Cyclists without frontiers

 

First, a big apology to all of you who have been asking us what's happening with the blog.  To answer your question - well, actually, it answers itself: nothing's been happening.  We blame some technical problems but mainly it's just been that we've been on the bikes so much of late, and that we're generally lazy gits when it comes to anything that could be deemed admin...  Anyway, have no fear, there will soon be a flood of posts up for you to read, should you so wish.  I'm actually finishing writing this from Loja, Ecuador, so as we've yet to post anything on either Bolivia or Peru, you get some idea of just how behind we've got with the blog!

Additionally, this particular blog post is about five months out of date, but there is good reason!  It involves an unofficial border crossing from Chile to Argentina, and we certainly weren't going to write ourselves into the history books as the guys who posted details of their 'crime' on the Internet, only to get arrested for it before they got out of the country safely!

We spent Christmas in Torres del Paine national park, in Chile, and the next place we wanted to visit was the Perito Moreno glacier in Argentina.  To get there you have to cover 400km on a boring, notoriously windy road, as this is the only official border crossing.  Or you do what we did.

Christmas day involved a four hour hike to see the famous Torres, where we cooked up some ropey tasting rice for our Christmas dinner.  On returning to our campsite we found our friends Christian and Olga had found our tent and pitched theirs next door.  We cooked some more ropey food and 30 seconds later, after we had finished it, we invited them over to share our vodka.  Strangely, we decided against opening the cheap bottle as well and had a reasonably early night.  We had big plans for our Boxing Day.

A different Christmas Dinner. Torres del Paine, Chile.

Our plan was relatively simple: cross the border via an unofficial crossing which would take us up a mountain track which may or may not exist.  It would save us at least 350km and certainly be more exciting.  We had been unable to find details of anyone actually doing this route before, but there were rumours floating about regarding possible alternative routes.  This was all made possible by the laziness of the customs guys back in San Sebastian.  They simply didn't stamp our passports to say we'd entered Chile, so as far as our documents were concerned, we were still in Argentina.  This meant that we may actually have had problems if we crossed back into Argentina using the official crossing, as they would have wanted to know how we had gotten into Chile without a stamp!

We left early on Boxing Day morning and rode the 15km or so to the customs point, where we carefully chose a minibus driver to ask if there was, indeed, a road or track towards the border.  Affirmative was the reply, but it was quickly followed by what we feared: there was no way to cross the border. Ignoring this advice, we set off past Lago Azul and after some time decided to cook some food up by the side of the road.  Here was our big mistake: we called in at a house to ask for some water to cook with, and it turned out to be the park rangers place...  Water was given in exchange for our names, which were written down, and Mr Ranger also found it prudent to ask some searching questions about our plans.  Simply a bit of exploration off the beaten track - in search of a bit of solitude, you could say - was the answer we gave.  He replied that we were fine to do that but we must check in with him again on our way back. Of course we will...

A bit further on we came to a gate across the track and, at the same time, a man in a four wheel drive coming the other way, down out of the trees.  He gave the same advice about it not being possible to cross the border (though we hadn't mentioned our intentions), but told us that if we were in search of solitude, yonder was where it was at, and advised us to keep to the left track when it forked.  Good advice, as it turned out, as without it we would have taken the right-hand track and it would have started to go all wrong.  Not that it all went 'right' after this...

After some pretty serious climbing up the rough track, we came on another 4x4, driven by a young Swiss guy, whom we'd meet a few times later, called Cyril.  He was on to our game immediately and, indeed, had been trying to accomplish the same trick as we were attempting.  He had been scuppered by the track being out with no way for a car, even a 4x4, to get past.  Couldn't stop us, surely?!

A few km further we managed to navigate the break in the track which, we reckon, had been put there as a deterrent to taking this route to the border. After this things got seriously rough: streams to cross, incredibly steep sections strewn with boulders, and sections which had been totally destroyed by cattle crossing it while it was wet.  This was not easy, but it was nothing compared to what was lurking at the bottom of the hill!

An excellent piece of photographic timing – Dave picks his bike up after a fall on the perilous way to the Rio Zamora.

Ah, the Rio Zamora, what fond memories I have of thee!  We had come upon the river crossing we had been expecting from our hugely inadequate map.  About 20m wide and full of bright blue glacial run off water, which was waist deep, fast running, and obviously close to freezing, the Zamora scared the bejesus out of us.  We had come so far, and across such awful terrain, that we couldn't bare the thought of turning back - and taking that 400km road to Perito Moreno. Neither was an attractive, even plausible seeming, proposition, but we decided to go for it and cross the beast.

Crossing the Rio Zamora on our illegal route back into Argentina.

Each bag had to be ferried across separately, and we had 5 each, plus our bikes.  That meant 18 trips across and back.  We stripped to our under crackers and started to ford the raging current.  Uneven, large, slippery, sharp rocks on the bottom meant progress was slow and hazardous and required some form of footwear to be worn.  Which is where we came a cropper.  5 metres into my first crossing, about to hand over a bag to Al at the middle point, I stopped.  Immediately Al recognised what was wrong: one of my Reef sandals/thongs had broken!  Looking behind me it quickly popped to the surface and charged off down the river at a rate of knots.  I immediately grabbed the one from my other foot and chucked it into the river after it -  one wasn't much good!  Dave's Fitness First sandals lasted only a couple of crossings before  being rendered useless.  Now only Al had the necessary footwear to ferry stuff across, so Dave and I took up our positions on the opposite banks and began to, erm, manage the situation, while Al crossed back and forth time and time again in the freezing water.  Awful thing to happen, that.

With the last bike finally across, I ventured across on my own, looking like something from Monty Python's Ministry of Funny Walks as the rocks cut my feet.  Oh how I laughed...

All 3 of us, but especially Al, were freezing; the tent went up in record time on the far bank and we cooked up a quick meal before sailing off to the land of nod.

While the usual porridge brekkie was being cooked up, and the tent taken down, yours truly was sent on a recce mission up the ridiculously steep hill out of the valley to make sure it was feasible to continue.  With no bags on the bike it was possible - just - to cycle up it.  Covered in rocks from various landslides, on a loose sandy base, and necessitating first gear even unloaded, this wasn't going to be easy with fully loaded bikes.  Nevertheless with the river blocking our retreat I declared it possible and descended recklessly to the valley floor again with the, strangely good, news.

No-speed falls were the order of the morning as our bikes were frequently stopped dead by sand or huge rocks while climbing the steep slopes, but we made it to the top and the cycling became very enjoyable.  Part of this was the feeling that very few people had been here before, and we were feeling good to be away from the tourist masses and doing something fairly unique.

We had been expecting the border to be a mountain pass, and we had spied the mountain range we'd thought was the likely candidate hours before.  Out of nowhere we came across a hut which seemed to have been lived in fairly recently, possibly even currently, so we went into stealth mode and rode around the back of it.  It suddenly became evident that this was actually the Chilean border post, and the mountain range in the background was firmly in Argentina.  Our pulses raced as we realised that it was quite likely for someone to be manning the post, even though it wasn't an official border crossing.  We cycled onwards, climbed over some gates and fences, until we seen an Argentinean flag flying from a mast at the end of a large fence.  This was it: we either went as fast as we could and made it into Argentina, or we got caught by the Chilean or Argentinean border patrol and forced to go back!  Bags were thrown over the five foot fence, bikes were passed over after them, and we legged it.  Unfortunately we only got 10 yards before having to go backwards to get around a huge ditch!  Panic!  We were now in a huge field which was very rough, wet and soft - cycling was barely possible.  We stuck to the tree-line to avoid capture (!) and after a terrified half-hour we declared ourselves safe.  Ish.  And in Argentina!  While certainly relieved, we were still on edge as we had no good reason to be where we were, unless we'd just crossed the border.

All we had to do now was stick to the incredibly feint line on our map which seemed to indicate a track and we would soon reach the main road.  Hmm, sounds easy, right?  It wasn't.

This "track" turned out to be nothing more than a track made by the cattle, and it made it's way through the huge field and various forests, over unbelievably rough terrain, fallen trees, through bogs, up and down 45 degree plus hills.  Very little was ride-able - this was almost all pushing.  We pushed and pulled the bikes through kilometre and kilometre of this for hours until it started to get dark.  Tent goes up, dinner cooked with the minimal water we had left, and the land of nod came all too easily again to us all.

The next morning involved more of the same for a couple of hours until we finally found a track which we could ride down - and it was down, thankfully. We flew past some bemused gauchos on their horses and made it to the main road where we tried, in vain, to make it look to the passing motorists as if we'd just stopped for a bite to eat...

The “road” on the Argentinean side of the border.

Postscript...
As soon as we got to civilisation Dave called the Chilean Parks Office and asked them to tell the appropriate ranger that we had passed back safely but as we did so early in the morning we didn't want to wake him. Just one more little lie.
The next time we crossed the border, back into Chile, was at Lago Deseierto before the Carretera Austral, and everything went like clockwork.  Looked like we'd gotten away with our little adventure.
When crossing back into Argentina, however, before Bariloche, we had a scare. Having done the usual border post stuff with our passports, on the Chilean side, and in a rush to catch a ferry which left from the far side of a huge mountain, we met a jeep full of coppers who instructed us to call in with their cabin, just before the big climb started. Why, we weren't sure, but we did as asked without thinking too much about it. While casually thumbing through Dave's passport, the officer asked "So you guys haven't been to Torres del Paine, then?". What?! Erm, no, of course not!  He didn't pursue it any further, but it certainly made us go quicker up that 8km climb as the Argentinean border was right at the top!  We still don't know if there was anything in his question, or if it was completely innocent, but we suspect there was something in it and consider ourselves a touch lucky.

 

Col