Surely cows need to sleep too? It was a question I asked myself many times while camped on a farm one night out from Cochrane. Throughout the night, like a foghorn going off and with the same mechanical regularity. Every 5 seconds or so a great bellow that not even my earplugs could attenuate. Still, it was not all bad.. a night in a beautiful spot on the banks of a river, oven-fresh bread courtesy …
South America Archive
Los Exploradores and other places..
Somewhat stupidly I never really expected Patagonia to do heat.. proper, intense, stuffy heat that causes your eyes to fill with sweat on the climbs and leaves the taste of flinty dust in your mouth as you ride. But it does and it does it well. The last 7 days have seen a spell of almost unbroken sunshine and increasing heat day by day. The last couple of evenings I’ve watched from my tent with …
Costa Rica…. (or not ;-)
I lay in my tent listening to the rain pattering on the fly and huge gusts of wind tearing through the forest like cannon balls… each one followed moments later by a violent shudder in my tent as it flexed heavily in the wind. I watched my breath mist in the cold air above my sleeping bag and thought “Why am I not in Costa Rica..?” It was the day before Christmas… I did not …
Feliz Navidad and all that..
I shall wish you all Happy Christmas now in case, as seems likely, I don’t get another chance.. I hope you have a terrific time. I shall be on the road I have decided, it seems highly likely I will be able to link up with my German friends.. but if not it does not matter, I shall be surrounded by mountains and glaciers and all that kind of stuff.. so I shall be happy, …
Christmas gear list for the Carretera Austral… or how many pairs of underpants..
I looked up some climate statistics for this area… average annual rainfall for Coyhaique is 2800mm, it is thought of as a drier area… with a mean temperature of between 7 & 9 degs C. Just to the west of here on the coast the rainfall goes up to something like 5000mm… So all you folk back in Cornwall complaining about the weather… be quiet :-) Having said that.. as I write it is midsummers …
a Coyhaique … en bicicleta bajo la lluvia
“And as he drove on, the rain clouds dragged down the sky after him for, though he did not know it, Rob McKenna was a Rain God. All he knew was that his working days were miserable and he had a succession of lousy holidays. All the clouds knew was that they loved him and wanted to be near him, to cherish him and water him.” Rain. I always think of Rob McKenna and the …
Chaiten y la Carretera Austral
< a couple of caveats before I get on with the narrative.. it’s quite a long one so I hope you’re sitting comfortably.. and one or two of the photos might not appeal to the squeamish or those of a vegetarian disposition… > Post-apocalyptic Chaiten, 2 1/2 years ago a town of around 4000 people in the shadow of a volcano thought to be dead, its last eruption happened some 9000 years ago. In May …
Quellon
I’ll post this little bit now as once I leave Chiloe on the boat tonight I suspect it will be a while before I see wifi or internet again… While wandering around Quellon yesterday evening I wondered if I would feel the same about the place if my host in Chonchi hadn’t mentioned that, in his opinion, it was not a place to hang about, bodies found in the harbour and all that. Would all …
somewhat damp in Castro & Chonchi
Just 87km down the road from Ancud, Castro had a noticeably different character.. lacking Ancuds outgoing charm I suppose it is no more than you would expect from a renovated administrative capital. The palafitos on the waterfront are pretty but beyond that the weathered old wood and corrugated buildings have been replaced with concrete and the busy streets laid out in a basic grid lacked interest. After another late night I felt a little weary …
Arturo Prat…
Arturo Prat, possibly known as Archie or Arty to his friends, was a Chilean Navy Officer who become a national hero after his death at the Battle of Iquique in 1879. I only mention him because most Chilean towns, at least down here, have a street or a plaza named after him.. appropriately always an important street, and I thought it would put some context to this photo.. Wikipedia has a whole page on him …
Ancud etc…
If I was asked to summarise Ancud in one photograph I might use this one… or possibly this one might be more useful.. But I don’t so instead I can just throw a few at you :-) Ancud has a terrific vibe to it, aside from the colour all the folk here seem generally happy.. lots of smiling faces and always some music drifting out from somewhere. I like. I spent a couple of hours …
una botella de ron barato en Ancud… hurrah!
In the end I needed 3 nights in Puerto Varas to get all the inflammation under control and my head back in the right place :-) Time well spent eating cake, watching movies, reading and generally chilling out. The only downside to the time spent in Pto Varas was that some miserable bugger stole my MSR fuel bottle. My bike was parked in the covered interior courtyard of the hostal, pretty much out of sight …
Puerto Varas
Puerto Varas, I have a room in a rambling old hospedaje.. a veritable rabbit warren of dark wooden corridors and alcoves illuminated by little rectangular skylights. There are redundant bakelite fittings on the walls from an earlier electrical age and I can enjoy such curious innovations as the light switch for my room being situated on the outside of the door, or an old enamel sink, complete with pot-plants, plumbed into the stairwell. I am …
No hay agua caliente…
In Osorno, for a few quid, I stayed in a gloriously delapidated pension where the old blankets lay an inch thick on the beds, lino was peeling off the bathroom walls and the friendly but slightly eccentric landlady in her pale blue dressing gown kept the ignition for the hot water boiler under lock and key. Still, that weird mix of programming called the BBC World service was available on cable so I was able …
Los Lagos log house…
One of my favourite things about travel by bike, other than the freedom, is that one is never fully in control of ones destiny, unexpected things happen that invariably add to the richness of the journey, even if it is a dog running away with your shoe… On Friday morning I rode the 60km from Panguipulli to Los Lagos along mellow spring time roads, arriving in time for a fully loaded hotdog for lunch from …