Day 60 - going on a cabana hunt

Santa Lucia to La Junta (70km)

November 2nd

Despite our best intentions of getting up super early and rocking out a 100+km day, we slept and slept and slept! No surprise I suppose, we had very little sleep on the boat and had put our bodies through a tough work out yesterday so who can blame them for snuggling under the feather duvet near the wood fire until way gone 9am!

Eventually we prised ourselves out the lovely room, grateful that the wood stove was there to dry our washing (this matters A LOT when you're alternating two sets of clothes, hand washing each night and are no longer in the high temperature, dry environment of Peru!), and ventured passed the baby cow, to the breakfast room.

Ant left me to finish my 3rd cup of tea, pay the lovely Hostal lady and practice my Spanish in the process. Good news! She thinks the road south is very well kept with minimal rippio! Yeah! This motivated us to get a wiggle on and actually get out the door!

It was now abundantly clear that we weren't getting further than La Junta today, so we had a target of 70km. Patagonia was delivering her weather pick and mix style as ever, leaving our jackets and trousers totally confused as to whether they were needed or not, on off on off...! Again she was a tease, clouds hiding the views and occasionally revealing a hint of snow and what lied above. This messed with my mind and seemed a little unfair - we were working really hard to venture across her terrain, she could at least help us out a bit?
Ant meanwhile was loving it. I think he felt the lake district was too 'easy' (!) and that this is much more of an adventure. Plus to his credit, he now doesn't have to do any route planning, just point the bikes on the one road and calculate the distance to the next town - a relief when he's been working so hard to keep us on track the rest of the trip.

So the road - today it started off with beautiful tarmac that tilted up and down quite a lot to test how our legs were coping with intervals these days. The wind - on our backs wahoo! Well initially at least. At some point we descended into a valley and it switched to our fronts - just because you can't possibly enjoy a fast easy descent in South America!

A huge wide river, and appropriately sized orange bridge signalled the start of the rippio, which today was treating us kindly. We were zipping along.

If I'm honest, this pretty much describes the whole day. Trees, mountains, a glimpse of snow, sun, rain, wind (in varying directions), and a very enjoyable ride on almost traffic free roads. Oooh and it wouldn't be a blog post from me if I didn't comment on our food! We'd smuggled some of the delicious bread from breakfast and smothered it in butter and jam. If you closed your eyes and thought hard it could have almost been scones! Teamed with some crisps this set us up nicely for the afternoon.

So we arrived in La Junta at about 4.30pm, nice and early - partly thanks to the initial head wind, but mainly because our legs are pretty strong these days. We were craving our own cooking and it soon became clear this would be a distinct possibility. Cabañas had been sprinkled all over the town like confetti, so it was just a case of finding one that looked suitably snug, reasonably priced and available - and of course the ability to find and communicate with the owner was a must!
After a loop of the town, we picked up our shopping from the bakers and well stocked supermarket - I might have had an awkward moment or two whilst I tried to buy cake from a man who was just a customer in the bakers. He was so enthusiastic about our trip and wanted to explain every type of product that was on offer so I wouldn't be hungry... I just kept saying "ill take three cakes and 10 bread please, thank you"... I don't think he found out as much about our trip as he'd wanted, but he was a jolly fellow who didn't seem to mind too much and wished us well. Though his relief was evident when the baker finally appeared to serve me! Dinner would be toast, ham, mushroom and cheese omelette and potatoes fried in butter, with an avocado on the side, cakes for dessert and cheese on toast as a starter - and man we were excited! And don't worry - we'd tucked four beers into our panniers!

After another loop of the town we decided to check out the cabañas we saw on the way in... The looked lovely but were above our price threshold for the day... So back into town we went... Sweeping the streets like a groundsman sweeps out the lines on a cricket pitch. Out the other side we saw another set of good candidates, but no owner, hmm, perhaps this would be harder than we had expected. But there were still a huge amount to check out so no panic yet. Well it had started to rain and we were starting to shiver, so a home soon would be nice. Ant spotted an excellent candidate and after a few phone calls we were snuggled into our lovely new wooden home, the lady running around getting firewood and making a fire in the stove. It was fantastic.

Ant set about doing strengthening exercises, showering and preparing supper, whilst I went about... Well doing absolutely nothing I'm afraid to say! I'd found myself a comfy arm chair right by the fire and was focussing on snuggling in.

Our supper was amazing, our home was snug, our clothes were drying, and all the while a good Patagonian storm was raging outside. No matter how hard it tried, the rain and wind couldn't get us in here - even if it was shaking and rattling our home a little!

Let's hope it dies down tomorrow - or at least is on our tails...

Day 59 - Welcome to the Caraterra Austral!

Chaitan to Santa Lucia (85km)

Tuesday 1st November

Fuelled (thankfully!), sleepy, but feeling full of adventure we hoped on our bikes and got ready to see what Patagonia had to offer us.
The steep, green hills on either side of the road were luscious yet intimidating. The grey cloudy sky, that we've now grown unfamiliar with, added to the eerie feeling we both had - where did the Sun go? Returning back to the UK will be interesting! And then the occasional snowy peak would roar up through the clouds and reveal itself, looming high above us, showing a glimpse of just how much of this new world lurked up above the clouds.

Our road, for now at least, was lovely. It snaked in between the steep hills carving valleys that swept around wide corners with very gentle climbs. Despite the new challenge of the weather, this was quite possibly the easiest cycling we've done so far.

We had 30km from Chaitan to the next town, which we were excited to discover were all paved! Where is this hideous bumpy careterra that people speak of? Oh well, we're not complaining and are still feeling proud to now be among the few cyclists who can boast adventuring along the Caraterra Austral - despite its current state of easiness!

We swept into the next town and were pleased to see some restaurants, hotels and campsites - again something that rumours said were rare. It was looking like tourism  visited our road just enough to make it friendly, but not yet enough to remove the feeling of isolation and adventure - we could have timed this perfectly!
It feels appropriate at this point, to mention that the Careterra Austral is currently part of a 20 year plan to make itself paved and tourist friendly. One of the main reasons we really wanted to include it in our trip - to experience it before it becomes something different.

We found a suitable bus stop on the outskirts of the town to have a bite to eat and watch the rain start to fall (timed that well!), get waterproofed up and psych ourselves up for the gravel track that looked ahead.
As we left the town, on tarmac, we had the un-nerving feeling that the gravel was approaching, but knew not where or how far it would let us get before we had to get our best legs out. I said that if we got to 44km of our 85km day then I'd be a very happy girl. We stopped for a few pastries and empanadas at the 40km mark and were still on smooth roads. Looking promising! The 44km marker came and went and we were still on tarmac. Each additional metre was now a bonus!

Almost as soon as I'd said "so where are all the other cycle tourists braving the Austral?", a cycle tourist appeared in Ant's mirror. He was French, had been cycling for a couple of weeks on the road from Puerto Mont where he said the careterra was terrible. Loose stones and bumpy roads. Pleased we got to boat then! He was also cycling with a 'colleague', but we never actually saw this person. Obviously cycling 'with' a colleague meant cycling ahead of them then stopping to wait for them every few km. We didn't quite understand this but each to their own. He was planning on getting to a campsite 50km into our day, just around the other side of the lake that we had found ourselves on. His colleague had also reliably informed him that the road became bad at this point all the way to Santa Lucia (our goal for the day). This didn't dishearten us as much as you might think. We'd come here to battle with the Careterra Austral, it would be a slight shame if it was a simple walk in the park! Also how hard can it be? We've now fought fairly bad rippio for days in the past and come out winning - we can certainly do it again.
At about 46km we saw the sign 'fin de pavimento'. The inevitable had finally reached us. We ventured onto our new piste and it was actually ok. Perhaps we've become more accustomed to this stuff than we realised. A few km later and we saw another sign 'fin de rippio'. What?! Wow what a treat. The next few km was a patch work of rippio, then not rippio, taking it in turns to test our legs and giving us a nice introductory day to central Patagonia.

Or so we thought! This IS South America after all. You don't get away with a straightforward day just like that! We waved goodbye to Rahul at his campsite (off to find a fishing rod and catch fish in the lake for supper - something that we meant to try on this section - most cycle tourists do - but we sort of forgot - my Dad would NOT be proud - sorry Dad, opportunity missed, though I'm not sure my fish gutting skills are quite what they used to be!) and set off on what we would soon find out was the last piece of tarmac of our day.

Of course the weather had been off an on all day. It hadn't decided what it wanted to do today, be Sunny, Rainy or Windy, so it alternated between them every 20minutes or so - water proofs on, waterproofs off, waterproofs on waterproofs off... We were soon discussing what we would prefer. Wind or rain. We decided two things that we would definitely reflect on in a few days' time: 1- that we would trade wind for rain any day, 2- that we wished the day would make up its mind and decide whether it wanted to be rainy or sunny so we could stop having to change our kit. (hold these thoughts for now - like I said I shall reflect on them in a few post's time!).

So we were now left to tackle the last 30km of the day, on rippio, in rainy sunny, cold, warm, shivering, sweating, sun cream, not sun cream, leg warmers, not leg warmers, conditions. Heads high and still excited by this new part of the adventure we went full steam ahead o to the rippio. And up the rippio. And up. And up.
It was wet, muddy, steep up and down, churned up by dreaded 'road improvements', covered in huge stones, slidy in the rain, and a new challenge - getting stuck in muddy puddles. Definitely a case of hold on tight, find power in the legs and prey!

To give you an idea of how hellish this last section was a workman pulled along side us in his pick up (presumably about to head to the next section of road to make it 'better'!) and said in Spanish: "hey guys, you OK? You know this road continues like this to the next town right?! It's like 17km!".

Feeling strong enough and with just about enough breath spare to speak we both nodded enthusiastically and said 'yes', whilst also munching several energy bars for added comfort! He wasn't offering us a lift or anything, just heeding a warning and giving us quite a lot of kudos!

We powered on up the incredibly steep remaining 20km (he was wrong and man those extra 3km mattered!), thinking this leg burn would never end and then had to tackle a slidy, muddy bobbly descent into the town. Come on Alan, you're made for this kind of thing! Suspension on, courage high let's do this! Jamling... Um... Good luck mate... We'll be routing for you and your inflexible, heavy load! Just be pleased you have an expert driving you otherwise you'd be screwed!!

I don't think I've ever received such friendly and unintimidating attention from a team of men clad in road workers' uniforms. These smiley, fluorescent orange beasts, were full of cheer and admiration for both of us, stopping their digging to wave, cheer and simply watch us go passed - probably wondering how the hell we were managing to remain upright!
I'm thankful to them as towards the end of the climb and descent that was probably the only thing keeping me going onwards to finish this marathon and get to the town. By the pride written across Ant's face, I'm pretty sure he felt the same.

So eventually we descended into Santa Lucia, treated finally to a last few km of smooth tarmac. We had no idea whether this sleepy line of houses would have any place to stay and were hugely relieved, and fair to say slightly surprised, to find a wonderful homely room, with ensuite and wood burning stove to rest our weary legs in. It was glorious! Ant was ecstatic to find a hosepipe to clean the boys after their muddy day, I was struggling to function as a human being... well one above the age of three at least. I'd managed to find a small calve and identify it as such by pointing and smiling whilst saying 'tiny baby pet cow'.
Once the boys were clean, the cow had been identified, and we were showered and ready to tackle the world again, we ventured the whole 100m to the other end of town and the hospidage, where we were told to go for food. This was not an obvious restaurant, much more like knocking on someone's front door looking tired and hungry (but still able to identify basic living things), and saying: 'hello... Eat?... For dinner?'.

Turned out they indeed had food - chicken, rice and salad to be precise - an man oh man we loved it!

We stopped by the local supermarket (read 'small shack which was open') to pick up milk and cereal to supplement our breakfast ( and a beer to supplement our evening! ) and then I watched in amusement as Ant got increasingly more and more annoyed with a small ratty, yappy dog, who kept nipping at our heels and then (and this the bit that really made him mad) scared the small tiny cow. Then ensued a battle of wills between Ant and said dog. Ant would chase the dog out the garden, dog would run scared, then as Ant's back was turned would sneak in through a different location and appear as if by magic, yaping at the calves' ankles whilst poor tiny baby cow quaked in fear... Ant would chase dog... Dog would sneak back... so on and so on.

In the end he decided it was not his responsibility to protect the cow, but in fact it was the job of the big farm dog, currently hiding from the rain inside, so amused Emma and aggravated Ant retired to our room and crashed out into the longest and deepest sleep ever. Night night!

Day 58 - Between the seats

Puerto Varus to Puerto Mont to Chaitan (20km and a ferry)

Monday 31st October

Grateful to wake up without a hang over and ready to face the day, we ate breakfast and packed our bags fo a big day of... Well nothing really! We had a ferry to catch at 11pm this evening and had a 20km cycle to get to the port, but given the rain had started again and really showed no signs of stopping we decided to hang out in the chill out communal area of our Hostal and get some admin done. We still had to work out the finer details of our route south and how far down we'd go.

After a relaxed morning we pottered along to la gringa for a lovely lunch, then wrapped up in our water proofs and hit the road.

Knowing we'd not be able to shower properly this evening - a sink wash at best - we decided to take it super slowly. We even played the 'you're not allowed in your big ring' game, which left us both spinning out down hills. At some point on the descent into Puerto Mont it got cold, and wet, and cold. By the time we were searching around this rather industrial area (locals call it Muerto Mont - muerto meaning dead!) for a port we weren't certain we'd find, my hands were strangers to my brain, my feet were numb and I was very much all chilled up!

We found what looked like a port for a container ship and a man sat in a hut sort of guarding it. He informed us this was indeed the port, that the boat boards at 9.30pm and that no there isn't really anything here. When he saw us struggling to change into warmer clothes he kindly offered us one of his cabins. About three hours later (I exaggerate) I'd managed to gain enough feeling in my fingers to attempt undressing and dressing again and we were ready to go in search of some shelter and dinner (though at this point we weren't hopeful).

Surprisingly we managed to find a very lovely restaurant with a good view of both the sea and our bikes and set about eating fish soup, chips and battered hake. A beer and bottle of wine later (well we did have three hours to kill!) and it was just about boarding time.

The boys strapped neatly in place we set about finding our seats and setting up camp for the night. The good news was I'd picked the only two seats together (the others were in threes), the bad was that they were near the bar! We blew up our air beds and snuggled down on the floor between the seats ready for a good night sleep.

That's a lie, when did anyone ever have a good night sleep on a tiny boat (smaller than the isle of Wight ferry!), sailing into a storm, mid pacific. Whirl, splash, bump, roll. We got used to the motion and eventually grabbed an hour or two at least!

When we woke up we realised we were really in the depth of Patagonia now. 8am, rainy, cloudy, jungle steep slopes dropping into a grey rainy sea.

Item 1 on the agenda - find some food by the port in Chaitan. Not an unfair assumption to imagine that the local businesses would have worked out that every other day at 8am a ferry load of hungry people disembarked, and that if even one of them opened their restaurant / shop / supermarket two hours earlier than usual on these days they might get a fair amount of business.

But no. We spent rather a long time, hopefully cycling around the small sleepy village, bouncing from closed shack to closed shack and eventually (after ending up back where we started and about to give up and boil sea water to make porridge) we tried the first door we had tried earlier and this time it opened.
We ordered eight fried eggs (thought we were ordering four!), bread, apple pastries and empanadas and set about thawing out and getting ready for our first day cycling in Central Patagonia. A daunting but exciting prospect!

Puerto Varus

Saturday 29th - Monday 31st October

Saturday - Feeling our age

Despite all good intentions of burning the candle at both ends and desiring the coolness of meeting folk over beer and adventuring with them the next day, I woke up at 7 (obviously Ant was still snoozing), saw the room still spinning, was not yet able to acknowledge my head ache - still a little numb, and soon saw the vast ambition of meeting Andy and Moises by 9am, hitch hiking to a volcano, climbing volcano, then hitching back was slowly floating out of reach. Yes it would be super cool, but this is also a rest day and the total sum of: a Pisco sour, a glass and a half of red wine, and three pints of beer; was now it seems, enough to have me realing back to university Saturday mornings, longing for bacon, eggs and a good hard rowing session to clear the head. Being neither in possession of bacon, eggs, or an enpacker, it was my lot to lie and suffer, hoping gallons of water would solve the problem. Needless to say I messaged Moises and cancelled our part in their adventure. Obviously I consulted Ant on this matter and took the snore of a slightly different frequency as acknowledgement that my new plan of staying in bed all morning was most agreeable.

Several hours of watching the ceiling spin later, and we were munching our coco pops and contemplating braving the outside world. We gathered our washing to go on a lavanderia hunt, and naively hoped that the Breakfast Club had opened a cafe in Puerto Varus.
Two things scuppered our plan. Bank holiday weekend (to celebrate Halloween - the UK needs this!), meant that even the one or two open lavanderias were not even thinking of looking at our bag of sweetly smelling clothes until at least Wednesday next week; leaving us to take said sweetly smelling (and fairly heavy) bag with us on our adventure around the city. And it had started to rain. Not just rain, but  RAIN. Real rain, not the fake rain we see in the UK. So there we were, clutching our large sweetly smelling bag, in our one set of clean summery clothes (the 'posh' set reserved for good - my summer dress and Ants shirt and shorts), huddled under a shop shelter in the dubious back streets of a town, with stinking hangovers, waiting for the downpour to pass.
It didn't! We ran from shelter to shelter, watching our clothes get muddier and rainier hoping that the Breakfast club would reveal itself soon.

It didn't! Instead we found a bakers, that was in fact a newsagents that sold empanadas - they would stem the hanger for now - and huddled inside hoping they sold coffee.

They didn't! But the rain had now at least paused so we ran into the centre of town and found the cutest looking, bacon promising, cappuccino clutching, cafe we could find. Finally a good post lunch breakfast.

It wasn't! A plate of nachos and a lasagne were the only dishes remotely suitable and whilst the former was plentiful and almost tasty, the latter was tasty yet lacking in proportions. At least they had proper coffee.

It wasn't! The latte was more like a watered down version of a naff caff's attempt at warm brown liquid.

Feeling slightly more alive now at least, we ventured into town to hunt the shops for some trecking trousers for Ant and explore the city, went back to our home to put sweetly smelling bag to bed, ventured to a supermarket to grab washing powder to help our bag be more accepted in wider society (somehow via the rafting place to book a trip on a ducky for tomorrow... What?! How did that happen?!) and whilst in the fruit and veg aisle, stumbled across Andy and Moises!

Turns out Moises had the same thoughts as us, but Andy, to his credit, had an exciting day trekking and managed to skip all the rain! "wanna come back to ours - I'm making homemade pizza?'. Do we heck!

We were soon searching for pizza toppings, hurrying home to hand wash clothes quickly, munching a bowl of cereal to tide us over (9.30pm now - tummy gremlins approaching!), then venturing back into the dubious parts of town, walking along a deserted train track, hopping fences and jumping hedges whilst avoiding the scary yet polite youth of the night, to make it to Moises' lovely little wooden house alive.

And then a brilliant night of drinking, laughter, science chat, pizza making, Chilean swear word learning, cultural story swapping, travel tale sharing and eventually (at midnight!) pizza eating, ensued. We learned how to say things are awesome in Chilean: "vagina"; things are good: "bum crack"; and things are really bad: "dick"!!! We learned about the time Moises was the Chilean, who went to London to watch his favourite Bavarian rock band play, missed their set and the next day ended up being the Chilean, in Chelmsford chasing a Bavarian rock band around Essex, eventually seeing them play, but missing his flight the next day due to underestimating London traffic. Learning how Moises' friend (I forget her name) worked in a lab, which was set up in someone's house mass producing a protein sold to many companies (her and I spent many an hour discussing just how much we love protein molecules!). We imparted our wisdom on the grammatical difference between 'hangover' and 'hungover' - this took longer than you might expect - and were flattered when they thought we might be a similar age to them - not even close! And eventually we were driven home, tired but incredibly happy and frightful of the hair of the dog hangover that could ensue tomorrow morning.




Sunday - The day of the ducky

Relieved that we'd managed to build up enough resistance to alcohol over the last 48 hours to be alive and kicking by 11am, we ventured to a brunch cafe 'la gringa' (trip advisor recommended - we'd learnt our lesson!), for eggs benedict and a latte that almost resembled a good coffee. All this was in preparation for the more advanced battle with white waters we had scheduled for 2.30pm.
A 'Ducky' is an inflatable kayak for two people - a cross between a raft and a kayak I suppose. Ant and I would be harnessing our Mansfield rowing prowess to navigate through the white waters guided by a dude in a Kayak who looked like he actually knew what he was doing. Safe to say I was bricking it! We wet suited up, hopped in, practiced paddling upstream, then we were off.  We were sweeping through the waves, loving the adrenaline rush. Even I was loving the thrilling ride, yelping with glee.  The instructors were constantly telling us the next rapid would throw us in, we were overridden with pride as we clung on and stayed afloat. Apparently everyone gets thrown in at some point or other - you guys vastly underestimated the team work and competitive spirit that the EmAnt team have harnessed for years! We did it. It was awesome! And they even gave us a cold beer at the end to celebrate our success!

We were soon home again rearranging bag of sweetly smelling washing around room, hoping it would dry (it didn't!), and ready to venture into town for food. We found a food market which supplied us with three tasty sandwiches (pork, chicken and loaded hamburger), ate cake then collapsed in bed, soba and ready to catch up on sleep to continue our adventure tomorrow.

Day 57 - Silly hilly Chile

 Puerto Octay to Puerto Varus (60km)

Friday 28th October

I'm pleased to report that our breakfast was every bit as good as we'd hoped it would be. I mean its still no pancakes and bacon, or full English, but it was fluffy warm bread, farm cheese and ham, home made jam and AMAZING cake! Though I'm longing for Chile to find a life beyond instant coffee - Nescafe granules just wont do!

By 10am our taste for cake was such that we simply had to stop at the local bakers for three slices of their finest before setting off. And 4k out of town we were very glad we did. We climbed 200m in that 4km in sharp bursts of 20%, up and down and up and down and what's more, we were back at the altitude we'd started at. Shattered! If this battering continues we'll be lucky to make it to Puerto varas next week let alone this evening! This time we'd need more than a carrot or two to get us through, so we were exceptionally pleased we'd approached the day armed with cake - and definitely not afraid to eat it!

A little aside which you might appreciate if you're familiar with the you tube classic "the duck song". When tackling hills in Chile, if one is fresh enough, one should always sing a little song to keep ones head high. Ant was by no means able to sing (he was much more likely to ask the road if it would like to take its hill outside and settle this once and for all!) so it fell to me to hum a little tune... Good job I'm good at humming silly tunes! It went something like this:

"the ducks walked up to the road man and they said to the man building the road, hey, got any flat? And the man said, no you see there duck this is Chile so you're rather (insert naughty word that rhymes with ducked), how about a hill? The ducks said 'i feel ill'. Then they pedalled away 'hilly chile', then they pedalled away 'silly hilly chile' then they pedalled away 'hilly chile' every single day, bum bum bum bum bum bum bum."

Anyway! (coughs in slight embarrassment!).


Our biggest and understandably most traumatic decision of the day came when we had to chose whether to stop after only 7km and still high on two slices of cake, for a reportedly (according to guide book and other resources) amazing lunch of spit roast wild bore and regional ales (oh how we love that we're in the German region) at a wooden restaurant with a beautiful lake - volcano view and roaring fire, or cycle the remaining 53km more soba and less heavy, but far less happy, with no wild bore experience. I'm afraid to say we pedalled passed and gritted our teeth, wowing at the fact we were skipping such an opportunity, but knowing that if we stopped we'd probably not move again - besides we had yesterday's empanada and a packet of crisps... What more could we want! Eeek! How we went passed I'll never know! But it was the right choice, we had a long day ahead if  the hills were anything to go by and had a hostal reservation in Puerto Varas for 5pm this evening so better keep going.

Luckily the hills got easier and the next 20km to Frutillar was fairly pleasant, with many silly songs sang by both Ant and I... "I've got hills, they're multiplyin, and you're losing control, cause no power, your legs are suppylin, I'm electrifying... You better shape up...!!!"... I'll not treat you to any others but you get the gist!
Now frutillar is an interesting town. On first glance, it seems like a strange, slightly grubby looking, sprawl, but then (after getting a bit lost and going around in squares - gotta love the block system!) you head down to the lakeside and it morphs into a beautiful modern resort - theatre, cafes, parks. Where better place to sit and eat our left over lunch... and cake! 

Ant was happier now, he'd seen many sailing boats (the first on this trip!) to perve over and was reportedly relieved that at least someone was making good use of such beautiful lakes.
On to decision number 2 of the day. Do we take the side, gravel road, that goes straight over the top of the land that juts into the lake, or take the main road that goes around the edge that's three times longer but with beautiful views? We took one look at the gravel road, saw its crazy gradient and decided to stay on tarmac - I mean this has to be less steep and smooth so it's a no brainer right?
About 10km later we were almost regretting our decision. At least with the gravel track our pain would have been over quicker. This road managed to break records for the steepest sections we've cycled on this trip (and incidentally the steepest I've every cycled on a loaded bike without falling off!). We were even cheered up it by farm workers who are otherwise mostly indifferent to us!

Finally around the jut and on the decent into Langehue we were already debating our next decision of the day. How to get from this lake side town to the next lakeside town that was our goal for today. The main road took the pan American routa 5 - unpleasant and likely sketchy; a side road was gravelled but had trucks whizzing down it spitting up dust and stones at a speed that made the pan Am look appealing; or spend a while exploring the lake shores in the hope of locating the mysterious cycle path that the guide book says goes ALMOST  all the way around the lake and failing that cycle on the disused train tracks.
Whilst looking at the Pan Am - gravel road junction and debating whether to go exploring lakeside a kind girl overheard our conversation and told us there was no road or path by the lake. Well that solves that. Now just to decide which road to take.

We chose the Pan Am and thankfully, unlike the other choices we'd made all day, this one turned out to be ok. I put my high vis jacket on, we rode in the hard shoulder which was wide and well kept, the traffic wasn't appallingly fast and the gradient was shallow enough for us to keep our relative velocities at a safe enough pace. Plus there were a couple of other road cyclists out and about so at least we knew we weren't the only foolish ones! Anyway it was only 6km and they went very quickly indeed.

Soon we were cycling into Puerto Varus and tackling its steep side roads hunting for out Hostal (casa Azul... The blue house). Safe to say it was fairly easy to find!! We were slightly apprehensive after seeing the Trip Advisor reviews. The review themselves were mostly glowing, 4-5 stars, brilliant! Hence why we booked. But then out of curiosity we looked at the replies from the owners, who rather abruptly told anyone who gave less than 5stars that they were wrong and to 'have a nice life'... Hmmm! Its hard to say whether it was these preconceptions, or the actual tone of the place, but we quickly felt like we were nuisances to the owner - can we put our bikes in the garden? No. Can we have breakfast in the morning? No. Can we wash our clothes in the sink, take a bath, sing a song? No!! Ok so eventually they let us tie the boys up safely in the garden, but under no circumstances were we to go and visit them without supervision. Such a shame ad the Hostal itself was a delightful place. Wooden, clean, peaceful, charming even. Oh well, we're pretty good at laughing things off and now have mire things to worry about - like finding food and beer - or strangely tonight, wine, we really fancied wine!
So back to trip advisor and we found number two was a bbq steak house around the corner - done! A cocktail and beer (whilst they lit the massive coal fire!) and caraf of wine whilst we ate our feast, and we were fairly tipsy and incredibly full! I felt a huge sense of pride when the waiter tapped my shoulder to congratulate me on my eating skills, with an amazed big smile - I have officially succeeded in life! We decided to walk it off with an explore around the town, which would be our home until Monday, perhaps in search of cake!
No more than 100m travelled and I was jumping for joy - a marquee, buzzing with all the atmosphere of a party. Fairly merry, the thought of dancing the night away couldn't have made me happier! We practically tan towards the tent and were greeted by the most wonderful sign "festival de cerveza", a festival of beer! Bingo! Even Ant's eyes lit up, this was enough to tempt him away from the lure of bedtime.

I soon learnt that picking beer based on branding is not always a sensible plan. Turns out that "fucks" beer was rather sweet and sickly and did not live up to its amusing name or the cute fox that was on the label. Ant had however, after several tastings, selected a much better option. So there we stood, me with a pint of 'fucks' and Ant with a half (uhum!!) of tasty beer, wiggling to German umpa music, surrounded by Latin Americans.
As soon as the nearest table became available we kept at it. As did Andy and Moises - a German who was 'couch surfing' and Chilean who provided the couch. We got chatting all things science, ecology and travelling (yep we somehow stumbled across the other two beer loving geeks in this city!) and were soon planning a day of volcano climbing and trekking tomorrow.

And then Moises got excited - the band were about to play. It's fair to say, Andy was also happy - he was loving the German-ness. Now I don't know how to explain the band. Think 40 year old military men, who look more like the awkward Dad dancing at a wedding than either military, or band. But incredibly talented huge military style orchestra playing Latino classics (according to Moises and the huge crowd who were now whooping and wiggling their hearts out). The lead singer who was the epitome of the Dad dancing look, was singing beautifully and wiggling his bootie like no one that big in military uniform EVER did before!
We were there until closing time (an early 11pm!!!) and then stumbled back to the blue house excited about our new friends and our planned hike!

Day 56 - 4 volcanos and some Swiss people

 Aguas Caliente to Puerto Octay (90km)


Thursday 27th October

As much as we were sad to say goodbye to our lovely domo, we were, as always, excited to be back on the road. We'd set off fairly early, prepared for a long day with a possible 40km rippio section to get to Puerto octay, a reportedly cute German town. We were also slightly apprehensive about those sharp Chile ups and downs, inevitable when following lakes.

The road was beautiful, spring green fields with a white volcano peak popping up every now and then, and the odd lake saying hello too. We started down that awesome (this way round at least!) 4km descent, which we'd battled up a few days ago, then started tackling the hills. A few km later we saw what looked like a couple of battered cycle tourists sprawled out in a style that we know only too well.  We stopped to check they were ok - they weren't really. Two tired Swiss people, Tim and Magdelena, the morning after a night of wild camping, relatively new to south America (just 5days cycling so far), with the inevitable stomach bug that this continent imparts to outsiders on arrival. We felt their pain, discussed routes, then spurred them on and set off all four.

The next 30km was, for us, a fairly gentle potter along, wait for it... A fairly flat road!!! That went along a lake. It must be the only thing of its kind in south America!  We chatted about routes, jobs, hills, suffering and the joys of cycling with tummy bugs, where they'd come from (they camped in a water bottle distillation plant's grounds by mistake and got chased off this morning!), where they're going (ushuia hopefully), what they did (trainee doctors), how long they have (until January).
Eventually we came to Entre Lagos, our 30km point and a third of our day done. Ant and I decided to stop just outside town to pick up supplies for the journey ahead... The Swiss followed suit. A supermarket shopping experience that yielded both an empanada saga and an ice cream saga - I took the last empanadas for ant and I then felt incredibly guilty that there were none left (my guilt has not yet gone - poor Magdalena had to walk down the road to find another shop - of course I offered her ours, but she was having none of it, oh dear); revenge was had when my ice cream stick broke and I ended up with chocolate smeared all over my face - much to everyone's amusement of course!

We were hoping to wait for the others and help them along some more, but were also aware of the 60km ahead,  of which 40km had rippio potential. They didn't think they had 60km more in them so we said our goodbyes then off we pottered, slightly spurred on by a friendly workman (who might have also joined in laughing at my ice cream failure!) who said our road ahead was paved and beautiful - fingers crossed!

We soon realised we really should put more faith in workmen - the road was beautiful - stunning! Gorgeous spring green fields and trees with 4 snow peaked volcanoes peeking up all around. We frequently stopped for photos, breathed in the scenery and enjoyed a much easier 40km than we'd expected.

Then we turned a corner and had a huge long straight road, lined with amazingly tall trees and rising ever so slightly up hill with an ever so slight head wind. Still lapping up the beauty we weren't too worried we were having to work a little harder and still very thankful for the absence of gravel tracks.

Then round another corner and the road started tilting up and down just a bit more, and the wind started blowing just a bit harder... Only one thing for it... We stopped to eat a carrot! Ok so I know it sounds strange but we've been craving veg for a long time and have been carrying a bag of carrots around - why not indulge in some carroty goodness whilst psyching up for the last 20km?!

Carrot fuelled, we churned the pedals the last few km before the road turned right (this was exciting as it would mean the slight head wind turns into a slight tail wind and we needed this to lift our heads a little). We whizzed down the kilometers and soon had 8 to go, but now the map revealed an almost 180 degree turn to get into the town... Aghhh! Both shattered, the full on head wind that this resulted in, was the last thing we needed. I introduced Ant to the 1km on 1km off game spurred on by the fact the road was marked every 200m so we could clearly see who's turn it was on the front and how long they had there. This game got more exciting when the road started throwing in hills that lasted for about 750m - who would get lucky and have the downhill section on their turn?!

So mind games over, we descended into this sleepy, but very old German town, with houses build from wood that looked that they'd arrived fresh from a wild west film set, but with huge signs advertising "kuchen" - oh yes this town does cake like no other town! We cycled around surveying our new surroundings in search of a new home and saw a sign out the corner of our eye "bed and breakfast, cake, cyclists welcome" - seriously?!! We'll take it! A lovely owner greeted us (though she was mortified we caught her both without shoes and eating an ice lolly! What a crime! She hurriedly found shoes and gobbled down the lolly whole now feeling she was much more presentable and giggling in a lovely friendly way) showed us to a beautiful attic room and later we caught her making cake and jams for breakfast - heaven!

So all we had to do was find dinner, and it was late enough that we needed to find it quickly otherwise my hanger would read volcanic proportions. Naturally this meant we'd spend at least half an hour walking around the town in search of restaurants that either didn't exist or were closed (with signs clearly stating they are open - this happens so frequently we once had to check that we'd got our translation of open and closed round the right way!) and ended up back at the only (as far as we could work out) hotel/restaurant in town that was open (except a chip van which would do for seconds!) that was actually within shooting distance from our B and B.

It was a beautiful old hotel, but a very strange and slightly haunted set up. Tall grand ceilings, bare electrics that looked like they'd been installed just after electricity was mainstream, a grand staircase and a room full of old dolls and toys! They did do good food, though terrible service - but we didn't care, we gobbled down our roast pork chop, chips and tortilla and hurried back to bed - after all it was almost 9pm!!

Domo

Wednesday 26th October

We woke up in our little foresty haven and went for a late leisurely breakfast (we'd already decided today would be a short day to help our legs out a bit). Decided to use the time to catch up on admin, book ferries, work out our route south and how to get home! (crazy time's passed so quickly recently!).


 Then I had a brainwave... The ferry from puerto mont south doesn't leave until Monday, it will only take us two days to cycle there, we love it here and have time to kill...no brainer surely!

We booked domo another night and set about being lazy for the rest of the morning.

After a large late lunch in the restaurant, we went hiking. This turned into trail running as we climbed up.through a beautiful forested path overlooking the valley. Then when back down, we ran along the river to see the rapids. All the while Ant had been hoping to stumble across the more natural 'free hot springs' which he'd read about, but at the moment we had little success.

And then he decided to dip his toes in the river water - freezing cold! But wait... There is a family sat further down the river bank... Surely they can't all be loving ice cold tootsies... ! Turned out if you dug deep in the bankside gravel, water flooded in, warmed up and gave you your own personal hot spring! Some kind sole had left a shovel so we got to work - super cool!

We decided to go to the actual outside hot spring (included in dome price) just before it closed so the kiddies would disappear. It was cool, but not quite as cool as the one we dug ourselves!!

An awesome day, lazy yet invigorating and we were looking forward to snuggling up in our domo again tonight.

Day 55 - Smuggling fruit

Villa la angostura to Aguas Caliente (100km and a ton of hills)

Tuesday 25th October

Wow, just wow. Today was as long and tough as we'd expected it to be, but amazingly beautiful with so much varied and changing scenery on both sides of the border.

We headed out early for us, on the road just after 9.30 having had two breakfasts (hotel's plus ours to supplement the dry bred and jam!). The 10km into town that we resented so much yesterday was actually fairly pleasant and over quickly, and soon we were on our way up the road to Chile. Literally, up, and up and up.

A beautiful road with stunning green scenery, weaving its way up the mountains at a fairly pleasant gradient.  Thanks Argentinian road builders, today we love you! Our fear that the road would be stuffed full of trucks and other heavy vehicles on their way to Chile was thankfully not at all realised and the further we went, the more the traffic thinned out. Yep there was the odd truck, nerve jerkingly close bus and heart wrenching overtaking pick up truck, but mostly we had the road to ourselves. The first 40km of the day would consist of this gradual climb of over 1000m and we were churning the pedals and working our way slowly up it. About 15km into the climb we passed through Argentinian immigration, added yet more stamps to the passport and got laughed at by border control because I look nothing like my passport photo - something to do with hair colour (though Ant explained it by saying I look really hot in the photo... Keep digging!!).

We decided a few km later that it was time for lunch number 1. We'd decided we'd need several stops on the way up the climb, not just to give us energy, but also to eat up the fresh produce before crossing the border. (it's against the law to try to smuggle apples into Chile... You think I'm joking... I'm not! What's more I have a tomato and I'm not afraid to use it!!). Apparently Chile has an alarmingly small number of agricultural diseases, and it wants to stay that way, so fruit, nuts, cheese, meat - you're not welcome! We snuggled under a tree out the sun and overlooking a beautiful river, and munched our way through several apples, bananas and avocados.

As we climbed we found ourselves getting closer and closer to the snow line. We started out with rocky verdant spring green, with trees all proud of their newly grown leaves and water flowing proudly down the valley, but as we rose life became harder, trees were still tucked up in their winter shades of brown, the air got thinner and colder and we even started to cycle passed snow!  After seeing our road rise right above us our of the tree line, we apprehensively chugged on and eventually got to the border. 40km climb - done. And wow we actually enjoyed it and neither of us is at all broken! What's more it's still before 2pm so we have plenty of time in hand. We celebrated with photos of us and the 'Welcome to Chile signs' (yes we've been in Chile for a while, but this is the first time we entered on our bikes!), then wrapped up ready for the descent down the other side (nippy up here!) and the impending hot springs.

We stopped for lunch number two just over the top of the hill and realised the trees has no branches or bark and the ground was covered in grey sand. It took until we were discussing how beautiful the snow peaked volcanos were that we realised we were surrounded by volcanic ash from the 1960's eruption. Awesome! How cool is this! Incredibly grey and eerie though.

45km done, 1000m climbed, two lunches eaten and it was still only 2.30pm. A brilliant day! We were on our way again and then we were reminded of how Chile build their roads. Why go slightly around when you can just go straight up. 10, 15, 20, 25% all acceptable gradients for sometimes snowy mountain passes right??!  And if you're planning to lose altitude, don't expect to actually spend that whole time going down a hill. What will actually happen is you'll start off by going up a 20% climb, then down a 20% climb for just a bit longer, then repeat until eventually you've accumulated enough descent to get you down the hill you were aiming to get down, with enough lactate in your legs to curse and squeak.

Ok so we did get a good 10km downhill once we were over the top and whizzed into the Chilean immigration so fast we needed to put our jackets on, but we'd done a lot more ascending than we'd bargained for.

Now I've never been interested in smuggling forbidden items across borders and as far as I know, neither has Ant, but when we bought our garlic in Chile a week ago we didn't plan for its life to end quite so abruptly after a short Argentinian road trip - so we were on a 'save the garlic mission'.  That was probably the most legitimate of our borderline items, in that it originated from the country from which it was now banned. We also couldn't really bring ourselves to throw away the dried fruit, cereal bars and snacks that we would probably need to tackle the remaining 60km. Luckily we'd been informed through our secret sources, that you should always tick the 'yes' box on the customs form, declaring that you are indeed in possession of forbidden agricultural items. That way when they find avocado the assassin, or carrot the con-man during their full grocery search, they can't fine you, just ask you to throw them away. So that we did. Despite being careless smugglers (I mean we didn't even go to any lengths to hide the contraband, no tomatoes up the jumper or anything) as soon as they saw our forms they half heartedly checked our bags, asked us what we had in them, stamped a form and let us pass. No fines to be had here then! Moral of the story always tick the 'yes' box!

So garlic, avocado and carrot breathing a sigh of relief (we hadn't even realised we were in possession of the latter two until we stopped for a snack!) we were on our way through the ridiculously undulating roads of Chile. The road started off in a cloud forest which really felt like rain Forrest, with broad drooping leaves and huge tall trees, and ended up descending into wide open undulating farm land, with tree lined hills either side of the valleys.

We kept on chugging away amazed at the changing landscape and growing ever more weary from the biting hills. After 95km we cycled passed a spa hotel, our first hope for a home, but they were fully booked. Surprisingly we were fairly relieved, it looked expensive and not quite the epitome of natural springs we'd hoped for. The down side was our next hope lay at the top of a 4km detour climb, that was 10% at it's kindest and 20% at its most evil - right legs I need you to shut up and do your thing.

Thankful for the distance markers every 200m, we were able to count down the burn - the ultimate gym session.

And then we were finally rewarded with a Chilean natural version of centre parcs! A choice of camp sites, lodges or... DOMOS!! Yay, we can stay in a domo! The 4 year old inside me is screaming with joy! And we get natural springs included in the price, but they shut in an hour... The race is on.

We ran to our domo through the forest, showered quickly, grabbed our swimmers and ran back to the pool.

And relax!!

What a day! We love our domo, we love its home, we live the restaurant... And we're gonna get the best night's sleep ever!

Day 54 - looking for fire wood

Beautiful camp spot to villa la angostura (75km 1000m climb - again!!) Monday 24th October

So it turns out that even on rolling terrain, our road will pretty much always climb a minimum of 1000m (usually in short sharp bursts) and we will miraculously manage to finish the day at the same altitude that we start (or even lower in some cases!). Either way a 1000+m climb is fairly standard these days!!

Today was no exception. Thankfully again the scenery was simply stunning. Lots of free flowing rivers, streams, waterfalls, lakes and snow capped mountains too. Unfortunately to go around a lake, typically means to climb up on 10-15% gradient for a while, drop down to ride next to the lake, then ride back up again... And repeat.

Though I have to say we were enjoying today a lot more than yesterday and by midday had even just about managed to spin the lactate out our legs. We swept along the roads taking pictures as we went and debating the firewood potential of different pieces of wood, trees, branches, no matter how big or small. The lasting effects of building our own fire last night I guess. It's amazing how long you can occupy yourselves with this conversation! "That would be good... too big... Too small... Too damp... Kindling... Slow burner...!!"

We ate our lunch (or what remained of the food bag we'd packed yesterday - no shops here!) perched a top a rock on the side of a lake, yet again putting ourselves in the way of all the beauty nature has to offer, then did the only thing you can do when your oranges are full of pips - play the 'who can spit them the furthest' game - despite much enthusiasm, I lost.

On the road again and passed the last two of the seven (though we counted more) lakes that we've seen on the 'siete lago' route since San Martin yesterday, absorbing the inevitable ups and downs, We had just one route dilemma today. Go 10km downhill passed the road to 'limit de chile', stay in a town (mmm hot shower bed food), but have to climb back up tomorrow making it a very hilly (over Andes back to Chile) long (100km) day; or stop somewhere before the town, probably camp and have a marginally easier day tomorrow.
Whilst debating this and taking yet more pictures, a lady with a camper van started chatting to me. Now I may not have great Spanish, but I have learnt the stock questions and answers: Where are you going, where have you come from, where are you from (difficult to distinguish between these two, which leaves people amazed we've cycled from England, then follow it up with - wow how did you cycle across the sea... Oh dear!), are you cold? Are you tired? Is it your first time here? All of which I'm now enthusiastically and confidently responding to as if I could speak Spanish... Then as we were cycling again I realised why the lady had looked so confused... I realise now that some of our conversation went like this: "ah, wow, many days?"...  "no not cold, very hot, England is much cold than here", "no many days on bike?" "yes the bike makes you very warm, warm and tired, and warm and hungry, not cold" ... Woman crosses the road kindly assuming that it was our distance that was leading to my stupidity and that clearly any misunderstanding could be fixed with closer proximity " many days??"... "nope hot... (clicks) ... Oh yes 5 months..." Woman breathes sigh of relief promptly ends conversation satisfied, returns to camper van pleased with the progress she made.

We returned to our road and realised that we needed supplies - that would dictate how far we went - as soon as we came across a shop and had enough supplies we'd look for somewhere to stay. Turns our the next shop was a supermarket in the town - tomorrow's gonna be a big day then!

And what a weird place this is! It's one long road at least 5km lined with fairly upmarket hostals, cabañas, and hospedajes, but nothing else. The centre of town eventual comes, signalled by a bus station, fast food place and then several pricey but yummy restaurants (ski village style). Given this place is right next to a beautiful lake, its strange to have only seen busy main road - but there you go! Apparently the shoreline has a few more bits, mostly residential, but there was no way we were going even further down, so instead we did a huge supermarket shop (prepared to camp tomorrow, just in case!) then ate yummy food and lots of beer!

Day 53 - we're going on a lake hunt...

San Martin de los Andes to camping by a beautiful lake (50km) 1000m of ascent (standard these days!!)

Sunday 23rd October

After a fairly terrible night sleep, we allowed ourselves a slightly lazy morning. I left Ant sleeping and went for a wonder around this beautiful ski town to find a supermarket and stock up. A lovely peaceful stroll at 9am on a Sunday and the town half asleep, but it was beautiful and thankfully had a very large well stocked supermarket - brilliant - we might be camping the next couple of days so good to stock up.

We hit the road around lunchtime and realised just how beautiful the outskirts of this town are. Wonderful lake surrounded by beautiful snow topped mountains. Absolutely stunning.
And good job too, the way our legs were feeling we were going to need to keep our eyes busy to help our mind shut out the burn. Man we were feeling the hours we put in yesterday and our legs were just plain refusing to exist!

Our day started with a 700m climb over 17km and really tested our legs. They were simply empty! But wow, what views were were treated to. There were so many cyclists out on the roads too, unloaded, fast, speedy road-type chaps (not so many chapesses!), but nice to see our kindred spirits out and about.

So our day chugged on, stopping at miradores to look at the views, snacking in glorious vistas, and wondering when our legs would wake up!
Once the hill went away, the head winds kicked in (of course!), but we didn't mind too much, the views were still lakey, mountainy, and stunning. We would also most likely be camping tonight so it was simply a case of whatever we get done today, we don't have to do tomorrow. We were aiming for anything between 50 and 80km to make tomorrow more palatable, but at the rate our legs were spinning even getting to 40 would be an achievement!

We were now cycling the rolling lake district, on tarmac roads (thank you!!),   back up to over 1000m altitude - hello lungs, and feeling like we were cycling more and more into the middle of nowhere.

Once we'd passed our 50km target we decided to let the campsites (or lack thereof) dictate our distance.

An wow. We stumbled across a "free campsite" - an area in the national park set aside for camping, fires and all other activities otherwise banned in this beautiful region. And what a beautiful spot it was!

We didn't care that it didn't have any facilities, nature had provided a beautiful lake (and fairly ice cold - thanks snow melt!) - for us to freshen up in, and there was just about enough wood around to collect and make a fire.
It was quite simply the most glorious camp spot I think I've ever stayed in. Stunning.

Day 52 - a challenge worth taking

Puerto del Fay to San Martin de los Andes (Saturday 22nd October)

The challenge - 65km... in under 5hours... on rippio... mostly uphill... with sketchy downs thrown in

The prize - a home before dark

The penalty - cycling rippio in the dark... or camping with limited food... no thanks!

Today was amazing! Brutal, like doing five tough gym work outs in one long back to back session, but amazing!

Why set such a daft challenge? Well our boat to get to the other side of the lake left daily at 1pm, arriving 10km short of the Argentinian border at 2.30pm. Possible places to stay were either 10km into Argentina, giving us a very short day today, followed by a short day tomorrow, or San Martin, 55km into Argentina, giving us a long tough day today, but a potentially beautiful home for tonight- a small touristy mountain town, with many hotels, campsites and restaurants. Plus, we just LOVE a challenge!!

The boat time at least gave us an excuse to enjoy a very long a leisurely breakfast in our little cabaña, before we packed up and set about sourcing supplies for the day. Two shops a large bottle of coke and two bread rolls later we were slightly nervous, but will be forever grateful to the boatside cafe that made us 4 delicious sandwiches (2warm cheese, 2chicken and avocado), to take with us.

We met the two French cyclists again, and now, at the beginning rather than end of the day, we were much more capable of sustaining a long conversation. Marie and Christoph had started in Cusco, were in South America for 3months, before heading to New Zealand then Asia. Marie always wanted to travel the world and meet people. Interestingly she finds cycling frustrating on this count as you arrive at a town exhausted, eat, sleep, then leave the next day - this along with her weaker cycling strength than Christoph's, means she's cycled bits and back packed others - a very interesting perspective and one we'd not really appreciated. But as soon as we finished our conversation, Marie was busy chatting in fluent Spanish, energetically and enthusiastically to every interesting looking person on the boat. What a skill! We could easily see how cycle touring would be frustrating for her, but equally appreciated that trying to hold any sort of valuable conversation in Spanish would be frustrating for us! We made the right transportation choice then! Whilst Marie and I discussed the pros and cons of cycle touring, the trials and tribulations of tough terrain and long days; Christoph and Ant more helpfully compared and checked maps, shared tips and discussed possible routes through southern patagonia where the terrain looks like someone threw lumps of land in the sea and forgot to join them up! "Here there is a boat, but only one a week so you have to time it right to get there, here the boat takes 6-8hours, here it's the fastest moving glacier in the world, you can actually see it carve..." The conversation continued. As if she hadn't already made up her mind (she clearly had!) Marie declared she would take a flight from Pueto Mont - the other side of the lake district - back to Santiago, then head to Colombia for a few weeks if backpacking and meeting people, whilst Christoph navigated the Carreterra Austral. I simply smiled and grew more and more apprehensive, yet excited inside! I should also point out Marie and Christoph were probably at least 10 maybe 20years older than us!

The boat trip was beautiful. Indeed I believe people come to do this trip just for the sight-seeing, then head back. Huge rocky tree covered lumps, with crystal clear lake underneath them.

Ant checked the bikes - released some tyre pressure and checked all the bolts were tight - ready for the rocky road ahead. I caught up on the blog. We both ate sandwiches nom nom!
Then we were off! We decided to try to cycle with Marie and Christoph, but unfortunately Marie was finding the terrain sketchy and tough and very slow going. Indeed it was! Horrible bumpy rocky rippio. Our advantage was we've done a fair amount of it now, and like skiing, the more relaxed and fast you tackle things, the more control you have and easier it becomes. I love these sports, you know, the ones where you have to be ok being out of control to actually be IN control - messes with my control freak inside! Anyway, we were on a tight time line and Marie preferred to scream and swear at the road alone with Christoph (I feel her pain, I remember those first rippio, bike throwing down days in Peru!) so we pressed on and realised just how fast we've become on this horrible stuff, even if we still hate it!
Perhaps it was the challenge, perhaps the feeling of accomplishment, but we were travelling well, much faster than we'd thought we might, and strangely enjoying it! Did I just say that?!! I even cycled the whole way up a 15-20% short sharp bit, full of cobbles, without pushing or falling! At last!!

The 10km to the border was bone jerking, teeth chattering, rolling terrain, but the border came surprisingly quickly. A very sleepy border crossing and one of the most fun, with people more interested in our trip than the passports (and to the mild annoyance of my feminist inside, we've also learnt that if I go in first with a sweet sounding "hola, Buenos Dias" and a big smile, we have a much more friendly experience, wherever we go. Everyone here seems to like talking to me and not to Ant. He even gets a slightly cold, aloof, response from the same people who are chatty and friendly to me.  A shame really as they'd have much more comprehensible conversation with Ant - my verbal Spanish is still limited to "hello, nice day... Uh... monkey... apple" and even when they realise this, they talk to Ant through me!).
So border down, and us on our way, we soon realised the road was glorious! Ok not tarmacked, but as gravel roads go this was one of the best. Yes it was bumpy, but it was also firm and consolidated. Pot holes a plenty that would wreck a car, but easily navigable by bike and very fun to ride! Ant was in his element, cycling like elves through a tree lined forest alongside a beautiful lake and I was lapping up the scenery and really, really enjoying going fast and throwing Alan around underneath me to avoid the bumps. Wahooo!

We stopped for our remaining sandwiches at half way and Ant dipped his toes in a beautiful cold stream, sat like a river pixie on a rock, munching away. But not for long, it was time to get moving again. One thing that made this such a challenge was the lack of time. You see you can generally tackle anything if you have enough time - just plod on and get the job done at a steady rate - but the time pressure makes you go at it hard, and that's what really burns!

Next we had to tackle the big climb out of the lake and up towards San Martin, and man was it big!! Up and up and up, steep sections punctuated with hairpins from hell that swept up at ridiculous gradients and had kindly been scattered with horrible big stones to help the cars grip... But they only helped us curse and squeal as we had to fund power in our legs to ride on through them to not get the bike swiped out from underneath us.

At this point we realised that gravel roads are much better for us if they are small and unkempt. The minute some helpful bloke comes along with his work force and 'maintains' them by chucking a load of gravel down to fill in the cracks, is the minute we curse, slide and squeak.

Nevertheless we pushed on, still feeling strong and enjoying this powerplate gym session. After what seemed like forever we checked the map - 3km to the top before we start descending - wow and we thought we were nearly there! 3km on this stuff feels like forever! Still chug on up...

...and then ...relief! We could begin the hairy down - which was of course ups and downs and was littered with more and more rocky gravel as the road got busier. Thank fully all the cars seemed to be full of adventurous types who slowed right down to prevent a dust shower, the. Yelped and whooped and horn peeped, to show their support.

And the scenery seemed to do the same. It just got more and more spectacular as if to cheer us on too. Mountains with snow and looking just how mountains should look, peeked up on the horizon, overlooking this vast green plane that we were descending.

Next came the squiggledy roads leading down to the town, about 10km beneath us. Man if we thought the hairpins were tough on the way up, they were trickier on the way down and with tired legs, arms and minds.

Ooops... Skid, swerve, bump... Well I almost stayed up... But fell. Thank fully I've taken to riding rippio unclipped in trainers rather than cycling shoes to give added reassurance that I can stop myself if I fall... This time though I landed on my hand, but had been able to slow Alan down enough to prevent any real injury... Just a bruise. What a pair we are!

The wind got colder, the descent more tentative and hence mire scary for me (confidence fully disintergrated now!), but eventually we dropped into the lovely town that is San Martin.

Expensive, but lovely. We found a hosterier who's owners were away but which was being looked after by a cool guy, eager to give us route advice and chat journies and cycling.
A lovely and surprisingly well cooked steak and bottle of wine to celebrate the glorious day and successful challenge completion and we were ready to snooze and let our aching bodies recover!

Wow! What a day!!

Day 51 - Brutal, just brutal

Conaripe to Pueto Fay (55km) and another 1000m+ ascent day! Friday 21st October

I want him to have a voice (even if forced!) so I will give you Ant's summary before I continue:


"Today was short (in distance not time!) but incredibly steep. We climbed 1000m over 55km, with many good steep sketchy downs thrown in too! A nice road in the middle was solid, but sandwiched between two horribly steep gravelly sections that felt like cycling on a pebbled beach (try it if you dare!). And the day was punctuated with a personal favorite of mine, cars and trucks speeding past and throwing up dust all over us. We were really testing our strength, will power, breaks, balance, hand grips, Emma's arm strength as she pushed Alan uphill, and general ability to persevere and get the distance done".

So...

We started the day on a beautiful tarmacked road running alongside a river out of Conaripe. Wow! Perhaps the map was wrong and the road would be much better than the compacted gravel it promised. A few km later as we turned up the first steep hill of the day we realised that the map was indeed wrong - there was nothing compacted about this gravel at all.

The road bumped and swerved, throwing rippio, stones and sand up at us with each pedal stroke, and then tilted up to a lovely skiddy 20% that at times was impossible to ride up - even for Ant. And pushing two loaded bikes uphill is just the way we love to spend our Friday lunchtime!

Oh well only another 50km to go... Aghddhdjfkcndj!!!!

Our journey became a sequence of sweating and cursing our way up the road, then scraping and fearfully praying our way back down the other side - then repeat to infinitum.

Our conversation today was mostly about stones and pebbles - what caused them to be on some stretches of road and not others, what level of traffic did a road have to have to promote or relegate the number of stones, which sections were passable "come left it's good here... Oh wait... Bump bump pot hole... Clunk... Aghhh... Don't go left its pretty crazy... Aghhhh truck... Bugger".

And then we came to our turning, off the international road and round to follow a river valley downstream to a lake, just before our final destination. "Downstream towards a lake"... That sounds good right? Wrong! As usual to go down, this road went up, and up and up and up. Though this was at least the 'nice middle section' - the stones were firmly set into the mud and trees, and the ground was hard enough to be able to look up at the quite glorious scenery from time to time and spot the occasional waterfall. In fact its a shame we had to spend the morning looking at and contemplating the life of stones, as we had really been cycling through a beautiful part of the world. This path (sorry road... But let's face it... It was a path!!) vaguely resembled the start of the walk up from Chamonix to Flagere in summer and finally we were able to ride side by side, with very little traffic passing us. It even had a bus stop - a great place for lunch (at 4pm!).

Right 15km left and an easier road, we could do this right?

We gathered our strength, hopped on our bikes and headed towards our final turning onto the international road that would take us towards pueto fay and Argentina. This had all the promise of being a tarmacked road - 'international' - sounds big and important, and in fact it looks like it soon will be, but for now the workmen are satisfying themselves with pouring heaps of gravel onto the very wide track and not yet rolling it in. Brilliant! A 'nearly new' road in a purgatory worse than simply being old.

And man it was steep, really steep, and full of trucks and pick ups heading to and from the towns on a Friday evening - giving little consideration for the crazy cyclists trying to push, pedal, grind their way up it.

Eventually we came to the first town, 5km short of our destination and full of very tempting huts, cabanas, camping and, our favourite: 'domos' (a dome shaped cabin that looks and sounds cool - especially when you say it like a 4 year old!). But no. We should plug on as there is only one ferry a day from Puerto fay and we need to catch it if we're to get to Argentina.

A few km later and we found a couple of French cyclists - "why didn't you take this road" shows us road... "its tarmacked almost all the way"... Hmmm! Ours was prettier we told ourselves and a true adventure! They were trying to find the owners of a campsite, but of course it was closed... Again nothing opens till summer!  So they too only had one choice - to push on with us.

Another 200m climb and we reached the town with its shabby cabañas, hospedajes and ridiculously expensive boutique hotel (what's that doing here?!!). We found a beautiful looking cabaña, wooden, kitchen, sofas, bedrooms shower and lept at it. Then found out it was rather more like its owners who were getting increasingly stoned, hot box fashion in the restaurant next door! The door handle fell off, the shower worked intermittently, the water was sometimes warm!... But we managed to get supplies from the shop next door and engineer a supper of fried potatoes and omelette... Yum! Followed by my own new invention - three bananas fried in butter and sugar until they become mush... Yummy!

Then we zonked down for a good night sleep, only to be woken every hour by a dog that was barking at his own existence. Hmmm!

Day 50 - hide and seek with a volcano

Pucon to Conaripe (75km) Thursday 20th October (another 1000m climbing day, but we didn't know it until the end!)

Funny thing about traveling is just as you get attached to a place it's time to leave. With every longing to stay, you remember the next cool place you might find on the way. If we hadn't left Cusco we'd not have found  Copacanaba; If we hadn't left Copacanaba we'd not have found  San Pedro de Atacama; the list goes on... Jujuy, Salta, Mendoza, Santiago, Pichilemu, Buchapereru, Concepcion, Pucon... Where's next to add to the list?

That's the question you have to ask yourself as you leave a beautiful place, "where's next?". That way you get excited about what's to come rather than asking the question "why can't we stay", which would only promote feelings of a desire to be in one place, have a base and a home, which inevitably leads to missing home...

...so where next...???

Tonight we'd be sleeping the other side of the volcano - at Conaripe, the little town that could... If it wanted to!

It has everything that Pucon has, and yet lacks everything that Pucon has. It has the volcano, the rivers for rafting, the beautiful setting, many more thermal spas, waterfalls... But not the alpine-esque tourist infrastructure to make it top-notch adventure town. Clearly it's a tourist location, camp sites a plenty, cabañas, restaurants, but a sleepy one (at least in shoulder season), with many of the above closed and shabby looking - a town clearly waiting for Summer and (unlike Pucon) is refusing to come out and play any sooner.

So that was where next... But how?

We cycled West from Pucon sandwiched between a beautiful lake and traffic. The road to Villirica was good, but full of people wanting to get between to two towns, including many dreaded busses (drawback of nice tourist reputation). The wind was on our back though so we made good progress on the rolling terrain.

20km later we were heading South East, circumnavigating the Volcano, which would hide between towns and trees, then eventually reward our big climb out of Villiarica by peeking out from behind gaps in trees to say hello.

Playing spot the volcano and watching the scenery was really all that kept us going today.  A beautiful part of the world that tricks you into thinking it's easy cycling, because your eyes and mind are so well occupied. But whilst stopping for lunch in our favourite lunch stopping location, a bus stop (seats and shelter - what more do you need?!), we both confessed over our empanadas that we were finding it tough physically.

This was a day that was most definitely good for the mind, but hard on the legs!

So digging deep and channeling Jens Voight, we told our legs to shut up and continued to climb. We had no idea how climby our road would get or when it would decide to be un-climby again, we just got on with it.

One thing we realised is that when we're feeling beat, our conversation (which usually fluctuates from philosophical bubble babble, family & friends, home life, Christmas plans, Chamonix, would you rather (usually limited to types of terrain we could be cycling, discussing traditions and cultures we've seen in compare and contrast, future route options ... ), resorts to that of a six year old:

Emma "tree"
Ant "pretty tree"
Emma "where volcano go?"
Ant "there he is!"
Ant "cow"
Emma "moo"
Emma "sheep... Fluffy sheep"
Emma " ooooh lake"
Ant "pretty lake"
Ant " hill"
Emma strops a little
Emma "windy"
Ant says nothing but looks like he wants to punch the wind

And so it goes on.

This was one of those days when our six year old selves emerged just after half way and stayed with us.

As we descended towards Lican Ray, the town before our final stop, we were treated to beautiful lake and volcano views... And flies!! Clearly they had come out with the Sun that was beaming all day.

Emma "yukky yuk... Spit... Close mouth... Cough"
Ant "flies"
Ant "ouch" (even small flies hurt when they hit you at a relative velocity of more than 40km/h)
Ant "buggers"
Emma "mmm mmm mmmmmm" (trying to speak with mouth closed)


Flies aside, it really was a beautiful decent and meant we were now just 15km from Conaripe with plenty of time in hand. Enough, in fact, to stop for our final pastry to fuel us the rest of the way... Damn it, people actually using this bus stop! Will have to resort to choice number two... Barrier low enough for us to perch on, high enough for boys to lean on.

We came into Conaripe and soon both agreed that camping looked very appealing (says something about our opinion of the hotels on offer - strangely al lining the main road and none lining the lake?!), plus we'd not camped for a while and would be good to save some money.

We surveyed the campsites (which lined the lake) and picked our home because it was the only one open!! A lovely helpful and very interested man owned the site and had Bobby, the one-eyed, old shaggy dog to guard it. Bobby had all the bark but really no bite, no bite at all - mostly because he seemed to find distances very hard to judge. But he did like keeping us company whilst we set up camp and thankfully guarded our things well whilst we ventured into town for feeding time.
Some home made chips from real potatoes to accompany salmon and chicken and we were happy. We snuggled into our tent and got ready for tomorrow - it would likely be a big day on mostly gravel... So we needed good sleep and knew we'd sleep well with Bobby there to guard us.

3am. Emma stirs to find Ant's in Meer cat pose peeking out the gap in the tent...
Emma "you ok"
Ant "shhh animal... Food bag"
Emma "what is it"
Ant "don't know, racoon? mini bear?"
Animal "claw, paw, claw" (trying to get into our butter)
Ant "shooooo shooo "
Animal "meeeow"

Seems Bobby's not quite the  guard we'd hoped dog after all!

Pucon - the Chamonix of the Southern Hemisphere!

(Tuesday 18th to Thursday 20th October).

At some point on the 4hour bus trip to Temuco, and several hours after we'd got over the trauma of convincing the conductors to put the bikes on the bus (there was plenty of space in the luggage compartment... Seriously!), I'd managed to make headway with the blog and Ant suggested an amendment to our route.

We'd planned to cycle from Temuco towards the first lake Villirica (whoes name reminds me too much of the town Billericay in Essex!), then south from there. But after much consideration of the map and guide book, Ant came up with what we would later realise was an excellent plan.

Get a second bus from Temuco to Pucon so we could actually see the culinary and adventure capital of Sur Chile. Otherwise we would have missed it or had to do some serious back tracking. We left it to the cycle touring gods to decide - if we could find a bus that was happy to take bikes we would go, otherwise we'd get on our bikes...

...the bus was more than happy to take bikes and us, and left in half an our - perfect! Just enough time for Ant to source some lunch. Off he trotted leaving me to mind the boys at the bus station. He came back with a donut looking fried bread and... An egg... Literally an egg... In its shell! Hilarious. Turns out he'd asked for 'bread with egg' and that's quite literally what he got! Not quite the omelette he was hoping for, but at least the egg was boiled and warm inside!

So we headed south under the cover of a bus, and watched the weather get rainier and colder from the safety of the bus window.
Arriving in Pucon at around 5pm severely underdressed in our shorts and t shirts (we needed at least another 2layers and waterproofs here!), we quickly changed our plan of cycling to a cool, guide book recommended Hostal the other side of town and settled for the rather nice looking one near the bus station "Hostal alto Panguin". It was lovely inside, all new clean and shiny with an amazing shower and very reasonably priced. Moreover, the owners were delighted to house us for the night - they buzzed around almost singing with delight as they showed us the choice of rooms!

So we settled in, then ventured onto the main street to find the guidebook recommended restaurant "Trawen" - less because of the food recommendation (though it did sound good!), but more because of the sentence "houses the best craft ale selection in town".
As we wondered the streets we immediately fell in love with this southern ski resort. It could have been plucked out of the alps and dropped here. It really would be hard to not stay at least another day!

We made ourselves the promise - either we leave tomorrow, or we do something adventurous tomorrow and stay another night (it's not like we were short of options, climb the active volcano, raft, hike, trek, kayak, even ski... The list and tour operators was endless!).
The morning came and there was no way we were leaving, so we booked in for another night and set about finding someone to take us rafting.

At 11am we were on our way to the white waters with Florencia (a tour company who I can't recommend enough! They were brilliant).
By 12 we were on the water and I was yet again learning to break my fear of all things wet and wavey! Our guide was brilliant, he added enough theatre to the experience to make us anticipate what was coming, but navigated us through the rapids expertly - no mean task given we were perhaps the 6 least coordinated folk he'd ever seen in a boat!! We also had a guy in a safety raft ready to catch us if we flipped, and another dude in a kayak taking the most brilliant pictures! At one point he gave us the opportunity to 'swim' a section of rapids instead of rafting them. Ant was the only crew member crazy enough to take him up on this offer, and looked slightly worse for wear for it! He hopped over board into the freezing cold water, gasping for breath, and floated downstream whilst being swept by 2m high waves! Thankfully our guide never let him get more than a few feet away from the boat and quickly hauled him back in as if he was as light as a feather. Exhilarating by all accounts!
So pleased we stayed the extra day, what an awesome way to see the valley, volcano and beautiful countryside.

After left over lunch of our spag bol, we mooched into town, watched the sunset over the volcano and lake (glorious) and after wondering around this lovely place, found latitude 39, an American bar, to drink beer and eat tacos and hamburgers.
Brilliant day!

Concepcion

Sunday 16th to Tuesday 18th October

Firstly let's clear a few things up:
1- yes this IS the name of a city on south middle Chile's coast line
2- no I've not forgotten how to spell (on this occasion at least!) it IS actually spelled like that (though ironically im not entirely sure if that's the correct way of saying spelled / spelt (or is that a flour?)... Anyway
3- no it's not a Beckham esque nickname we gave to a town... Really!!

So having booked a whole two nights in Concepcion, to do admin and source some bike supplies and a decent camping stove, we realised, after face timing Fran and having a very lovely and lazy, that it was indeed a Sunday. That means nothing is open here, and no call centres are open at home for us to complete our admin. Only one thing for it. Stay another night!

This was actually contrary to what we wanted to do. As much as we loved the flat, we were ready to be on the move again, especially after our seaside break earlier in the week. But hey - cycle touring lottery. There are far worst places to spend a day in the world!

So we continued to be lazy on the Sunday, and just about managed to complete task 1 out of a million... Do some washing... But not without its challenges. How much detergent to put in the machine? Ant insisted the packet implied we needed it all, my intuition said that was too much. So a comedy sketch ensued with us emptying a whole packet of washing powder into the machine, playing with coins until it finally worked, then crossed our fingers! Somewhere between the flat, the washing room and our wardrobe, one of my cycling gloves was hiding. We spent at least an hour retracing our steps, but he was hiding good! A mystery!

Soon it was Monday, and this time we'd decided to get up early. For us that meant out by 10am. By lunch time we'd arranged flights home for December, sorted house admin, bought a camping stove and bowl, found a new pair of cycling gloves (Emma weeps a little), and had lunch!

Feeling very pleased with ourselves we treated ourselves to a stroll around the city and the central plaza. We also watched one of the many political party demonstrations (municipal elections in Chile on October 28th so every town and house is full of posters for many candidates... All with thumbs up and family members smiling in support!).

By dinner time we'd bought me some new socks (naughty toes peeping through all of mine now!), found presents to send home to some lucky recipients, sorted through our clothes to also send home some to lighten the load for the last month, negotiated the postal system and actually managed to send stuff home, bought stuff for dinner - enough to make sufficient spag bol for the entire neighbourhood, drank the better part of a bottle of wine (selected purely for its name and picture... Bicicletta!), watched a program about the American election, planned our route further south, cooked dinner and were ready to sit down to eat some good home cooked grub, satisfied with everything we'd accomplished today.

So our route south would start with a bus to Temuco tomorrow to get to the cool areas (lake district and Patagonia) with (hopefully!) time to play at the end, and then we would be back on our bikes.

Perhaps it was the sunny day (finally!), or our own satisfaction, but Concepcion wasn't the concrete jungle we'd been dreading - actually a rather pleasant city with a leafy square.

Day 49 - the day Alan was brave

Colemu to Concepcion. Saturday 15th October (80km)

As we woke up, slightly high from furniture polish, we decided to aim to be on the road by 10.30. We nommed down a few bowls of cereal, packed up quickly, showered and hit the road. But not before we were accosted again by Steve (the motor cyclist we'd met the previous night who had been on the road for a year from Canada and who fuelled our conversation for the day allowing us to spend time debating the merits and drawbacks of both methods of transport whilst we pedalled on). Steve liked to talk - a lot - more of an orator than a conversationalist, but a pleasant 60year old chap nonetheless who couldn't understand why we didn't take tinned food with us - just in case... Have you ever carried a bunch of tin cans uphill Steve?

So we were eventually on the road by 11am after a bakery stop to grab many pastries. A quick glance at the GPS and Ant realised we had climbed over 1000m yesterday - no wonder our legs were finding it difficult today! That's like a Peru day disguised in lots of rolling lumps! We'd later also realise we were to do similar today too, but for now we just plugged up the climb out of town.
Now today was a very eventful day!


As we were climbing out the town on a fairly busy road and going much slower than the traffic (always makes it a bit more sketchy), a small shaggy dog saw us, got excited, alerted his bigger Alsatian type of buddy, then they both sprinted out their garden, towards the road to cross it and eat us...

...except at the same time a truck came the other way. Big Alsatian had the sense to stay in the shoulder and sacrifice eating us to save his life. Small unintelligent shaggy mutt had no such sense and was only saved by the fact he was much smaller than the bumper. A thump, skid and whine later and he was running (thankfully!) out the other side of the truck to continue his chase on our side of the road. But as soon as he reached the shoulder he realised he was quite shocked and had in fact just been hit by a truck. He stopped and whined a little, before trotting back to his garden, whilst bigger dog seemed to tut and shake his head.
An adrenaline buzzing moment for us, dog chase, truck, ouch, poor guy... But hopefully one that will teach shaggy dog never to chase bikes again.

A few km later we were joined by a collie. He came out his garden, stopped to look both ways before eventually crossing the road very safely, then ran alongside us as if to say 'ok guys, where are we going?'. Every time he heard a car, he stopped, looked to see where it was coming from, and got off the road onto the verge accordingly, then when safe, he continued his venture. He was a happy sole, who reignited our faith in pups - but not quite our trust - you just never know what they will do!

After about Half an hour on the road, and still on the climb, we felt a few spots of rain. Should we waterproof up? No. It's refreshing, not very heavy and cooling (after all we were sweating and overheating up this hill). About another half an hour later and we resembled shivering drenched rats, cycling under far clouds through a sheeting downpour in soaking wet kit. Oops.

There was only one thing for it - stop under a tree to eat pastries!

Bellies fuelled and waterproofs on we chugged along in weather that now resembled a cold February day. Ant was quite literally in his element. Much better to be cold and rainy than over heating. I was also surprisingly upbeat - adventure!!

Then came our first decision. Busy road direct to Concepcion, or quiet road, slightly indirect, back to coast then down. We chose option 2 and headed back across the coastal hills away from the trucks and busses towards the sea.
This was a much more pleasant road and one we could actually enjoy. But after about 20km my body ran out of sugar and my head dropped as I started to shiver (need much more fuel to keep warm in cold weather and my kit was still soaking under my waterproof - Ant's had dried - I'm sure there's some kit analysis to be done here Tom!

At my request we stopped at the top of a hill to eat more pastries and sugar up. This turned out to be an error. We stopped just long enough to get really cold at the top of a hill which would become the start of a long descent into the coastal town on route to Conception.

Man that descent was windy, cold and soaking wet and left us dreaming of all the tea shops we would probably never find in the town (got to remember this is actually chile and not north Devon - no cream teas for us!).

We shakily found the town and its plaza and hoped for some sort of warm restaurant ... And then we saw it... A coffee shop called Ambar, with a wonderful waitress who said we could put the bikes inside (wow!) so we could get dry and warm whilst we drank really yummy coffee and ate sandwiches and hamburgers!!! Dreams can come true! Ok so no cream scones but almost!

My shoes were so wet they made a puddle on the floor, so I realised a kit change would probably be sensible! Having stripped all my wet kit off and replaced it with lovely warm dry clothes, I was much happier and living my coffee! (squirty cream on top - yeah baby!).

We eventually dragged ourselves back into the downpour, ready to tackle the remaining 30km to Concepcion. As we hit the coast road we realised two things 1- there was a hideously strong wind... On our backs!! Wahoo!! 2- there was of course a steep climb out of the town just like there had been a descent into it.

We started plugging on up and into the rain and then something strange happened. A pick up with a very friendly family offered us a lift to the top of the hill. Wow! Yes please! We threw the boys into the truck and hopped in. A few minutes later and there was a gasp from the driver... Bicicletta!

Alan!!! He'd jumped off the back, obviously annoyed that we weren't cycling. We hopped out the car and ran down the road to rescue him and survey the damage before any other cars came and ran him over.

Luckily he's a tough chap and had only suffered a handle bar scrape and a saddle bump that left the saddle rather wonkey and a little torn. But wow! We seriously thought our trip was over when we saw him lying there as a casualty... Amazing. Ant somehow managed to gather his strength and bend the saddle post back to almost normal. I rescued our pastries from the wet grubby roadside and we hopped back in the truck - this time securing both boys in tightly with a rope!

Once we reached the top we, all four, hopped out and continued our venture into Concepcion. Shaken but not broken, we tackled the busy roads into the city and after a near death encounter between Ant and a stupid stupid truck, we arrived at the apartment we had booked for a few days (we needed to get some washing done and had a ton of admin to catch up with).

After a lovely Peruvian meal in a local restaurant, we found a supermarket, stocked up the apartment with all things tea and bacon, and settled in to let our little hearts (and Alan!) recover from the crazy day!

Day 48 - bye bye ocean

Buchupureo to Coelemu - Friday 14th October 80km

So we finally managed to say goodbye to our lovely cabin and set off up the cliff towards the next and final coastal town before we head inland.  After a good steep climb and 10km later we swept down into the town, picked up supplies and said goodbye to the sea one final time, then turned the corner to head inland.
Of course this meant a steep climb over the cliffs and after the stormy weather it was incredibly warm, sticky and humid. Sweat pouring, but very pleased to be back on our bikes, we settled into the climb and enjoyed churning the pedals.

After a few km climbing Ant said jokingly, "looks like we've got a 10km climb ahead of us!!!", both of us chuckling - we knew it was likely to be a long climb but thought 10km was a vast over estimate.

Almost exactly 10km later, after much sweat, thankfully no blood, and no tears, we finally started the lovely rolling descent. A steep climb up, then gently down to lose just a bit of altitude - then repeat.

45km into our day and we swooped down into Querihue (a rough approximation of the actual town name). We sat in the plaza, made avocado bread rolls (our new favourite lunch), grabbed some cash, then set off down the road, along the river valley towards Coelemu - our next stop on route to Concepcion.
Although busier, this road was less hilly and more gentle rolling lumps (joys of being slightly more inland), so we made good progress and eventually found a town just short of our final goal. It had three small hostals and was a tempting place to stop. Not really a town, just a cluster of houses along the main road - but it definitely had places to sleep. We'd been unsure if we would find a home in either town so this was appealing.
But getting the extra 10km under our belt today and reaching Coelemu would help us tomorrow so we took the chance.

As we reached Coelemu, we were greeted by the brown sign of hope - showing what services it has in pictures - this one showed the two pictures that make us happy - knives and forks; and a bed.

After several laps around the plaza and knitted streets surrounding it, we eventually found the hotel. Ok it was about 6pm in a Friday night so perhaps the owners had been enjoying their evening, but Ant reported a very Faulty Towers experience of trying to get a room, whilst I waited watching the boys.

One lady wasn't sure is they wanted to give us a room (couldn't be bothered), the next said yes sure, they then spent a while trying to open a room and failing, then settled on the room outside with sliding patio doors and a distinct smell of furniture polish. It was clean and cosy enough, with its own bathroom so we were more than happy - even if we did have to use our bike padlock to add some sort of security to the unlockable patio doors!
We found a bar that sold yummy warm sandwiches and chips, and bumped into an amazing bakery on route.

So happy and cozy we settled down for Poldark.