Villa O Higgins to Cerro Castillo

After reaching Villa O Higgins, resting up for a bit and having a good night on the pisco we shopped and got set to hit the gravel road north. Cycling the Carretera Austral was going to be a big challenge for 3 reasons, one the weather was supposed to be notoriously wet, two the road surface was poor and about a car and a half wide and three getting supplies was going to be a problem as the areas is as sparsely populated as Connemara. Add some passes over the Andes into the equation and you could see why its a decent challenge.

We hit the road at about 2, hungover from the night before but putting some good miles in. The gravel road wasn´t all that bad and we were enjoying the cycling. The carretera crosses a couple of Fjiords on the way up, with ferries linking the Fjiords so making the ferry ports at the right time would save some waiting about. Our plan was to make the 95km or so to the Ferry at Puerto Yungay in two days, cross on the evening of the second day so we could start cycling next morning. My bike speedo wasn´t working first day out so we had only a sketchy idea from the GPS of the road distance we´d covered when it started to rain late in the evening. Oh well, one day in and here´s the start of the rain I thought, least it can´t be as bad as a winter in Galway.

We spotted a half finished farmers´s shed in a small holding with the chilean flag flying outside and agreed a price with a farmer for the nights camping under the galvanised roof with the cedar posts. Turned out from what we could make out that this might actually be his new house as the I´d penned the shed he was living in for holding animasl. Lonely Jack as we called him was a chilean ex service man and had retired here having flown commerical jets for the chilean airline lan when he left service. He was self sufficient like most people here and made some income from smoked fish. He seemed to know a lot about nature, showing us all the plants and some impressive chinhook salmon bones from the prevous season. Like a lot of people here he had no outgoings so could get by simply on his 100 hectares of ground.



Despite waking early and being all set to cycle the 50km in time for the 11 ferry we were waylaid by lonely Jack wanting to chat to us. We could see living on his own had left him starved for conversation so we chatted to him about fishing, eventually he told us of the government plans to dam the patagonian rivers for hydroelectricity. We´d seen Patagonia Sin Represas on car stickers and grafitti´d on signs and now we understood the impact on the ordinary people. If the dam´s went ahead Jack´s retirement plans would be in ruins. Late for the ferry we took a photo with him and then hit the road half hoping to make up the time on the road.

I´d struggled to eat my porridge but ended up stuffing it in, if either of us skipped our portion of porridge we´d usually be the first to end up hungry so despite the rumblings of my stomach I finished the lot. About 10km down the road my stomach was still doing loop the loops so I stopped to fill my waterbottles from a stream at the side of the road. I was feeling so ill that I decided it was best not to fight it and let my stomach empty itself on the side of the carretera. Feeling a bit better and downing a few electrolytes I cycled on, we weren´t going to make the 40km to the 11am ferry in time but we might as well get the miles done for the evening ferry I thought. After about another 10km I was feeling worse, our pace had dropped and eventually I just got off the bike and lay on a bridge by the side of the road to let the dizzyness pass. Paul looped back to see what was up and I decided it was best if we made the port at least rather than get sick in the middle of nowhere. The next 30km was tough enough going, great scenery but I was in no mood to enjoy it and in th afternoon when the port was 5km further on the km signs by the roadside than the map I had a few choice words for the chilean maps. Our luck was in as there was a 1 o clock boat which we took to the other side, deciding I should rest up for a bit. We´d been given some decent antibiotics and seeing as I had a fever I took some rather than let the bug get hold.


The port on the other side had just a Carabinero outpost and no shop so after chatting to the carabinero chief we camped by the picturesque lake shore for the afternoon. I slept and recovered while Paul sorted the food out. Next morning I was no better, in no state to cycle so we decided rather than waste a day that we´d try get a lift to the next town Cochrane to recover there. That was 2 days cycling away so if we got a lift today and rested for one we´d not lose a day on the road to santiago for xmas then.

The Carabinero Chief came down to enquire as to how I was and offered to ask the ferry crew to ask some of the jeeps and lorries on the boat to give us a lift to Cochrane. Like all of the Carabinero´s we´d met on the road he was a real gent and though we had no luck with the morning and noon ferries a toyota open body van coming off the evening ferry stopped to give us a lift. As it turned out it was the local bin run from Villa O Higgings but we didn´t mind as we hoofed our bikes and bags in on top of the black plastic bags and high tailed it along the bad gravel road, the 3 of us well filling the small van.

At home 110 km/hr might feel fast but here the surface was so bad that 60 km/hr feels out of control. In places the gradient was so steep it had the van scrambling uphill in first, picking a line of solid gravel and skidding up the loose bits. On flat sections the driver gunned the van and sped up, trying to keep one wheel on flat road so the whole van doesn´t bounce and using all of the road to pick his line, not seeing a fair few potholes and crunching the vans shocks into it. I´d give the van 2 years tops before the wheels start to come off. We got into town at 12 and the driver lit up when we give him a few pesos for beers, he´s not talked much during the 3.5 hour drive, partly due to having to concentrate but I´d say mostly due to spending 10 hours a day driving on these roads, not good for the head!



After a few laps of town on foot, walking our bikes as mine is out of action, we eventually find a lodging.
Next day in town I have to try and find replacement screws for my back wheel as 8 out of 10 screws holding the back wheel together have shaken loose on the gravel roads. Only thing is the screws are quite small and despite the local hardware store stocking everything from weekly food shopping to outboards to oxen yokes in 4 sizes no less, they don´t have anything suitable. At this stage I´m a bit bothered as without the screws I´ll have to bus it to Coyhaique the capital of the region and miss out of a good third of the Carretera. After a bit of a think I remember we cycled past a jeep mechanics garage the night before. Worth a try so having explained the problem in my pidgeon spanish, Ronaldo the friendly mechanic empties a greasy box of spare screws on his workshop table and after some sorting we find some replacements from an old carburetor that will do the job till I can get some proper screws to fit. After letting me do a full service of my bike in his workshop he refuses any kind of payment so I slip his young assistant enough pesos for a few chops of beer.
I´m feeling a bit better now the antibitotics have kicked in so we´re good to hit the road tomorrow.

Meanwhile Paul has met two lads cycling south and later we all go for our favourite meal when we reach a town; steak with eggs, onions, chips. Simon from England is on a 2 month cycling holiday with a similar selft built mongrel bike to ourselves and Jean is a Belgian with a custom made bike and is well equipped. Both of them are sound fellas; we have a good chat and then swap stories about the road ahead, Simon telling us of the snowy pass ahead where he nearly froze as he has no thermals and Jean telling us of the slow going ahead due to road works.



Next day we get supplies for the next leg and wish the lads the best of luck before hitting the road round 2pm. The road out of town is a killer 12km of climb of loose gravel, it´s hot and I´m running out of gears on my bike fast and after a while the hill gets so steep that we both end up pushing our bikes uphill. Its a slog for the first half of the day and we´re rewarded with great views of the blue waters of the Rio Baker that snakes past the road, often rushing though rocky gorges with its huge mass of water churning. That evening we pass lots of fishing lodges, Rio Baker is one of the worlds most famous fly fishing rivers and when we reach the beautiful riverside village of Puerto Betrand I enquire about getting a guide for a days fishing. No luck though with the local guides and not wishing to pay the rich tourist prices for fishing at one of the lodges or worse still have to cycle back the road, we hit the steep road out of town and wild camp in the woods by the roadside. Will have to try and organise it later on somewhere cheaper.



Next day the steep hills continue, grinding up the gravel road in our bottom gears, only now the roads have lateral bumps of loose gravel in spots making cycling uphill impossible with the loads we´re carrying. By lunch, hot and dusty we reach lago general carrera and cross the suspension bridge over the start of the rio baker. The lake has beautifuly clear water and dissapears into the horizon with snow capped mountains on both sides, easy to see why Chile and Argentina claim the lake, the chileans calling it Lago General Carrera and the Argentines Lago Buenos Aires.

The lake is also a decision point for us, we decided against taking the ferry across the lake for the shorter route to villa cerro castillo, famed for its beautiful mountains and instead took the scenic western road along the lakeshore to reach Cerro castillo over the mountains. We both went for a swim in the lake off the roadside to get rid of our dust, sweat and suncream tans before having lunch and taking it easy on the lakeshore for a half hour.

Rather than doing the days milage in one block we´ve been doing a morning session of 2.5 hours, eating lunch, then doing another 2.5 hours of cycling in the evening before starting to look for a campsite which has usually ended up with us doing at least 60kms a day. It´s working as the third day on the road we´re still going strong, the time seems to be about the right amount before we need to eat again and we still have some time in the day to do something other than cycle of camp. Between waking up in the morning, eating breakfast, taking the tent down, packing and starting cycling it takes an hour and a half.


All that afternoon the lake winds its way round the hills ahead, disappearing round the corner. Each time we crest a hill there´s another blocking the view of the lake ahead. We know we´re headed into an inlet off the lake, just that we´re not exactly sure what the road ahead is like and we´ve had some tough climbing for two tough days now. Late in the evening we eventually make a call on it and camp on some gravel off the road overlooking the lake. I check my GPS and we´re at 460m so it wasn´t just my mind playing tricks when I thought there was more up that down in the days hills!


Next day after our usual porridge breakfast we hit the road and finally get some decent downhill for all our efforts. After 10 Km of downhill we coast into the neat little one street village of Puerto Tranquillo, the alpine farmsteads and lupin lined roads making for enjoyable cycling when you´re not avoding potholes or surfing the gravel. By now the lake has turned into an inlet and we follow it for the day, taking an hour nap under some trees before making camp for the day by a river with some fishing in mind.

Through the day we meet a french and then a german solo cyclist and then a dutch couple taking it easy,cycling at their own pace. It turns out that some german cyclist has produced a book on cycling the carretera, even going to the bother of producing a gradient chart for evey 500m along the road. The german solo cyclist has the book on his handlebars and bluntly tells us we´re going the wrong way because his book says the prevailing wind is against us. In our own way were a none too impressed with his gradient map, where´s the adventure in knowing what´s ahead of you each day. After trying to convince the german cyclist that it was safe to drink for the streams rather than haul water from each town and wishing him the best of luck we headed off only to meet the belgian couple who were so impressed with the book they´d taken photos of each page, different strokes for different folks I guess.



After missing out on fishing the baker river I´m determined to catch some fish so I make up a night line with the hooks and a rock at the end to anchor it mid stream. Baiting the hooks with some worms Paul and I cast the line below the bridge hoping this might give us some change from the diet of porridge pasta pasta for breakfast lunch and supper. Next morning though there´s no luck as two of the hooks have been nibbled clean and a baby salmon has decided to chomp one of the big hooks giving us no way to release him.



01/12
By now our calculations leave us with between 80 to 90 kms from Cerro Castillo with a mountain pass between us and the village where we will resupply. Simon who we met in Cochrane has told us about the BEER, BEER, BEER BEER BEER method of motivation, basically when you´re tired at the end of the day you keep thinking of beer to get you to the next watering hole. We reckon it might work and after porridge and a mate, we hit off at a good pace with Paul leading the charge along the shaded valley. The carretera is snaking round the side of the mountains by the river bed, thankfully mostly level so far and we do a solid 24km /hr till we hit the steep hills where the road breaks from the river. Along the way we pass all kinds of small farmsteads and holdings and as we haul up throught the forest getting closer to the snowline I spot an old yellow schoolbus parked off the road and converted into a house. We call in an end up having a mate aboard the bus with the one eyed old fella that lives there. The bus seats have been ripped out; his bed is on one side up front with some counters on the opposite site and there´s an oil barrell wood stove down the back for heat. The stove leaks smoke and the bus is dirty with a few cockroaches scuttling round the place, the poor fella has only just settled here it turns out and the dwelling is a far cry from the well organised farm the Mancilla family lived on. It´s hard to see how he´ll survive the winter here in terms of food, not to mind use his chainsaw to cut firewood now he´s recently lost an eye as we can see from the bandage covering the socket. We leave feeling sorry for the old fella.

After an hour and a half of cycling the heat of the day is too much, its some change from two weeks ago when we were cycling in winter leggings and thermals. We stop, have lunch and let the heat of the day pass by a waterfall at the side of the road having made good distance of 47km for the morning session.

Later we push on throught a valley of dead trees whose roots have been flooded by a river, very eerie and with still no sign of the town or the buttressed mountain peaks the town is famous for. Even though it could be 10 or 20 km ahead I´m beginning to feel like we could be in for a long evening´s cycle.

The ripio goes from bad to worse; instead of compacted small pebbles we have to plough through big round loose stones with your wheel sinking, sapping your speed and energy, downhill is no better with big braking bumps like ploughed ridges across the road that rattle the crap out of you and your bike.

At the end of the valley there´s a steep hill and we end up pushing our bikes up in the dead heat, sweating buckets as the oil lorries roar down hill using engine braking to stay slow. Hoping town is on the other side of the hill we push on to the shade of the forest at the other side.

Before we reached town we´d end up pushing our bikes through 4kms of loose gravel where new loose gravel was being laid, but by this time we were so determined to hit town we even passed by a nice campsite and stayed going. It was beer this evening or bust.

Later we got a peek of some buttressed peaks and we reckoned we were in the money, though we couldnt see the town it had to be there somewhere down below the hillside we were on.

After climbing another hill there´s still no sign of the town, it´s one of the few towns that´s not on my GPS so I can´t even check that and for a while we consider camping wild among the stunning views of cerro castillo but the thought of a cooked meal and a cold beer gets us cycling again.

The road is still in poor conditions and starts to wind downhill, and using all of the road we wind downhill until the village appears out of nowhere at the last minute. Cycling into town we pull up beside an old bus that´s been coverted into a chipper, and wolf into chips burgers, ice creams and beer delighted at any form of civilisation.

We´d just done 85km, a Ripio record and rolled into the local campsite tired but happy.