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!