Apologies for the lack of posts, after reaching Santiago we´ve been very Busy.
Paul and I met Emily his girlfriend and headed to Valparaiso for Christmas eve and had a great Chirstmas dinner, complete with draught cans of Guinness thanks to Emily.
A few days later Paul and Emily headed south on their travels to explore chile and argentina while I headed to Mendoza with my girlfriend Rosie, sister Lorr and her boyfriend John.
Right now I´m in Pucon,the chilean lake district with Rosie, headed rafting some grade 4 rapids the afternoon, Rosie´s headed to the beach, by odd co incidence Lorraine and John´s backapcker tour is in town too so no doubt we´ll meet up later for a few drinks and I think Paul is somewhere between Mendoza and Santiago.
Lots to write about, will probably have to wait till Rosie heads home and we reach a cheaper place to stay for a few days and plan the rest of the cycling.
Alls well,
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Friday, December 19, 2008
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.
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.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Where we are now
We´ve been here in Puerto Montt for the last 4 days chilling out after getting the ferry out of the ghost town that is Chaiten where the volcano erupted last May. Went to visit the island of Chiloe today and hoping to do a big update on the blog tomorrow, lots to write about, will need some coffee.
Meanwhile Paul has uploaded more photos from the trekking in Torres del Paine
Meanwhile Paul has uploaded more photos from the trekking in Torres del Paine
Friday, December 5, 2008
Cross Country Border Crossing
We´d heard about a border crossing from Argentine El Chaltein to Villa O Higgins in Chilean patagonia that involved a couple of boats combines with a hike and was only possible on foot, horseback or by bike with some pushing. Sounded like an adventure so it was a must do for the both of us.
While hiking Fitzroy we met our first other cyclists on the road who advised us to chat to the owner of the local wine cellar. We chatted with him for an hour or so, he´d cycled from Alaska to Ushuaia with his wife and had plenty of good advice for us, marking our map for dangerous spots, free cyclist houses and even reccomending good places to spend new years or the time with the now infamous "las novias". He also advised us to head for the border crossing early as there was only one boat per week on saturday morning. It was Thursday and we´d need all the time we had to make it across to the port for the boat or end up waiting a week in the middle of nowhere.
The crossing would involve a cycle to Lago del desierto to catch a daily boat. Then a hike a bike through a forest for 7 to 8 hours to reach a farm on the chilean side of the border from where a boat goes to the mainland once a week.
We hit the road out of town after buying food and having a feed, cycling the 34km on bad ripio road round the back of mount fitz roy through stunning valleys. A gaucho herding horses passed us as we headed deeper and deeper away from civilisation, the road passing a huge river that was taking chunks of the road away where the two met, no sign of any crash barriers here!
Late in the evening we reached the boat dock on the freshwater lake and wild camped for the night in the woods nearby. Next morning we loaded the bikes on the boat and were fleeced for a 45 min trip across the lake. It was better than hiking the bikes alongside the lake for what was signposted as a 5 hour hike, we´d been advised that we´d need the time and energy for the other side of the lake anyhow.
After we got off the boat we got our exit stamps on our passports in the small border patrol station. The border here is very disputed, we´d passed the site of a battle where the argentines had routed the chileans along the road here in 65, hence 4 or 5 lads were posted here out in the sticks, with a patrol boat to keep and eye on things on the lake. Seemed like a waste of the guys lives to me to be honest.
The friendly officer pointed us in the direction of the track leading up into the forest and over the pass and wished us the best of luck. We headed into the forest at 12 and it wasn´t long before we had to take our front panniers off as they were getting stuck in the deep trail. Have a look at this photo of Paul pushing his bike.
For the next 4 hours we´d do one run with the bikes for about 500 metres and then go back for our front panniers and rucksacks. It was tough going. A German couple had headed off hiking before us only for us to meet them on one of our trips back to collect our bags with some younger border officers carrying their bags. Turned out the rookie cabelleros had sent the couple on the wrong trail from the border post, having to go out and find them first and then carry their bags through the forest as penance.
We were glad when the track smoothed out a bit and wasnt as deeply rutted after 2 hours so at least we could push the bikes loaded and not have to do three trips over every section, we were going 3 times faster but still it was slow going.
The bridges were in poor condition, a few of them were just a tree trunk over a stream, some were just 3 or 4 saplings left across the streams so we´d have to unload the bikes completely and do a few runs, treading carefully on the often rotten branches and trying to balance the weight of the bags over the streams. Neither of us fancied hiking in wet boots
The photos of some of the track are here
Once we reached the actual border there was just two signs saying welcome to chile or argentina depending on which way you were headed, but never before was anyone as delighted to see what we´d call a bog road at home as the two of us. The sandy, rocky one lane track meant we could cycle again so we headed off towards the farm, not really having an idea of how far we´ d have to go. We´d done about 5 hours hike a bike to get here, it was getting a bit late in the day
and there was still no sign of any fjiord to catch our boat on. Being in a hilly forest we couldn´t see much further, understandably given the tensions over borders neither country had any decent maps of the crossing so we were relying on guesstimation.
Close to 6 the forest started to thin and the mountains of the valley we were in started to decrease in height and we reached a river where the two Germans were standing, scratching their heads. The main bridge had been washed away so we all ended up building a bridge to cross the flooded river with using oak planks from the washed away section of the old bridge. We had a good laugh with the two Germans, calling this the first German Irish bridge built for the chileans.
We headed on on our bikes leaving the two to continue hiking. They were obviously tired but had a tent and supplies so if worst came to worst they could camp but Paul offered to send someone along to collect them if they were still out in the dark when we reached the farm. We´d seen tyre marks on the trail so there was some form of vehicle at the farm.
We cycled downhill on the rough track for about 12kms, the rough track passing a deep ravine along the cliffside. We could finally see a lake ahead so we couldn´t be too far away. At 7 30 we reached the chilean border control and a group of military houses perched high along the coastline where we got our passports stamped and told the officer about the two Germans still out in the woods.
We cycled on, going down steep, gravel with grass in the middle, one lane island roads that reminded me of the aran islands back home and eventually we reached the port only to find there was nothing there bar an empty shed.
Seeing a sign with the now magical symbols of a crossed fork and knife we headed up another rough lane to reach a wooden building farmstead where the Mansilla family lived. We camped there meeting an Italian hiker who was staying there for 3 days waiting for the boat and was helping one of the mancillas build an extension. The 3 of us watched as he cut timber to length using his chainsaw, the only tool he used to turn trees into planks and then a building, dangerous stuff, especially when we found out later that the nearest nurse is in villa o higgins, a boat trip away and the doctor will only fly in to the local airstrip if the injury is serious and the weather permits. Hence as Ricardo Mancilla explained later they don´t rush things and cause accidents. Though the chainsaw still looked like an accident waiting to happen to me as his brother cuts perfectly straight boards from a tree plank using his trainers to hold the timber in place. Skillfull but deadly stuff.
We found out the only vehicle was the army tractor so the poor german couple had to walk the rest of the way, arriving as darkness fell at 10 and opting to stay in the warm farmhouse.
Next day we found out the boat would not be at 11 as usual but at 4 in the evening as it had to call to other farming outposts along the fjiord. Normally Id be deligted at an extra rest day in such a unique spot but we were low on food and had to spend the day hungry on low rations. Later, in the evening we all gathered in the farm kitchen to listen for word of the boat on the radio, we all heard the captain say manyana meaning tomorrow and thought the worst, but Ricardo chatted to the captain and then told us the boat would be late because of the bad weather but it would arrive at 5.
At 5 we all heard the boat sound its horn and headed down to the port, thanking Ricardo and his brother for their hospitality and glad to be headed somewhere where we could get some food. The boat was a comfortable tourist trip type vessel with space up front for cargo, today was it´s day to visit the local farms and on the way to villa o higgins an inflatable went ashore to a farm and over several trips brought a farmer, his dog, chainsaw and 9 lambs aboard. The poor lambs looked a sorry sight as they huddled in the corner up the bows of the boat over the 2-5 hour trip up the Fjiod
It was dark and 11 at night by the time we arrived and we´d not eaten since 12 so we were glad of the lift into town by the local hostel owner, even if he was a bit of crank abouit the bikes. We had no food left to camp with so any way we could get into town in time for a restaraunt would be mighty. Only thing was when we arriveed in town there were no restaraunts or pubs, this was a small town at the absolute end of the carretera austral and nobody had the money to eat or drink out so there was no food for us.
We all put our remaining food together and made a big pot of soup with pasta through us, not enough to fill any of us but enough to sleep on till breakfast in the morning.
In the morning the hostel owner had no breakfast for us, we figured he´s not had a booking so hadn´t bouht anything in seeing as it was the low season. The shops didn´t open till noon so we had a long wait efore we all attacked the local supermarket for what very basic, non perishable items they had. After eating well for the day we all went back together and clubbed in for some bottles of pisco and rum and in celebration of being back in civilisation we polished off the bottles of booze, 3 other cyclists travelling south having joined us in the hostel after a long cycle so everyone had a good reason to celebrate.
We enjoyed the stay in villa o higgins, bar the stingy hostel owner who charged us santiago prices and gave us nothing to eat, a cardinal sin in my book
While hiking Fitzroy we met our first other cyclists on the road who advised us to chat to the owner of the local wine cellar. We chatted with him for an hour or so, he´d cycled from Alaska to Ushuaia with his wife and had plenty of good advice for us, marking our map for dangerous spots, free cyclist houses and even reccomending good places to spend new years or the time with the now infamous "las novias". He also advised us to head for the border crossing early as there was only one boat per week on saturday morning. It was Thursday and we´d need all the time we had to make it across to the port for the boat or end up waiting a week in the middle of nowhere.
The crossing would involve a cycle to Lago del desierto to catch a daily boat. Then a hike a bike through a forest for 7 to 8 hours to reach a farm on the chilean side of the border from where a boat goes to the mainland once a week.
We hit the road out of town after buying food and having a feed, cycling the 34km on bad ripio road round the back of mount fitz roy through stunning valleys. A gaucho herding horses passed us as we headed deeper and deeper away from civilisation, the road passing a huge river that was taking chunks of the road away where the two met, no sign of any crash barriers here!
Late in the evening we reached the boat dock on the freshwater lake and wild camped for the night in the woods nearby. Next morning we loaded the bikes on the boat and were fleeced for a 45 min trip across the lake. It was better than hiking the bikes alongside the lake for what was signposted as a 5 hour hike, we´d been advised that we´d need the time and energy for the other side of the lake anyhow.
After we got off the boat we got our exit stamps on our passports in the small border patrol station. The border here is very disputed, we´d passed the site of a battle where the argentines had routed the chileans along the road here in 65, hence 4 or 5 lads were posted here out in the sticks, with a patrol boat to keep and eye on things on the lake. Seemed like a waste of the guys lives to me to be honest.
The friendly officer pointed us in the direction of the track leading up into the forest and over the pass and wished us the best of luck. We headed into the forest at 12 and it wasn´t long before we had to take our front panniers off as they were getting stuck in the deep trail. Have a look at this photo of Paul pushing his bike.
For the next 4 hours we´d do one run with the bikes for about 500 metres and then go back for our front panniers and rucksacks. It was tough going. A German couple had headed off hiking before us only for us to meet them on one of our trips back to collect our bags with some younger border officers carrying their bags. Turned out the rookie cabelleros had sent the couple on the wrong trail from the border post, having to go out and find them first and then carry their bags through the forest as penance.
We were glad when the track smoothed out a bit and wasnt as deeply rutted after 2 hours so at least we could push the bikes loaded and not have to do three trips over every section, we were going 3 times faster but still it was slow going.
The bridges were in poor condition, a few of them were just a tree trunk over a stream, some were just 3 or 4 saplings left across the streams so we´d have to unload the bikes completely and do a few runs, treading carefully on the often rotten branches and trying to balance the weight of the bags over the streams. Neither of us fancied hiking in wet boots
The photos of some of the track are here
Once we reached the actual border there was just two signs saying welcome to chile or argentina depending on which way you were headed, but never before was anyone as delighted to see what we´d call a bog road at home as the two of us. The sandy, rocky one lane track meant we could cycle again so we headed off towards the farm, not really having an idea of how far we´ d have to go. We´d done about 5 hours hike a bike to get here, it was getting a bit late in the day
and there was still no sign of any fjiord to catch our boat on. Being in a hilly forest we couldn´t see much further, understandably given the tensions over borders neither country had any decent maps of the crossing so we were relying on guesstimation.
Close to 6 the forest started to thin and the mountains of the valley we were in started to decrease in height and we reached a river where the two Germans were standing, scratching their heads. The main bridge had been washed away so we all ended up building a bridge to cross the flooded river with using oak planks from the washed away section of the old bridge. We had a good laugh with the two Germans, calling this the first German Irish bridge built for the chileans.
We headed on on our bikes leaving the two to continue hiking. They were obviously tired but had a tent and supplies so if worst came to worst they could camp but Paul offered to send someone along to collect them if they were still out in the dark when we reached the farm. We´d seen tyre marks on the trail so there was some form of vehicle at the farm.
We cycled downhill on the rough track for about 12kms, the rough track passing a deep ravine along the cliffside. We could finally see a lake ahead so we couldn´t be too far away. At 7 30 we reached the chilean border control and a group of military houses perched high along the coastline where we got our passports stamped and told the officer about the two Germans still out in the woods.
We cycled on, going down steep, gravel with grass in the middle, one lane island roads that reminded me of the aran islands back home and eventually we reached the port only to find there was nothing there bar an empty shed.
Seeing a sign with the now magical symbols of a crossed fork and knife we headed up another rough lane to reach a wooden building farmstead where the Mansilla family lived. We camped there meeting an Italian hiker who was staying there for 3 days waiting for the boat and was helping one of the mancillas build an extension. The 3 of us watched as he cut timber to length using his chainsaw, the only tool he used to turn trees into planks and then a building, dangerous stuff, especially when we found out later that the nearest nurse is in villa o higgins, a boat trip away and the doctor will only fly in to the local airstrip if the injury is serious and the weather permits. Hence as Ricardo Mancilla explained later they don´t rush things and cause accidents. Though the chainsaw still looked like an accident waiting to happen to me as his brother cuts perfectly straight boards from a tree plank using his trainers to hold the timber in place. Skillfull but deadly stuff.
We found out the only vehicle was the army tractor so the poor german couple had to walk the rest of the way, arriving as darkness fell at 10 and opting to stay in the warm farmhouse.
Next day we found out the boat would not be at 11 as usual but at 4 in the evening as it had to call to other farming outposts along the fjiord. Normally Id be deligted at an extra rest day in such a unique spot but we were low on food and had to spend the day hungry on low rations. Later, in the evening we all gathered in the farm kitchen to listen for word of the boat on the radio, we all heard the captain say manyana meaning tomorrow and thought the worst, but Ricardo chatted to the captain and then told us the boat would be late because of the bad weather but it would arrive at 5.
At 5 we all heard the boat sound its horn and headed down to the port, thanking Ricardo and his brother for their hospitality and glad to be headed somewhere where we could get some food. The boat was a comfortable tourist trip type vessel with space up front for cargo, today was it´s day to visit the local farms and on the way to villa o higgins an inflatable went ashore to a farm and over several trips brought a farmer, his dog, chainsaw and 9 lambs aboard. The poor lambs looked a sorry sight as they huddled in the corner up the bows of the boat over the 2-5 hour trip up the Fjiod
It was dark and 11 at night by the time we arrived and we´d not eaten since 12 so we were glad of the lift into town by the local hostel owner, even if he was a bit of crank abouit the bikes. We had no food left to camp with so any way we could get into town in time for a restaraunt would be mighty. Only thing was when we arriveed in town there were no restaraunts or pubs, this was a small town at the absolute end of the carretera austral and nobody had the money to eat or drink out so there was no food for us.
We all put our remaining food together and made a big pot of soup with pasta through us, not enough to fill any of us but enough to sleep on till breakfast in the morning.
In the morning the hostel owner had no breakfast for us, we figured he´s not had a booking so hadn´t bouht anything in seeing as it was the low season. The shops didn´t open till noon so we had a long wait efore we all attacked the local supermarket for what very basic, non perishable items they had. After eating well for the day we all went back together and clubbed in for some bottles of pisco and rum and in celebration of being back in civilisation we polished off the bottles of booze, 3 other cyclists travelling south having joined us in the hostel after a long cycle so everyone had a good reason to celebrate.
We enjoyed the stay in villa o higgins, bar the stingy hostel owner who charged us santiago prices and gave us nothing to eat, a cardinal sin in my book
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
El Chaltein and mt Fitz Roy
First of all we´ll have to admit we had to take a bus for one of the legs. We looked at our time schedule and what we wanted to do before we reached Santiago for Christmas and found out we had nowhere near enough time to cycle all the way and do the hikes we wanted to do. We needed to be in Santiago for the 22nd of December for the arrival of Las Novias, the girlfriends as we´d explained to many people on the route. My sister Lorr and her boyfriend John were joining the 4 of us for new years also so we had to be there on time.
After a lot of juggling figures and debating we took a bus from Puerto Natales to El Chaltein covering distances that would have taken us two weeks to cycle across barren ground with no shops and nothing much to see. Tough decision to take, but we´re glad we did now we´re getting to cycle the Carretera properly.
We stopped off for one day in El Calafate where we met some great people, Charly and Jo Edwards from London and their friend Cyril from Paris along with Jessica from Manchester who was on the same bus. We all got along great, ate out together and headed to see the spectacular Perito Moreno glacier together.
Paul and I headed off to El Chaltein in the evening, arriving late at night and very hungry so we headed into a cafe for a hamburger and a few beers. We ended up chatting to a few of the locals and trying some of the local stout, awfully sweet stuff. Later, round 1 am, well over the limit we cycled in the dark down the gravel main street and headed to the national park free campsite on the edge of town. Only we couldn´t find any other tents in the dark so after a few laps of the building with our head torches lighting the way we pitched up our tent outside the park ranger station beside a picnic bench. Seemed like an ok place to put a tent. Next morning at 9 hunger woke me and first thing I saw was a big field full of tents across the road from us, as it turned out the signs were only on the way into town as I explained and apologised to the Park Ranger who was none too pleased with us, inisiting we move immediately.
Later though he was decent enough to let us leave our bikes at his house while we were hiking.
Fitz Roy park was a better experience than the chilean Torres del Paine, less people so you didn´t have to say hola every 5 minutes and the trails were´in better condition, plus it was all free incuding a great info centre at the ranger station.
As we hiked out of town in the afternoon who did we meet but Charly Jo and Cyril from El Calafate, we hiked together for the day and pitched up our tents before heading up to see the base of mount fitz roy together.
I have to say of all the sights I´d seen so far mount fitz roy was outstanding, the approach shows you the mountain bit by bit, the peaks are awe inspiring and even standing where we were at the base you felt tiny looking up at the peaks. We had a geat clear day, cloud cover lifted and we could see all of the sublime peaks, remembering when they were summited first from the info centre.
The summit of Fitz Roy itself is rarely conquered and the first summit was in 1955, even that was disputed as one of the climbers fell to his death with the summit photos, so much so the other guy returned 11 years later and controversially used a portable compressor drilled rope anchors all the way up to conquer the peak. More info here
I was also impressed by the modern climbers returning from their summit attempts on various peaks. We talked to one pair to find out what they used the ski´s on their backpacks for only to be given a very short answer by one of the climbers; his older climbing parter explained that they´d failed at their attempt and apologised, saying they were tired, the skis were hinged at the front and had directional grip so they could use climbing boots to get over and up snowy sections easily. Later we met more mountaineers on their way down, some clearly elated but more were exhausted and shaky on their feet. Seeing the peaks up close gave me such respect for those guys, I get such bad vertigo that it will never be a sport for me but you had to admire their courage to climb such difficult peaks. Think how much work is involved in climbing 2000 metres with a 50 metre length of rope!
Later at the campsite in the middle of the woods we all ate and shared some wine, everybody cooking up their own camp food concoction, the french english contingent being more gourmet than the rest of us had some vino tinto which we all shared.
Next day we all the lads hiked to see the glacier then we returned to pack up camp and head on to see Cerro Torre. Id said goodbye to Charlie and Jo at the perito moreno glacier, then again at
the hostel in Calafate when our bus was later than expected, and then said goodbye again as they were headed back to el chaltein whereas we´d planned on camping again, only to meet them again later as we arrived at the Cerro Torre campsite and of course say goodbye for a 4th time, We also met Jessica on the trail later on, along with Robbie the Scottish-Aussie hiker who we´d met in the snow at the back end of Torres del Paine and again in El Calafate. Great to bump into such friendly people on the trail and swap stories.
Unfortunately Cerro Torre was hiding under it´s cap of cloud that evening and the next day so we decided to packup early next day and head into town to chat to the owner of a local wine store who we had heard was a touring cyclist also.
Fitz Roy photos are here
After a lot of juggling figures and debating we took a bus from Puerto Natales to El Chaltein covering distances that would have taken us two weeks to cycle across barren ground with no shops and nothing much to see. Tough decision to take, but we´re glad we did now we´re getting to cycle the Carretera properly.
We stopped off for one day in El Calafate where we met some great people, Charly and Jo Edwards from London and their friend Cyril from Paris along with Jessica from Manchester who was on the same bus. We all got along great, ate out together and headed to see the spectacular Perito Moreno glacier together.
Paul and I headed off to El Chaltein in the evening, arriving late at night and very hungry so we headed into a cafe for a hamburger and a few beers. We ended up chatting to a few of the locals and trying some of the local stout, awfully sweet stuff. Later, round 1 am, well over the limit we cycled in the dark down the gravel main street and headed to the national park free campsite on the edge of town. Only we couldn´t find any other tents in the dark so after a few laps of the building with our head torches lighting the way we pitched up our tent outside the park ranger station beside a picnic bench. Seemed like an ok place to put a tent. Next morning at 9 hunger woke me and first thing I saw was a big field full of tents across the road from us, as it turned out the signs were only on the way into town as I explained and apologised to the Park Ranger who was none too pleased with us, inisiting we move immediately.
Later though he was decent enough to let us leave our bikes at his house while we were hiking.
Fitz Roy park was a better experience than the chilean Torres del Paine, less people so you didn´t have to say hola every 5 minutes and the trails were´in better condition, plus it was all free incuding a great info centre at the ranger station.
As we hiked out of town in the afternoon who did we meet but Charly Jo and Cyril from El Calafate, we hiked together for the day and pitched up our tents before heading up to see the base of mount fitz roy together.
I have to say of all the sights I´d seen so far mount fitz roy was outstanding, the approach shows you the mountain bit by bit, the peaks are awe inspiring and even standing where we were at the base you felt tiny looking up at the peaks. We had a geat clear day, cloud cover lifted and we could see all of the sublime peaks, remembering when they were summited first from the info centre.
The summit of Fitz Roy itself is rarely conquered and the first summit was in 1955, even that was disputed as one of the climbers fell to his death with the summit photos, so much so the other guy returned 11 years later and controversially used a portable compressor drilled rope anchors all the way up to conquer the peak. More info here
I was also impressed by the modern climbers returning from their summit attempts on various peaks. We talked to one pair to find out what they used the ski´s on their backpacks for only to be given a very short answer by one of the climbers; his older climbing parter explained that they´d failed at their attempt and apologised, saying they were tired, the skis were hinged at the front and had directional grip so they could use climbing boots to get over and up snowy sections easily. Later we met more mountaineers on their way down, some clearly elated but more were exhausted and shaky on their feet. Seeing the peaks up close gave me such respect for those guys, I get such bad vertigo that it will never be a sport for me but you had to admire their courage to climb such difficult peaks. Think how much work is involved in climbing 2000 metres with a 50 metre length of rope!
Later at the campsite in the middle of the woods we all ate and shared some wine, everybody cooking up their own camp food concoction, the french english contingent being more gourmet than the rest of us had some vino tinto which we all shared.
Next day we all the lads hiked to see the glacier then we returned to pack up camp and head on to see Cerro Torre. Id said goodbye to Charlie and Jo at the perito moreno glacier, then again at
the hostel in Calafate when our bus was later than expected, and then said goodbye again as they were headed back to el chaltein whereas we´d planned on camping again, only to meet them again later as we arrived at the Cerro Torre campsite and of course say goodbye for a 4th time, We also met Jessica on the trail later on, along with Robbie the Scottish-Aussie hiker who we´d met in the snow at the back end of Torres del Paine and again in El Calafate. Great to bump into such friendly people on the trail and swap stories.
Unfortunately Cerro Torre was hiding under it´s cap of cloud that evening and the next day so we decided to packup early next day and head into town to chat to the owner of a local wine store who we had heard was a touring cyclist also.
Fitz Roy photos are here
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Hiking Torres Del Paine
The torres del paine national park is the most popular park in South america and was one of the big things we wanted to do. You have a choice between a day trip, which is what most tourists do, a 5 day w circuit and the big circuit which takes 8 to 9 days, both of which require you to carry all of your food.
We went to a great free info session given by the legendary Bill, the owner of Erratic Rock Hostel on the hikes and found out the refugio´s or shelters on the back end of the circuit were still closed from winter as there was still a lot of snow on the mountain. The snow would also mean we´d have to carry a tent in case we didn´t make the next shelter. There were also 3 ravines that had no bridges over them as winter avalanches had taken out the bridges and seeing as the circuit was not open yet they hadn´t been replaced so Bill advised us to tackle these first rather than go 5 days and find we had an uncrossable ravine between us and the boat home and have to backtrack 5 days.
We were up for the challenge so we went into town and bought food for 8 days. I know I eat a lot but if you´ve ever looked at 8 days food in a pile you´ll be shocked. No way it was going to fit in my 65 litre rucksack, I´d need to hire a 90 litre, plus Paul had only brought a 45 litre rucksack so we were only going to be able to carry 5 days food at best as we needed space for the tent, sleeping bag and warm clothes.While I had cycled in my leather hiking boots since ushuaia Paul had bought a pair of trekking shoes that weren´t going to be up to 4 days in the snow. The north face fancy dan lacing system had already started to fail. All things considered we opted for the shorter circuit with a bit added on; this would save us 4 days that we´d use to go hiking round mount fitz roy in Argentina and also give us two days to have a go at the ravines and get to the top of the paso gardner, the toughest part of the big circuit with the best views.
We took a catamaran across a windswept lake to the back of the park, ate a quick lunch and hit the trail to the back end of the park passing lago grey on the way where huge blue icebergs calved off the glacier were all parked up at the end of the lake by the wind. With Lago grey living up to its name because of the minerals in the water and the blue icebergs because of compressed glacial snow the view was stunning. At the opposide end after 5 hours fast hiking we got to the free campsite and sat for half an hour watching glacier grey, egging it on to calve off a piece of ice into the water. No luck, the glacier has been receding for the last few years so there wasn´t much happening though we didn´t mind as there were plenty of glaciers ahead on the route north.
We went to a great free info session given by the legendary Bill, the owner of Erratic Rock Hostel on the hikes and found out the refugio´s or shelters on the back end of the circuit were still closed from winter as there was still a lot of snow on the mountain. The snow would also mean we´d have to carry a tent in case we didn´t make the next shelter. There were also 3 ravines that had no bridges over them as winter avalanches had taken out the bridges and seeing as the circuit was not open yet they hadn´t been replaced so Bill advised us to tackle these first rather than go 5 days and find we had an uncrossable ravine between us and the boat home and have to backtrack 5 days.
We were up for the challenge so we went into town and bought food for 8 days. I know I eat a lot but if you´ve ever looked at 8 days food in a pile you´ll be shocked. No way it was going to fit in my 65 litre rucksack, I´d need to hire a 90 litre, plus Paul had only brought a 45 litre rucksack so we were only going to be able to carry 5 days food at best as we needed space for the tent, sleeping bag and warm clothes.While I had cycled in my leather hiking boots since ushuaia Paul had bought a pair of trekking shoes that weren´t going to be up to 4 days in the snow. The north face fancy dan lacing system had already started to fail. All things considered we opted for the shorter circuit with a bit added on; this would save us 4 days that we´d use to go hiking round mount fitz roy in Argentina and also give us two days to have a go at the ravines and get to the top of the paso gardner, the toughest part of the big circuit with the best views.
We took a catamaran across a windswept lake to the back of the park, ate a quick lunch and hit the trail to the back end of the park passing lago grey on the way where huge blue icebergs calved off the glacier were all parked up at the end of the lake by the wind. With Lago grey living up to its name because of the minerals in the water and the blue icebergs because of compressed glacial snow the view was stunning. At the opposide end after 5 hours fast hiking we got to the free campsite and sat for half an hour watching glacier grey, egging it on to calve off a piece of ice into the water. No luck, the glacier has been receding for the last few years so there wasn´t much happening though we didn´t mind as there were plenty of glaciers ahead on the route north.
Next day we left the tent pitched and packed light for an assault on the paso John Gardner, taking essentials plus a days food as we planned to return that evening. First we had to cross the 3 ravines, the first of which looked like a snow alley an indiana jones rock had rolled down. Winter avalanches had carved out a toboggan run for themselves here so we find a level section to cross where we can see solid rock and the rangers had left a rope to help us up the opposite side. We crossed some snow banks on the bottom of the ravine, feeling for more solid sections with my big boots making good sized foot holes to keep Pauls shoes dry.
At 30 metres wide and 20 metres deep there was some scrambing but nothing too hairy and we climbed up the bank and into the thick forest to find the trail again.
One thing that was really great about the park is that you can drink the water from the streams, glacial water running straight off the mountain tastes great and saves you hauling another kilo or two so after the hard work of the ravine we sat by a stream and drank a bit.
After two easier ravines across rivers we reached the ranger station. We´d passed a "track closed" sign before the ravines so when the ranger appears from his hut and asks us what we´re up to we reckon the game might be up, but once we tell him he chuckles and invites us in by his wood stove for coffee. Inside his hut we meet a spanish couple who´ve just came over the pass, they say the snow is waist high, I guess that´s thigh high for me but still tough going.
After a chat we hit off up the pass through a forest, hitting the snowline where thin powder becomes deep snow and eventually we´re walking on snow the height of the smaller trees. Some steps I just sink down to waist height, other steps I´m lucky and hit a frozen bit of snow and it can support my weight, tough going but good craic, don´t know how the poor spanish couple got down with their loaded packs.
We hit the top of the 1280m Pass, it´s higher than Carauntoohil! and the view of the icefield behind glacier grey is spread out before us with huge crevases and trails of rock on the top. We eat a bit of celebratory choclolate but can´t stay up too long though as the wind is harsh and the we see the weather approaching, time to get below the snowline before our trail gets blanked out and we have to use the gps to get back. On the way down through the deep snow it´s great craic, we take huge steps as if on the moon or walking on sponge and even toboggan down a bit without our packs for a laugh. The thinner snow in the forest is more difficult as it´s started to melt during the day and the going is tricky with slush and mud making for bad footing. It´s getting late as we recross the ravines and reach our tent for some grub and chat to the other hikers. A good days adventure.
For the next two days the weather was a bit Irish, we backtracked for one day and then tried to go up the valle frances, the middle part of the W shaped trail, crossing our first proper rope bridge over a glacial stream roaring below. Strong winds and a pelting mix of hail and rain stopped us half way up Valle Frances so we sat under a tree for an hour watching glacier frances up the mountain. At night in our tent at the campsite we´ve heard it rumbling away, from 7 in the evening on you hear a loud whoomph and the snow avalanche would rumble down the valley opposite us but today there´s no show. The lower valley is still worth having a good look at till the cold gets the better of us and we run out of biscuits.
Later Pauls North Face hiking boots give up the ghost. They have cleverly decided that rather than laces, which have worked for centurys they should use some nylon wire and a click system at the hheel of the shoe. These were marketed as proper hiking shoes but after the lacing system stops shutting and the laces themselves break in the middle of the hike the two of us get our camping stove and using red hot stove legs burn holes in the shoes to fit some laces. A month later the laces are still holding but no joy from north face in terms of replacing the shoes.
We take up the tent and head on to the next campsite in the hopes that we can dry all our soaking gear and boots. We´re pretty tired and damp and the thought of staying at a refugio in a warm bed is appealing only everyone else has the same idea and the place is packed. We nip in for a quick shower, leave our boots and gear by the fire to dry and walk barefoot out to the tent in the rain to cook dinner in the small porch of the tent rather than pay the outrageous money they are charging to use the gas hob, not to mind the price of a cooked dinner. A few friends we´ve made along the trail including Paddy the Cavan man try sparking up a stove to cook but are harshly dealt with by the staff so we don´t mind the outside too much.
Next day we ht the trail with dry boots and gear and cross into the dryer part of the park, making good progress and after 7 hours hiking we reach the torres themselves. It´s clear and we can see the torres themselves and then I don´t mind missing the valley frances the day before. People we´ve met have seen only 1 out of 3 highlights due to cloud so we´re doing well. We´d planning on bivying the night up there at the lookout to see the sunrise and it´s supposed to be spectacular so w e´ve hiked our full kit all the way up as the refugio staff refused to hold our tent overnight. Some of the privately owned refugios are not all that well run or friendly.
Anyhow it´s very cold up there and I guess after a long hike we´re a bit wrecked so we opt to hike down 50 mins to the campsite rather than stay up. It´s good craic at the campsite and we share some Vino Tinto with some welsh, american and israeli hikers. In the morning we get up at 4.30 and hike up with the stove and porridge and eat breakfast at the torres lookout at 840m or so, the porridge tastes great but the cloud cover is in and there´s no red sunrise for us.
After a wellearned beer and the best tasting can of pringles ever on the grass outside the small tienda at the bottom of the trail we hike out to the bus and then head into town to do some damage in the restaraunts eating two main courses in two different places, making short work of steaks and calzone´s and then heading for a few beers with Paddy from Cavan and Timo from the Black forest who we met on the trails.
Some pictures of the glacier and the hike are here.
Next stop El Calafate.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
The shed men of Patagonia
Next leg of the trip was the 250 km stretch north from Rio Grande, across the border at San Sebastian into Chilean Patagonia and then west to Porvenir for the ferry across the straits of Magellan into Punta Arenas. We knew the prevailing wind was from the north west so we´d have a few tough days ahead.
The morning we woke up to leave Rio Grande the wind was howling through the town. Once we left the shelter of the town on the road north to san sebastian we were battling a strong headwind. We´d gotten out of bed early to avoid the strongest wind at mid day but for no gain. We were working hard to get 12 km per hour against the wind and Id missed 2.5 hours of time in my warm bed. Mighty
It was a slow and steady day; fighting the cross wind by leaning the bikes into the wind coming from the west to the left. Some times the wind would gust and lean the bike over and you had no option but to go with it and end up in the gravel hard shoulder. As your front wheel had no grip on the gravel to steer you back on the road we would end up stopping and walking the bike back onto the tarmac. Trucks on the road made it even more difficult as a truck from the opposite direction would blast you with even more cross wind sending you towards the ditch, where as a truck going our direction would block the cross wind for a second or two, sounds good I know only this meant the wind you were leaning the bike against was gone and you ended up headed for the white line in the middle.
By lunch we´d made 65 kms and stopped over at the back of an estancia on a lawn among the old horse drawn carts. We slept for an hour in the tent and then pushed on for the last 22km round 6, the last 22km took an hour and a half but felt like 3. It was cold and wet and after a long day neither of us were feeling like sprinting the last few kms to the border. We slept the night in the argentine border crossing waiting room, which might sound a bit crap but we had hot showers, a gas hob to cook on and a tiled floor to sleep on for free. The floor was the first bed I´ve fitted in since I arrived here!
Next morning we loaded up and the wind was howling. The border crossing had an awning like a petrol station and as I went to push off west towards the chilean border crossing the wind was too strong to take off. Had to walk the bike a few steps thinking it must be the building creating a wind funnel. 100 metres down the road and the wind hadn´t let up, we were cycling in our lowest gears and still only making 8 km per hour progress. The 14 kms of flat gravel road to the Chilean frontier took us 2.5 hours with some of that being us walking the bikes. We even tried tucking into the slipstream of one or two of the lorries who were crossing the border to avoid the headwind only they were wise to us and sped up.
The wind was unbelievable, at one stage I felt gravel hitting my face and looked up to see a lorry rounding a corner a good 500m ahead, in the field a river was being churned up over it´s bank and the birds were even finding it hard to make progress. Later we found it was 140kms per hour, no day for cycling so we camped for the day and slept at the chilean frontier, hoping the wind would die down in the evening so we wouldn´t have to bus it to Porvenir. There was a 9 o clock bus what went to Punta Areas the long way round tomorrow that would pick us up at the frontier worst case.
The morning we woke up to leave Rio Grande the wind was howling through the town. Once we left the shelter of the town on the road north to san sebastian we were battling a strong headwind. We´d gotten out of bed early to avoid the strongest wind at mid day but for no gain. We were working hard to get 12 km per hour against the wind and Id missed 2.5 hours of time in my warm bed. Mighty
It was a slow and steady day; fighting the cross wind by leaning the bikes into the wind coming from the west to the left. Some times the wind would gust and lean the bike over and you had no option but to go with it and end up in the gravel hard shoulder. As your front wheel had no grip on the gravel to steer you back on the road we would end up stopping and walking the bike back onto the tarmac. Trucks on the road made it even more difficult as a truck from the opposite direction would blast you with even more cross wind sending you towards the ditch, where as a truck going our direction would block the cross wind for a second or two, sounds good I know only this meant the wind you were leaning the bike against was gone and you ended up headed for the white line in the middle.
By lunch we´d made 65 kms and stopped over at the back of an estancia on a lawn among the old horse drawn carts. We slept for an hour in the tent and then pushed on for the last 22km round 6, the last 22km took an hour and a half but felt like 3. It was cold and wet and after a long day neither of us were feeling like sprinting the last few kms to the border. We slept the night in the argentine border crossing waiting room, which might sound a bit crap but we had hot showers, a gas hob to cook on and a tiled floor to sleep on for free. The floor was the first bed I´ve fitted in since I arrived here!
Next morning we loaded up and the wind was howling. The border crossing had an awning like a petrol station and as I went to push off west towards the chilean border crossing the wind was too strong to take off. Had to walk the bike a few steps thinking it must be the building creating a wind funnel. 100 metres down the road and the wind hadn´t let up, we were cycling in our lowest gears and still only making 8 km per hour progress. The 14 kms of flat gravel road to the Chilean frontier took us 2.5 hours with some of that being us walking the bikes. We even tried tucking into the slipstream of one or two of the lorries who were crossing the border to avoid the headwind only they were wise to us and sped up.
The wind was unbelievable, at one stage I felt gravel hitting my face and looked up to see a lorry rounding a corner a good 500m ahead, in the field a river was being churned up over it´s bank and the birds were even finding it hard to make progress. Later we found it was 140kms per hour, no day for cycling so we camped for the day and slept at the chilean frontier, hoping the wind would die down in the evening so we wouldn´t have to bus it to Porvenir. There was a 9 o clock bus what went to Punta Areas the long way round tomorrow that would pick us up at the frontier worst case.
By 8pm the wind had died so we decided to make a run for it to Porvenir. There would be little or no traffic on the porvenir route at night so we put on our head torches and hit the road west. It might have been dark but we were making 22 kms per hour on the bikes easily and it wasn´t all that cold. All was going well till about 11 at night when the wind started to pick up again. There was no getting away from it so after doing 37kms in the dark on the gravel road I spotted a small galvanised shed by the side of the road where we slept for the night. Hardly the ritz but even if one of the sheets of metal on the roof was missing it kept the wind off us and we had a good nights sleep.
Next morning the wind was strong as ever and we were a bit wrecked. There was no point in heading off west against the wind as we were 110 kms from Porvenir and with that wind it would take us the guts of 3 days to get there. We only had a little less than 2 days food as there were no shops in the border towns like the map suggests. We learnt the hard way that a dot on the map might mean anything from a town with a bakery to 3 houses and a police station with no shop. The border between Argentina and Chile is very disputed so I guess both sides are keen to call places towns to stake their claims, without a thought for hungry cyclists looking for food.
Our options at this stage were either turn back and get a 9 bus tomorrow at the border 37kms back; easily done in an hour and a half as with the wind behind us we´d not even need to pedal, or we could try get a lift from passing traffic so we had a go at hitching.
Hitching with two bikes and a full set of bike luggage isn´t easy and while I can imagine two guys with a few days stubble standing by a shed in the middle of nowhere isn´t the most inviting place to pick someone up, nobody showed any sign of stopping. It was a good thing we had some food. Some sped up, buses drove on and ignored us and one lorry driver even gave us the finger. Some farm hands stopped and sparked up when I offered them a few dollars to get us to the next town but never came back. It looked like we were going nowhere. Nobody wanted to give the shed men a lift.
Late in the aftenoon I saw a white transit van coming over the road, taking it´s time and holding two buses up behind it. The buses were all over his tail, usually on a ripio gravel road everyone drives in the one lane, there´s space for two but one lane tends to wear better so the bus couldnt get past. Rembering when I had a landrover and it wouldn´t do any more than 55 without burning clouds of diesel and I used to hold up traffic I had a laugh to myself and though fair play to him, what´s the rush.
The white van stopped when I waved him down, the bus nearly crashing into him and Leo the street performer agreed to give us a lift. Turned out he had no mirrors on the van and hadn´t seen the buses. He was delivering statues to a town in the north, wasn´t going to Porvenir at all but my mention of 100 US dollars got him interested in the sights of Porvenir. We lumped the bikes in the back and with the three of us peering out through the cracked windscreen we hit the gravel road west. We were sorted.
On the way over we were glad we hadn´t tried to cycle for it. The two towns where we had thought we´d get food were deserted fishing villages so we´d have ran out of food. The wind would have been too much also as the sea on the straits of magellan was whipped into more white horses than I´ve ever seen and the old white milk van was struggling along at 60 kms per hour against the head wind and the hills. We didn´t mind the slow pace though and were delighted to get there 3 hours later. Better still we found out that the ferry which usually ran at 2 was delayed till 6 - we could make Punta Arenas tonight and be in civilisation for a few beers.
On the way over Leo was laughing at how much petrol his bosses van was using because of the weight and the wind. I´d smelt petrol inside but thought it might be from the stuff rolling round the back. Lucky the Van was dual fuel as when the petrol ran out 50kms from town he switched to gas. When we filled the van with petrol before heading for the port I saw petrol dripping down from underneath the van. We popped the bonnet and I saw that the fuel line was rubbing off the brake cylinder and dripping a decent amount of petrol down the side of the engine. Lucky someone had designed the exhaust on the opposite side to the fuel line in the factory!
Duct tape didn´t fix the Leak so while Leo went to buy some new fuel hose we chatted to two NZ motorbikers Steve and Rich we´d met at the border crossing the day before. They were surprised to see us given the wind but it turned out we´d camped just 10km back the road from them last night. Later, with Leo´s van getting better milage we said thanks and cycled to the port, our 20 minute head start on the motorbikes just getting us to the port before the bikers.
We cycled onto the ferry and after tieing our bikes down we got a good spot for leaving the port and watched the waves breaking over the bows of the roll on ferry. The crossing was rough and no doubt the sea water wasn´t the best thing for our bikes. Turns out it was worse for the motorbikes as one of them had fallen over and wouldn´t start when we arrived in Punta Arenas. We all pitched in and after two laps of the car park with 3 of us push starting the unloaded bike it wouldn´t start. I asked some welders refurbishing a ship nearby if they had jumpleads and next thing we had 5 of the lads and a jeep over chatting and helping out. After a lot of jumpstarting heating the sparkplug with the welders torch cured the problem and bike fired and we headed into town in convoy. Two bicycles and two motorbikes headed into town in convoy on halloween night at 10 pm must have been a sight as we got a few cheers from the locals trick or treating.
We had a few pints and food later with the lads who stayed at the same hostel in Punta Arenas before taking two well earned rest days in civilisation. The lads motored on, Rich first then Steve two days later after we had some more bike fixing to do before a battery charge and fuel filter change sorted it out.
A great adventure on this leg but hopefully we won´t end up stranded again!
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