our plans, that is. Today, we are doing the errands necessary to be back on the road tomorrow. We are headed towards El Bolson, a big hippie town.