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A view of the Lago General Carreras

This is a look at the type of road surface we were traversing. Not too pleasant to ride on

This is a campsite we found on the side of the road. Bamboo trees and snow-capped peaks. What a combination!

The valley of the dead forest, a 30 km. stretch with flat roads and amazing views

A quaint little Patagonian homestead

The winding switchbacks climbing out of Cerro Castillo, 100 km out of Coyhaique

This is the view above Cerro Castillo. Behind us, you can see to the south where we had been pedaling for the last two days

Hay bales on the landscape outside of Coyhaique

Cochrane to Coyhaique (Feb 21-25)

It was the same old gig in Cochrane and we were on the road again. The sun was setting as we pulled out on the gravel road, stocked with food for the next five days. The bikes felt heavy and we pushed out of town, just far enough to be comfortably away from other humans. There is something comforting about being on the road, camping wherever and not dealing with guarding the bikes, transactions or having too many options. When we roll out of town there is nothing to do but pedal, think and observe. In between we eat. We have a new trick with bread, butter, dulce de leche and bananas. Tim, our English friend, was having some bike trouble in Cochrane, and he decided to stay an extra day there, so it was just the two of us getting back out on the happy trail.

The road conditions to Coyhaique varied dramatically from kilometer to kilometer. Loose gravel, smooth dirt, wet pebbles…you name it, we biked through it. Combined with drastic switches in weather conditions, this has made for amazingly varied enjoyment levels. Sometimes it's a chore, just a matter of putting your head down and plugging through the conditions. On the same note we never know when a woman selling bread and cheese may be waiting for us (or maybe a freezing cold rain in the face). Out of Cochrane the theme was rough roads. In construction zones the dump trucks destroy the road surface by bumping along. The result is a washboard road which limits riding speed significantly. You can never get momentum because the troughs create a speed bump effect. And, subsequently, this speed bump effect creates some fairly acute wrist pain. The good with the bad, the good with the bad, the good with. . . On our third day the road miraculously smoothed out and we literally just rolled on a slight downhill for 15km. You can image we were grinning like bandits.

The trip to Cochrane was one of our longest stretches at 350km. It was a hard ride but we had wonderful campsites at night and we were not rushing the days. We knew we had enough food and so we just went as fast as was comfortable on the rough roads. Iain has had problems with his front rack and one more bracket breaking will force him to ride with a backpack. Dan managed to break two more chains on this stretch, but we have the spare links to make roadside repairs. We are learning that it is just not worth going fast and banging through the bumps. Despite the slower pace we managed to ride about 70km every day and still stopped a couple hours before sunset. This is a luxury that we didn't have in Tierra del Fuego. It has enabled us to stretch, wash clothes in streams and makes the days seem sooo much more relaxed.

While one of our longest stretches, it was also one of the most beautiful. The climbs were always rewarded by striking views of lakes, snow-capped peaks, and lush valleys. One of the greatest things about the Carratera has been the lack of vehicles and the general absence of signs of humanity. We can ride for hours at a time just listening to our own heartbeats and soaking in the scenery. No cars, traffic, towns, people, just us riding and thinking and laughing from time to time. Some of the pictures at the left are random shots that we took along the way, some of the most spectacular views that we found.

The last evening out of Coyhaique, we stopped about 30 km out of town and stayed in the patio of a rancher´s home. Looking at the sky, we judged that it would not rain and choose to not set up the tent. About 2:00 a.m., we woke to a cold drizzle and rushed to get the tent set up and our wet bags inside. We awakened to a bitterly cold morning and were invited in by the rancher, Jorge, to drink mate and warm ourselves by his fire. That morning we battled a horrendous headwind the last 30 km into town and found a nice campsite to stay at and dry our gear. Two days later, after cleaning and organizing our gear, we set out north again for our final stretch on the Carretera Austral. At Futaleufu, Chile we would cross over into Argentina again and pedal northward to Bariloche.