cycle diaries

Weld done us!

2008-07-14T12:38:00.001-07:00

Simon Bolivar, Venezuela's most famous son (sorry Huge Chavez), identified three great fools in history, sticking himself at the top of the rankings along with JC and Don Quixote. However, times move on and records are there to be broken and I'm sure if 'El Libertador' has been keeping up to date with events in his home country from his independent cloud in the sky he'll concede that a worthy attempt to dislodge the big three from the top of the fruit tree has recently been made. This entry will cover the final 'leg' of the journey from Manaus in Brasil to the finishing line - the Caribbean coast of Venezuela. Its was a Simon Jones leg: long and with several painful breaks but ultimately leading to glory; in his case the leading role in the 2009 English Ashes victory, in our's Isla de Margarita and the strange knowledge that we've just cycled all the way across the continent. What an odd thing to do!

Manaus to Boa Vista. 22nd to 28th June. 839 Kms

You might remember we had washed up in Manaus following a very 'crafty' journey down the Amazon. Perhaps we hadn't stressed enough that it became obvious somewhere back around Quito that our timetable was looking a little tight and we thus exhausted all available resources to convince ourselves that the Amazon to the Caribbean could be accomplished in the three weeks we'd left ourselves. These resources amounted to a map whose small scale encompassed most of the continent (letters on it obliterated entire days), a 'blog' written on the same route some years before by an accomplished-sounding US cyclist and the selective highlighting of certain cells on the spreadsheet I'd set up to see how fast we could go. From these sources we derived respectively that we could expect to have to negotiate an enormous letter 'u', would be cycling only on 'flat and quick roads' and could accomplish it all in 22 hours. That sort of selective statistical analysis had been forecasting some pretty spectacular results for Esso for years! It was going to be, in short, a walkover.

The "flat" road out of Manaus. According to some Sepo on his blog. Ok, it's not mountainous, but there wasn't one "flat" 100m of road for days!

Unfortunately it soon appeared that Al was really going to have to 'walk over' as his bike frame snapped in half the second day out of Manuas. Hastily consulting the spreadsheet to see what effect pushing his bike to the Caribbean would have our on our arrival date it seemed we were now projected to finish in 2018. Crikey, Delta Airlines will be bust by then as we'll have won our court case against them (Nicolas Cage will be playing heroic prosecuting lawyer Mike Delaney in the film remake, punching the air as the judge intones gravely: "...to the charge of being a bunch of nobs... guilty on all counts"!). Uhm, anyway, Al's bike had conclusively fallen to bits and we were now 140Km up the jungle from Manaus. After pushing the culprit (the bike, not Al) back to the nearest town it became clear either Col or I would have to accompany Monty Junior back to the city to spend a day trawling industrial estates for a welder, while the other remained sitting by the pool in a hotel we'd found, guarding the other bikes and bags - ie.. drinking mojitos. On this note I should add that our team is a microcosm of how a prefect society should work and the difference between these two tasks meant nothing to either Col or myself. Therefore, after losing the toss of a coin, I cheerfully set off back to Manaus without regretting for one moment that it was that Colin and not I left pool-side. Ho hum. To make matters worse this catastrophic bike failure had happened in the one country where speaking Spanish is no massive advantage (as regards Portuguese... people keep telling me its easy to learn, being 'just like Spanish' but, to me, this just means lets all speak Spanish?) Happily the enormous crack through the bike was eloquent enough in explaining the problem and just listing the events of the next day should suffice to explain both how odd our days were becoming and how tight our logistics were: Got the bike welded in a technical college as an example piece for a class of apprentices, raced to catch a bus back to the scene of the disaster, woke up Col, set off after lunch and sweated 75 Kms north, turned down a lane into the jungle on the off-chance of finding a place to kip, found a fishing lodge where Pedro the chef tried to cook more than we could eat (the final plate of bass did it), Toucans sit on our bikes and Macaws deliberately attempt to defecate on Col's head but sadly just fail. Yes, the Paraiso de Pesca was one of those strange blessings that are sometimes found in unlikely places.

A cheeky Toucan has a look to see what he can make off with at Paraiso de Pesca fishing lodge.

The following day we had an interesting experience as we cycled through an Indigenous Reserve with a somewhat violent history. Road users are asked not to stop during this 120Km stretch and a Ranger of some sort gave us specific instructions that basically amounted to 'don't wind the natives up'. Perhaps he'd heard about Colin's habitual foreign antics (there should be a 'link' on the word 'antics' to Colin being chased around the world by various taxi drivers but sadly no such footage exists). Happily these natives proved more tolerant than Mark Dainty in Andorra and we escaped intact, the enforced stops that cyclists need being accompanied by only imitation whistling arrows and shouts of 'he's weeing on your sacred tree - shoot!!' as we all returned, ahh, remained in primary school mode. I suspect it goes without saying that this was the best preserved tract of jungle we passed through, managed as it is by people who know what they're doing, and so we had the privilege of seeing wild monkeys (that is, not domesticated ones, not ones going berserk), otters, toucans, macaws and a lovely old tortoise. Or maybe it was a young one, its hard to tell. Oh, and I nearly cycled into the back end of a jaguar. This being the jungle the result was not a set-to in the street with a Hooray Henry motorist but rather some quiet thanks that the cat had decided to do a runner, most likely in surprise as I'm the weirdest looking thing in the rainforest since Sting. Anyway, all very exciting.

Some thoughts on cycling through the jungle. I mean, it can get a little tedious I have to confess. You're not really seeing a great deal and, funnily enough, it gets pretty warm and humid in the old rainforest. In short, not one for your next cycling holiday. Also we noted that, quite to the contrary of what our Sepo friend had predicted on his blog, the jungle was pretty hilly. Indeed, I'd suggest there are no flat bits at all for the first 200Km from Manaus, the entire stretch undulating in 'Big Dipper' fashion. You can well imagine we found this 'unwelcome' and our cycling predecessor began to receive the sort of imaginary correspondence we've been penning in our minds to other purveyors of route-note-rhubarb. On further reading of this chap's blog however it became clear that he was one of a common breed: cyclists who catch the bus. Claim to be 'cycling across a continent'? Making very very fast progress? Advice on the road ahead becoming a little flaky? Bike strangely clean...? You bussed half of it! Go back and start again! Hold on, this a self-righteous rant!! Apologies, born of the frustration that comes from wrestling with all the things that go wrong on the tough or boring bits other people sensibly 'miss out' I guess. Talking of which we're now in Boa Vista after four consecutive days over 150Km took us across the Rio Branco, out of deforested grasslands and into more naturally open savanna. Here comes the next string of events that meant our rallying cry from now on was "on to the next disaster".

Boa Vista to Puerto Ordaz (Venezuela). June 30th to July 7th. 878 Km

Things that make you go hmmm. After a rest day in Boa Vista (the only one for these three weeks) to watch Spain overcome their demons and subsequently wind-up the Germans in the sort of way that would make even the tolerant folk of the Waimiri-Atroari go 'Dainty' (conga chaos) we set off. Oh no we didn't because the Venezuelan consul was at a high level meeting all morning and wouldn't be sober enough to sign our tourist cards until the afternoon. Tolerance with this sort of guff was running lower than duct tape (reading our earlier blogs you'd appreciate we thought they were lucky we'd turned up to get our papers stamped in the first place) and we got shirty. Then we got trousery cos they wouldn't let us in the consulate in cycling shorts. Near diplomatic incident now. Our official rubber-stamping jotter-blotter thus set us the unlikely task of 100Km in under four hours to reach somewhere to hang our hammocks. What was unlikely became impossible when 'the Manaus weld' gave way 44Km up the road and we were faced with a hitch back to Boa Vista. Actually, we're not very good at hitching so we walked back to a roadside bar with the patient and called a cab. We're cyclists not hippies.

Awaiting a bus back to Boa Vista after Al's frame breaks for the 2nd time in a week.

Some excitement here as I waited alone for the second taxi when a gang of drunken yahoos appeared out of nowhere and waved machetes about exhausting my reserves of British Phlegm in studious display of disinterest. The next morning weld 2 (now with even more welding stuff was performed) and we were underway again, our progress towards to Caribbean akin to El Del's efforts to get through his bedroom door in college after a big night at Cindy's. The wild back and forth lurching of this day left us marooned by the roadside some 75Km short of the Venezuelan border. A truly grisly affair ensued here; simply recalling it is pretty traumatic. Al has assured me he's going to check in for hypnotherapy on his return so the memory never haunts him again. So, just for the record... we were forced to pitch the tent in a sort of ditch in the absence of any accommodation, the sheer quantity of mosquitos making sleeping in hammocks absolutely out of the question. It wasn't hot in that tent, it was a steam room, a pressure cooker. The lack of space, welcome in the high Andes, proved to be a serious problem. Seriously, after two minutes I was drenched in sweat. Only partly my own. Sometime later it felt like the air beds were starting to float. Sweat poured off the roof and through it all opening the canvas was banned, the mosquitos waiting patiently outside to come to the party. Of course, some got in anyway. Torches, flicked on as searchlights to find and kill the blighters, illuminated the drawn faces of men in a waking nightmare. There was no sleep on July the 1st. July the 2nd would have been a rather beautiful day, up into the mountains that loom up out of the Amazonian plains, but as it was exhaustion made the climbs to the border and the start of the panoramic Gran Sabana particularly draining.

Looks innocuous enough, eh? This, actually, is the very spot where Hell joins up with Brazil. The nightmare camp, just shy of the Venezuelan border.

We got into Santa Elena, Venezuela, just in time to have some cash stolen from our room, go 'off on one' with the hotelier, enjoy a trip to the local Sweeney where Al could complete the set of fingerprints left behind in Latin America (ah, but whose have a comment saying 'suspected of telling pork pies' next to them dear reader eh??!!) and leave under a cloud. That said, the bikes were still in one piece and the next day dawned clear to afford a dramatic passage through the flat-topped mountain scenery of the Gran Sabana which, unlike the jungle, is a really tremendous place to go cycling. Venezuelan army check points were being particularly friendly, one of them run by (another) Newcastle United sympathiser whose English vocab stretched only to the word 'Magpies'. Good lord. We meet a Canadian cyclist touring the Gran Sabana near the end of the day."You guys rock" she tells us. Indeed we do, and it is because our bikes are now held together by wire and hope.

Its off the edge of the Gran Sabana and down into three big days of hot hot heat though gold mining country. A meeting with a young Australian gold explorer in the town of Tumeremo is most instructive into the mayhem surrounding this 'industry'. I don't think I've ever met anyone more Australian, and that's including Big Aussie Joe. He's clearly upset at people shouting "Gringo" at him in the street (we sympathise with him on this point) and he's taken matters into his own hands. "Aw, mate, I've had to get hold of a few and tell em, I'm not a ****ing Sepo, I'm a ****ing Aussie mate"!!! Of that, there truly was no doubt. However, given he speaks no Spanish I can't imagine any of the locals are any wiser, though doubtless a few have been mildly terrified. Tumeremo was the scene of the latest mechanical delay as it turned out my rear rack had cracked in three places. Given Col had beaten me by a few days to this sort of show-stopper, and had thus already bagged the big-bolt-bodge of Calingasta, the delay was the length of time it took us to repair it with; 6 rusty nails, 6 cable ties, a bit of wire. Two days and some careful speed bump negotiations later we were down on the bank of the River Orinoco in Ciudad Guayana / Puerto Ordaz. Bikes, nails, welds, big bolts, fools sitting on top - all still where they should be. Preparing for one last 'big push' in this 'new town' we visited a shopping centre and, in the confusion caused by being amongst the sort of vulgar consumer hell that blights parts of Venezuela, I lost my treasured cycling cap. Dismay. I then fall victim to a dress code and get thrown out of a bar. A bar in a shopping centre. Rage. A replacement hat is obligatory as the sun is scorching so I'm now wearing the remains of a pillow case on my fingers, wrists and head and can no longer really complain about people staring at me in the street. We're all catching the sun now and Al is having to mimic my 'finger puppets' while Col is wearing a thermal shirt. In the jungle. In addition to the pillow casing I've got long johns rolled up to protect my knees and so, looking like a Monty Python sketch its 'Tally-ho!' and off to the coast!

Ciudad Guayana / Puerto Ordaz - Chacopata. 8th - 10th July. 433 Km

On the way out of Puerto Ordaz a fellow cyclist gives me a mango to eat. Its something to do while Al replaces a broken chain. We cross the Orinoco by ferry which is mighty fine, weave through some drunks on the far bank, and lay into the hottest day to date as we cycle 200Km across the edge of the river delta to Maturin which stakes a late claim for most chaotic town yet visited (Peruvian coastal towns filling the top ten up till now). Its a bit of an epic and one Al has labelled a 'make or break day'. Strangely we both make it and end up broke as the ATM's are not on the pay and Venezuela is the most expensive country we've passed through by some margin. It Al's birthday so we celebrate by finding a place that takes Visa and getting, uhm, Al to pay for it. Congratulations! This day was the sort of cycling performance that would have had the doping testers lining up round our team hotel with plastic beakers if they weren't all at the Tour de France, looking at Ricardo Ricco suspiciously. Accordingly we start late the next day (after nine) which works in our favour. We are cycling into the coastal range of mountains north of Maturin, around the pretty town of Caripe and have a big climb called 'La Campaña' to finish the day. It is hard to imagine tackling it successfully in anything other than evening cool. It is worth it to reach fresher air and great mountain surrounds; an ideal spot to spend our last night on the road and savour the downhill to the Caribbean the following day.

The start of the climb called 'La Campaña', north of Maturin, Venezuela.

Of course, that is not what happens. What happens is that we decide to visit Venezuela's biggest cave, 6 Km on the way from our overnight stop, on the worthy scientific basis that it might have a cafe where we can get a coffee and cake. It doesn't but we go in the cave anyway which turns out to be a bit of a nightmare for idiots in cycling shoes as its the slipiest surface since Pat Sharp closed his Fun House. On leaving it has started to tank it down and our descent to the coast is carried out in a monsoon. Hold on, we haven't reached the coast. We are going back up again, quite steeply. Hmm. P'twang: Colin's chain breaks for the fourth time this morning and he looks like he's about to go over the mental edge he's been teetering on since his tyre blew out on the Maturin ring road. Only the weight of the bike prevents him what David Millar recently did when struck by the same problem in the closing stages of a Giro d'Italia stage. Throw it!! Good grief, the Caribbean looms into sight out of a cloud at last. We are running later than we expected and so we go quick, so quick that we manage to break through two road blocks (social unrest of some sort, but as I'm dressed like Michael Palin's village idiot and carrying expensive gadgetry I deem it unwise to hang around to find out if its the 'battering a ginger Teessider' sort) set up on the track out onto the Peninsula de Araya before anyone can collar us. Here one last range of hills is breached and its down a barren and ragged seafront for the 20 Km to the place we chose for journeys end: the village of Chacopata. Here there is no hotel or hostal, indeed there are no visitors at all, and all is rough and ready. We didn't miss the boat to the Isla de Margarita (where we will relax for four days before the flight home) because no boats left today at all. The wet weather we cycled through in the mountains was the tail end of a storm that passed through today. This is the information we hear from the Harbour Master who has let us sleep in his office overlooking the little bay and a sardine canning factory. A power cut meant it was hard work tracking down a cold beer, but our new pal the harbour master runs the show in this place and he was still shaking his head in disbelief at our arrival when he reappeared with cans. We cooked our last pasta meal on the floor of the 'capitania' which may seem an unlikely place for journey's end, but one which, as only we can judge, was appropriate enough. The weld done us, so well done us.

Midd

Pura bici - a cycling update

2008-06-29T20:37:00.001-07:00

Apologies for giving up blog writing back in Argentina. So, please find below an update on where we’ve been, and how, in an extremely boring, pure cycling format. Everything is still very beautiful!

In summary… 22nd March – 28th June. La Quiaca (Arg) to Boa Vista (Brasil)

6,219 Km. 63 days cycling. Average distance on days cycled: 112 Km. Longest day: 223 Km. Route: Bolivian Altiplano - Bolivian central highlands – back to the altiplano and La Paz – cross to Peru at Lake Titicaca – south shore to Cusco and Machu Picchu – long crossing of the Andes to the Peruvian Coast – up said coast for 1500 Km through deserts – back into the Andes as we cross into Ecuador – down into the Amazon basin and over the equator twice to Coca on the Rio Napo - Down the Amazon to Manaus - Through the jungle to Boa Vista. General conditions: uhm, hilly!

Bikes

The frames made it to Coca. There will be a future blog about what has been going on in Brasil I’m sure but... Don’t get aluminium mountain bikes for a steel touring bike job! Support from Merlin Bikes very good indeed. The bits attached to the frames have generally been replaced or welded back together. Our tyres have proved to have a design fault – side wall splits mean a couple of cheaper replacements are now rotating. Continental ‘Travel Contact’ are the culprits to avoid. Dave Leslie’s (official team support coordinator) parcel of drivetrain spares arrived in La Paz but the parcel of pannier parts has already done Bristol – Mendoza – Bristol – Lima, and we think it might now be heading back over the Atlantic for the fourth time. It’s clocked up so many air miles it's becoming a serious factor in climate change.

La Quiaca (Argentina) to Potosí (Bolivia). 22nd to 30th March

Distance: 735 Km. 1 rest day. Av dist on cycling days: 92 Km. Very wild, scenic and seriously demanding cycling.

Cross the Bolivian border at 3443m above sea level and finish at 4070m up in Potosí. In between we climb to levels where no person has had the breath to carry an altitude marker. No tarmac at all. Dirt deteriorates to deep gravel before the town of Tupiza. Sand coming out of it improves to bedrock as we take a route that isn’t marked on road maps. Vast panoramas are wildly impressive. Camping with the Llamas, cycling up a river to the mining town of Atocha and sliding through sand dunes until we reach the Salar de Uyuni. 160 Km there and back to spend the night on an island in the salt flat. Best surface of entire section. Tupiza to Uyuni was difficult but Uyuni to Potosí was gruelling. Our map of Bolivia is great as it was a gift from the fantastic ‘Boon’ but really awful as it has clearly been drawn by infants. Ones who are really bad at geography. I’m sighting this as the reason for our traumatically late finish in Potosí. ‘Road’ appalling. Lots of sand, water and mud, some snow, but hardly any air. We see no other bikes in the city of Potosí. There is a good reason: many hills and they all only go up. 3 days off: visit the world’s most important mountain and see Evo Morales after much searching. A very memorable time.

Potosí to La Paz. 3rd – 14th April

Distance: 1074 Km. 2 rest days. Av dist: 107 Km's per day. Bit more air, Amazon tributaries, cobbles and long climbs

Potosí to Sucre over 2 days continues our anti-clockwise loop started in Uyuni. We drop down on tarmac through heavy rain to the more comfortable and pretty colonial city of Sucre (2790m) sitting above deep-cut, lush green valleys through which we travel over the next 4 days to the city of Cochabamba. Tarmac runs out on this stretch. Road made of debris for half a day then cobbles for 75 Km. Cobblers. Scenery wonderful, lots of dramatic drops and long climbs make for good cycling. Rivers are now Amazon feeders and surrounds suitably 'baby jungle'. Interesting accommodation in the town of Epizana: confusion is caused by a herd of pigs trying to break into our ‘room’ during the night. On to Cochabamba in landscape identical to Weardale. Leaving Cochabamba ( 2560m) we are now carrying sawn-off pick axe handles - see future blog from Al on how to avert potential urban ‘situations’. ‘Tarmac’ all the way to Ecuador now. We climb back up to the altiplano reaching 4500m and in doing so pass to a more barren, harsher landscape near Oruro. The run in to La Paz is marked by numerous inner tube explosions as I’ve fitted the wrong size valves in Cochabamba. Col and Al are having chain snapping problems instead. Entering La Paz (3660m) actually requires a steep drop off the plain into the canyon filled by this fantastic city. The descent is done is our trademark urban style – down a motorway kicking troublesome taxis and buses. It rains, we get drenched and freeze to the handlebars. 3 days off here to enjoy what is a really tremendous place. Go to La Paz!

La Paz – Cusco (Perú).18th to 24th April

Distance: 723 Km. No rest days so 103 Km's per day. All high level stuff so relatively flat around Lake Titicaca, which is, indeed, ‘very nice’

You can see it’s not really so far from the capital of Bolivia to Cusco (and Machu Picchu) and the first four days take us up to and around Lake Titicaca. Due to crafty logistics we manage a night on the Isla del Sol, birthplace of the Incas (in short). Col spends time on another planet as he’s suffering from the latest bout of bad guts that will, uhm, rumble on to Ecuador. Cross into Peru and travel along the fertile south shore of the lake before rising through a bit of austere splendour to a 4300m pass and so back into the Andes proper. Pretty chilly. It is worth noting that on crossing the border into Perú, until passing into Ecuador a few of days ago, the standard of driving descended to something so poor there is no comparison. The only instrument Peruvians seem capable of locating on the dash is the horn, cycling militancy was provoked and many drivers ‘had to be told’. Everyone’s glad that’s all over. We drop into the valley of the Rio Vilcanota (later to flow through the ‘sacred valey’), the temperatures increase and the scenery becomes more pastoral. Inca terracing everywhere – well, mainly on the hillsides. Into Cusco where we take 4 days off and discover some deserted houses on top of a big hill which is alright…

Cusco – Lima. 29th April – 9th May

Distance: 1169 Km. 1 rest day. 117 Km av per day. Through the Andes at the really wide purple bit on your atlas. Not for kids.

If you want to emulate the cycling climbing feats of Virenque, Chiappucci, Roche et al, and see lots of Alpacas at the same time, this is route. Six high mountain passes at or above 4000m, highest 4390, in the six days out of Cusco. Climbs of up to 65 Km in length finishing in wild hairpin, D’huez-style stuff. Snow-capped jagged peaks abound around. Very little air. Again. This route was shut by the activities of ‘The Shining Path’ through the eighties and nineties – perhaps that’s why our latest mapmaker didn’t get round to finding all the towns and took to making some up instead. It is deeply exciting scenery. Six mind bending days end up with a 2 and a bit hour descent down a 99Km 3800m drop to Nasca racing against nightfall. Fast and bumpy. I stare so hard through my sunglasses they snap in half. We take a day off in Nasca to look at the mysterious Nasca Lines from a light airplane. Discovered in the 1900s - I’d like to see the minutes from the Nasca council tourism brainstorming session a couple of years earlier. The next day we pass some suspicious looking workmen as we cycle through the same desert. We think they’re drawing a mouse. From Nasca we rack up some longish days through deserts punctuated by the odd irrigated valley and out-of-season seaside resorts and reach the snobby suburb of Miraflores in Lima thanks to the map drawing skills of Maria in a Repsol in Chorillos. 3 days off in Lima.

Lima to Macara (Ecuador). 13th to 22nd May

Distance: 1234 Km. 2 rest days. Av per day: 154 Km. Long fast days through a desert notable for fog and drizzle. Escape to beauty in Ecuador

We cycle straight through Lima and it is a seriously lively route. We followed the directions of what seemed to be a reliable voice and rocked-up in some tasty neighbourhoods where we only survive due to: our deeply weird appearance, our don’t stop for anything, anything at all and cycle as fast as possible at all times approach and a police escort out of a particularly ‘we’re all about to get battered’ sort of place. We were delighted to find the motorway which we sprinted along for about 20 Km before it downscaled to a dual carriageway down the fast lane of which a naked man came running at us. Frankly after all of this excitement not a great deal happened for 800 Km or so until Colin fell down the hole in Chiclayo. This is mainly because the northern Peruvian coast is a desert punctuated every 100 Km or so by depressed and depressing towns. People were very keen to impress on us how dangerous it would all be but we encountered no trouble whatsoever. Thus thrills were thin on the ground. The first four days out of Lima we actually covered more ground than the peloton will over the first four days of Le Tour his year. Ok, so their fourth day is only a 30Km time trial, but then they’re not avoiding naked madmen on the route. We manage the 223 Km crossing of the Desert of Sechura in one leap, which is a good job as there is not a great deal in it and it means we can watch the European Cup Final. If I’d have known odious Chelsea would lose it in such hilarious fashion I’d have walked over that desert to watch it. On my hands! Still chuckling we avoid ‘South America’s worst border crossing’ (the main route on the coast) by finding a route inland to the Ecuadorian border town of Macara.

Macara to Coca. 23rd May to 8th June

Distance 1284 Km. 3 rest days. Av per day: 92 Km. Very, very hilly. When it ended, which at points seemed unlikely, we were on the banks of the wide River Napo ready for a boat adventure east (and south a bit - pedants take note)

We climb through cloud forests to reach the spine of the Andes at Loja. It is a beautiful but difficult road. Loja to Cuenca is wet and difficult and might have beautiful if the cloud had lifted. Cuenca is very attractive but we have no time to stay as we cycle on to Riobamba, a route which is beautiful, wet and difficult all at the same time. In the last 8 days we have crossed the Pacific / Amazon watershed 5 times (lets just say 'The Andes') and the cycling is consistently demanding. Things level out a bit through the 'Avenue of volcanoes' on the 2 days to Quito and the rain eases off a little. The clouds only lift high enough to reveal the dome of Chimborazo on the day out of Quito, heading east to complete our last high altitude pass at 4100m, dropping down the eastern slopes of the Andes, past Volcano El Reventador, through the oil town of Lago Agrio and down to the Rio Napo.

Coca to Manaus. 9th to 21st June

River trip. No Kms cycled but some 'lost' as we move east and a bit south. Conditions generally flat and wet - it is a river.

Ready? Rio Napo: Canoe launch from Coca to Nuevo Rocafuerte: 10 hours. Smaller canoe launch over the border to Pantoja in Peru: 2 hours. Peke-peke (dug out canoe) with Nono the journo (¡q nos vemos en La Latina gaditano!) to Santa Clotilde: 2 days. 1 day wait. Rapido (fast launch) to Mazán: 4 hours. Cycle 4 Km over land bridge to Indiana on the Amazon. Amazon: Hilariously packed launch from Indiana to Iquitos: 50 mins. Cargo ship 'Manual Iquitos' to Santa Rosa: 2 days. Launch from Santa Rosa to Tabatinga in Brasil: 15 mins. 2 day wait. M. Monteiro (Cargo / cruise ship) to Manaus with ace Mary-Lou: 3 days. Shipbroker for journey: Middlemiss-Montgomery Lines who manage a 63% saving on quoted prices. Hey, Dr Pace; arrival in Manaus ahead of laycan (cos that's shipping coordination 'de puta madre' señor!).

Manaus to Boa Vista. 22nd to 29th June

Distance 839 Km. 1 welding day. Av per day: 140 Km. Hot and very humid, powerful sun. Should not have been a surprise; we were in the jungle. First 200Km very undulating (think the A68 to Corbridge) then flat, crossing the Rio Branco to this city close to the Venezuelan border.

Sluggish start with boat-life and heat induced lethargy in legs. Col's rear rack snaps on day one which we rectify with the 'big-bolt-bodge' from Calingasta (see Argentinean blogs). Second morning out of Manaus Al's bike frame snaps. More serious. Return to Manaus and get it fixed in the Technical College Pro-Menor Dom Bosco as a demonstration piece for a class of apprentice aluminium welders. Oh it is a result! Resolve to go even quicker before anything else falls apart. Improbably superb place to sleep found at Paraiso de Pesca; erm, 'muite obrigado' Pedro e Marco. 120 Km through the Waimiri Atroari indigenous reserve. I disturb a Jaguar (huge cat, not Morse's car) by roadside but don't get eaten. Toucans, Macaws, monkeys and tortoises are less worrying nature spotted here. Exit reserve - please feel free to chop down trees and graze your cattle. Long and hot days. Powerful sun and anti-malarial drugs combine to cause weird sunburn. Wrist bone has come up like a polished cricket ball. Final day to Boa Vista more open and interesting as various mountain ranges loom up in advance of the Gran Sabana which awaits over the border in Venezuela.

Meanwhile The Wolves did not go up. What, one wonders, is the point?!!

D Middlemiss

Ecuador, how hilly can it be...

2008-06-29T20:33:00.001-07:00

Ok, so like Col's post, this is a little out of date but here it is anyway.

Upon arriving in the border town of Macara we promptly checked in to a nice hotel, I fixed the puncture I'd gotten 200 metres from said hotel and we headed out for dinner. As Col alluded to, we first had to sort out our cash situation, which due to our usual forward planning and research (or rather lack of) meant we had no actual idea what the currency of Ecuador was. No problem we thought, we'll head to the ATM and pick up whatever the local currency happens to be. Dave steps up to the cash point and after some messing about with cards being rejected he gets out 300. The problem was it turned out to be $300 US dollars and this left us a little confused but nonetheless we headed of to a decent restaurant to get fed. After eating our food we asked for the bill and sheepishly handed over some dollars to see if they would be accepted. Waiter brings back dollars and we then realise that Ecuador uses US dollars as it's currency. Having learnt our first thing about Ecuador (lack of a travel guide or a map had ensured this) we head back to the hotel for a bit of kip.

Day 168 - Macara to Catacochha - 94 KM

Very abruptly we realise cycling in Ecuador wasn't going to be the relaxing experience we had been thinking about. A very steep climb out of town in hot, humid conditions ensure our first experiences of Ecuador are pretty brutal. Col and I catch up with Dave as he's taking a breather by the side of the road after having entered a cloud/fog patch. He seems quite content sitting on the little wall by the side of the road, to one of us points out the numerous huge spiders clinging to their webs behind him. Those who know Dave will know that this didn't please him at all, as much like myself he has no love of the arachnid family.

The day continues with more sharp climbs and they're quite possibly some of the steepest climbs we've encountered so far on the entire trip. If I wasn't enjoying the Ecuadorian experience I had to feel sorry for Col as he was having a "mare" as you would say. Numerous weeks of having the shits and his enforced diet of soda crackers meant he was pretty much running on empty. We descend to a bridge where we know we have yet another climb to finish the day. The climb is slow for everyone but especially Col, who looks like the Grim Reaper may be looking to have a word with him in the very near future. We finish in the pitch dark after about two hours of ill advised cycling along the white line as it was the only thing we could see.

NOTE TO OURSELVES: Buy batteries for Dave's bike light.

Day 169 - Catacocha to Loja - 100 KM

Day starts well with a nice spot for breakfast but deteriorates rapidly when the old "biddy" running the joint starts messing up the order. Several corrections later we are fed and set off.

Terrain is similar to yesterday, unfortunately, with very steep climbs up to a ridge where we unfortunately have a 25 KM downhill into Catamayo. I say unfortunately as after a spot of lunch in Catamayo we are off again on another climb - this time 20 KM. After this beast we have a short downhill into Loja where we spend almost an hour searching for somewhere to eat that isn't a fast food joint.

Day 170 - Loja

Alarm goes off at 7 am and after Col emerges from the shower a short debate ends in the decision that today is a rest day.....so back to bed it was.

Day 171 - Loja - Saraguro - 82 KM

Day starts poorly with Midds pannier clip finally breaking (initially damaged when he crashed 8000 KM ago) and us taking a wrong turn which costs us 8 KM. Progress is reasonable despite yet another chain breakage (not my chain for a change) but it then starts to piss down and we realise we don't have enough time to make it to Ona so we pull stumps in Saraguro where we find an excellent hostal with great showers.

Day 172 - Saraguro - La Paz - 75 KM

A brief downhill is quickly followed by about a 30 KM climb to Ona where we have lunch before pushing on. We then meet a very nice Austrian couple cycling towards us and stop for a chat and swap some stories and route info. They reckon we could make it to Cuenca today but that it'll be very difficult. They're right. On the climb before Cuenca we stop at a small village called La Paz where the locals tell us there is nowhere to stay but we're welcome to pitch the tent at the roadside in front of a building that's for sale. Tent goes up with a reasonable audience in attendance and we head to a small restaurant where we again have chicken and rice for dinner and get to watch the first leg of the Copa de Libertadores (South American champions league) which features La Liga from Ecuador against America of Mexico. The restaurant seems to close around half time but thankfully they don't kick us out.

Day 173 - La Paz - Cuenca - 73 KM

An early start and a long downhill into Cuenca sees us arrive there in the afternoon with just enough time to get the bikes washed and also get some much needed laundry done. Unfortunately we don't have any real time to see the city as it seems quite nice but we need to press on.

Day 174 - Cuenca - Canar - 72 KM

An early start is thwarted by our inability to find somewhere open for breakfast and Col finally deciding he needs to see a pharmacist again. This one is also a doctor and doesn't agree with his previous treatment and duly dishes out more drugs. Road out of town is uneventful until Midd very nearly puts himself in the huge, nasty, concrete drainage ditch after watching a large group of road cyclists wave at us - truly a close call. It starts bucketing down on our next climb and when we reach the top we take shelter in a barn full of shit - literally. Another few K's sees us sheltering in a roadside restaurant where the long fingered gloves and waterproofs are put on but after the descent into Canar we've had enough and call time.

Day 175 - Canar - Alausi

Our alarm may have went off at 6 am but trust me the fireworks in the middle of the night and the church bells ringing incessantly at 5 am have me awake already and I'm not overly amused by the whole thing. Breakfast is the various flavours of instant porridge we've been saving for an emergency breakfast and mine is dispatched to the bin pretty sharpish. The first cycling incident of the day sees Midds chain break and Col very helpfully fit the new one. Well you could say helpful but Midd and I were pretty sure the chain should actually go through the derailleur and not around it - nice work Col. After yet another Ecuadorian deluge the day's second incident occurs in the shape of Col's rear tyre exploding on a pretty fast downhill. It was only a matter of time really due to our tyre supplier (Continental) being a very unhelpful bunch and refusing to stand by their products which we have found out are pretty poor. They refused to accept their tyres were of a very poor quality and were only prepared to replace one of the eight that had fallen apart under warranty. If you're looking for a tyre to use cycle touring look no further than Schwalbe about whom we have heard so many good reports from other cyclists - unlike Continental whose tyres have let down other cyclists we have spoken with. The rest of the day is occupied by a ridiculous climb on a mud/gravel/sand surface which eventually gets us into the town of Alausi.

Day 176 - Alausi - Riobamba - 99 KM

First incident is my chain breaking, again, and I'm not finding it amusing anymore. Second is much more amusing when Col pulls the rear wheel out of its dropouts and can't unclip his feet from the pedals in time. He does end up in the ditch still clipped in to his pedals but much to my disgust I miss the sight.

Day 177 - Riobamba - Latacunga - 107 KM

A 6.30 am wake up is ordered to take full advantage of the all you can eat breakfast and we assault the mass of food with some gusto. Eventually get on the bikes at 8 am and hit the road. Some uneventful cycling takes us to Ambato where Col and I combine to lose Midd. Unknown to us he has followed the sign for Quito (why didn't we think of that...) and is off on the new bypass. Col and I wait around for a hour on the outskirts to see if Dave will appear but we give up and make our own way to Latacunga where we arrive to see Dave sitting at a cafe in the square. He's been there 2 hours after cycling really fast to try and catch up with us as the road he chose (that would be the correct one) was pretty steep and he figured we must be ahead of him - we weren't.

Day 178 - Latacunga - Quito - 92 KM

A suprisingly flat day sees Quito arrive quite quickly and we make our usual city entrance - cycle fast, don't stop for anything and give shit to all drivers who cut you up. We rather by chance find our accommodation of Hostal La Posada Colonial quite easily and are greeted by the very friendly owners.

Quito

Two days isn't a lot to take in Quito and our 2 was pretty much spent shopping. No, it wasn't shopping for the pleasure of the shopping experience but for essentials like hammocks, mosquito nets etc for our upcoming river/jungle experience. We did manage to fit in a trip on the cable car to take in the views of Quito and do some other essential admin before our next leg. Bad news we did have is that upon getting bikes back from a service and clean is that all 3 have cracks in the frames (on the chain stays near the dropouts). Not good news at all and we're just hoping they'll hang together for the remainder of the trip.

Day 181 - Quito - Papallacta - 74 KM

Some arguing, and looks of disgust from us, persuades a transit cop to allow us to pass through a tunnel on our exit from Quito. Good job to as the alternative route obviously would have involved a big hill. The descent from Quito is soon followed by the inevitable climb which we know will be our last serious climb (this one takes us to 4100 metres) for the entire trip. We reach the top in cold, wet conditions and put on extra layers and waterproofs for the descent ahead. Good job, too, as it's bloody freezing and the miserable conditions and fading light see us stopping in the little village of Papallacata.

Day 182 - Papallacat - El Reventador - 117 KM

A long fast downhill is the perfect way to start any day and this one goes for quite a bit. A stop in Baeza sees us scoff a proper breakfast (unlike the brekkie from the hotel in the morning) and also sees Midd get some more route info. The info results in a change of plan for us and we take a different road from that which we had planned to take towards Coca. We push on until it starts pissing down again and a nice resort with pool appears by the side of the road. Cycling boots come off and it's into the pool for a mess about with attempted overhead kicks and diving headers with the ball we find. Dave isn't feeling too well so Col does the decent thing and scoffs his dinner for him.

Day 183 - El Reventador - Lago Agrio - 102 KM

First 45 kms go quite quickly and we stop for a drink and for Col to change the tube in his rear tyre due to a faulty valve. We stop again 2 kms down the road when Col realises the rear tyre is partly off the rim. Whilst touching Cols rear tyre the tube explodes and I, as we would say back home, near shat myself. Lago Agrio is reached just before a torrential downpour and we check into a nice hotel as it seems to be the only place in town where we won't get our stuff pinched or get beaten up (Lago Agrio doesn't have a great reputation). It's a little expensive and it's my turn for the camp mat on the floor but we didn't get a beating or our gear nicked so we call it a success.

Day 184 - Lago Agrio - Coca - 91 KM

Not the most memorable cycle but we get to Coca and book ourselves onto the first of our many boat trips to come in the next 2 weeks. I say 2 weeks but that is a bit of optimistic estimation as it could well be 3. If it turns into 3 then we could be in a bit of trouble on the final leg of Manaus to the Caribbean coast as it will leave 2500 kms in just over 2 weeks. Interesting.....

Paddington Bear was from... Peru!

2008-06-29T20:23:00.001-07:00

Ok, so this is well out of date as we left Peru, moving into Ecuador, on the 22nd of May - but at least we've gotten around to it eventually. I'm going to cover the entire trip through Peru in this one post in order to get it done. That means it covers 32 days and a lot of kms, and as a result I can't bare to face writing about every day individually, just like I'm sure you couldn't bare to read it... I'll include distances and place names at the bottom of each section. I'm sure you'll thank me for my attempt at brevity as it's long enough as it is.

I'm writing this while hanging in a hammock on the deck of a slow boat down the Amazon to Manaus in Brazil, and it couldn't be more different than the month of tough cycling alluded to below! I've got a bit of a hangover from polishing off two bottles of Colombian rum last night (not alone, obviously...) while enduring a huge rainstorm on the boat. Still, mustn't grumble.

Anyway, on with the show. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Peru...

Isla del Sol/Copacabana, Bolivia, to Cuzco, Peru
Days 135 to 139, April 20th to 24th

Once back on dry land we were quickly over the border, doing the necessary documents etc, and into Peru without incident. Amazingly, things instantly became flat as a pancake - an incredible contrast to the previous month in Bolivia. This was expected, however, as we were on the banks of Lago Titicaca for the first couple of days and most lakes are flat, I'm told.

On our first morning in Peru we were delighted to have sheep's head soup for brekkie, down at the market. As Dave's and mine were served up it was amusing to hear Al beg Dave to ask the lady for no sheep's head in his! In a new take on playing with one's food, I was able to play a tune on it's teeth with my spoon. This day was full of bad drivers. One bus actually pulled in closer to Al and I as it roared past inches away, and the teenage hoon acting as a conductor actually opened the door, leant out and shouted some abuse at us! A short distance ahead, Dave was no better off, as a passenger in a lorry threw a load of water over him on it's way past. Welcome to Peru, fellas!

The next day in Juliata was only noted for a cheap chicken restaurant serving up such a mammoth plate that neither Dave nor I could finish it (following the amateur error of having 5 plates of salad from the free salad bar while waiting...). Beating the Middlemiss-Montgomery eating machine is not an easy task, and we both feel somewhat shameful of the incident.

Riding into Cuzco was another interesting experience as we exchanged abuse with the drivers of the multitude of 'colectivo' mini-buses who liked nothing better than cutting us up. It's become our MO for riding into larger towns and cities: ride together, ride fast, stop for nothing and give as much shit as possible! So far the beating sticks haven't had to be used, but they're always to hand if needed...

Day 135, Isla Del Sol to Juli (65km)
Day 136, Juli to Juliata (132km)
Day 137, Juliata to Ayavirí (102km)
Day 138, Ayavirí to Tinta (142km)
Day 139, Tinta to Cuzco (121km)

Cuzco
Days 140 to 143, April 28th

Cuzco's a nice, pretty city, it has to be said. But it's just so touristy and expensive it makes you sick. Everybody and everything in the entire city centre seem to be there purely for the purpose of grinding money out of the masses of gringos who constantly pour through. It's the base for trips to Machu Picchu and some other Inca sites and as a result it's just jammed full of tourists of all ages and budgets. Virtually everyone is trying to figure out how they can get to Machu Picchu without paying the exorbitant prices for buses, trains, organised tours, entry fees etc. We, having bikes, had it in our heads that we might cycle up there within a few hundred metres or so and walk the rest. In reality we just gave in, paid our money and joined the masses trying to be among the first people of the day to get there so the photos didn't include hundreds of Sepos* wearing raincoats and huge SLR cameras. Hold on, that was us, never mind the Sepos!

We visited some museums, seen some cool Incan stuff, and I finally took Dr Spark's advice and went to the pharmacist to sort my guts out after 5 weeks solid of, well, no solids... We found what could be the best restaurant in South America - Cicciolina's Bread and Breakfast. It was even more expensive than the rest of the muck we seen in town, but it really was worth it. If you're heading there, take note - just spend the extra money and don't bother with any of the other crap and you'll be constantly impressed.

There was an amusing incident involving me being fingerprinted while on a 'on a visit' to the police station, but it's probably best I don't reveal the details here... We managed to contact Delta Airlines and get our return flights changed back to their original date without charge, which was a huge relief. However, Delta are still proving a huge problem for us as we attempt to get a refund for their forcing us to move our return flights when we flew from Gatwick all those months ago. In short: DON'T FLY WITH DELTA AIRLINES and DON'T FLY VIA THE USA.

Actually getting to Machu Picchu is somewhat complicated as there are a few options, and a few factors which make it difficult. We decided to take a load of non-tourist buses to Pisaq, Urubamba and Ollantaytambo as it gave us the option of checking each place out, including he Inca ruins at the latter, and it was dirt cheap. Unfortunately once we were bored of the ruins we had to sit outside a cafe on the main square and be subjected to live local music for 3 and a half hours.

That may not sound so bad to you guys, but if you imagine listening to the same bouncy synthesised tune, with vocals switching between a young girl screeching in a high, monotone, out-of-tune voice and some twat talking or shouting about God-knows-what, you'll start to get the picture. Honestly, we know we should take in the wonderful diversity of culture we're experiencing on our trip, but this style of music, popular in Bolivia, Peru and to a lesser extent, Ecuador, is utter crap. It's been driving us mad and we simply can't understand how anyone can possibly like it. There is a name for the genre, but I don't dare remember it in case it triggers memories of the actual music in my dreams...

We caught the train from Ollantaytambo to Aguas Calientes and stayed the night in a cheap hostal - not much point in paying a lot when you've got to be up at 4am to catch the bus. This place is "Machu Picchu village" and it can supposedly only be reached by train. We reckon the train company are making sure the authorities never finish off the road so they can continue to monopolise and charge ridiculous prices. The whole Machu Picchu experience is amazing, but you do leave it wondering if all the cash you've just spent is worth it for walking around a load of stone walls etc that could easily be many parts of Britain! That's just the stonework though - the location is absolutely stunning. We left mid-afternoon, with hundreds of photos, got the bus down to Aguas Calientes and jumped on the train all the way back to Cuzco. Virtually everyone gets off at the stop before and gets taxis to Cuzco as the train takes an age to make it's way up and over the mountain. It actually changes direction (i.e. forwards to backwards) many times as it zig zags it's way up and down the steep slopes, switching the tracks at each change in direction.

* Sepo - comical, uncomplimentary, rhyming slang for an American. American > Yank > Septic Tank > Sepo.

Cuzco to Nazca
Days 144 to 149, April 29th to May 4th

This section was to be our last in the Andes proper for some time, as we traversed them at their widest point and headed West towards the Pacific coast. There were numerous passes over 4000m in altitude and unfortunately there tended be be huge valleys in between to make the climbs much longer.

On the climb out of Cuzco we seen a postman being attacked by 3 huge dogs. He then picked up a huge rock, ran after them and hurled it at them, resulting in loud yelping. Postie fights back. A touch further on we came across a man having a shit by the side of the road, which was a nice touch. The day finished with a 25km downhill, which continued the next morning taking us down to about 1900m, leaving the small matter of a 2100m climb. As you can imagine, that size of climb takes virtually all day but it was rewarded with another huge downhill (30km, 2000m this time) into Abancay.

While looking for some early morning breakfast in Puquio, we were privileged to witness two men having a fight. The previous day was the town festival, so they were obviously just finishing their celebrations in style. It appears that the local way of fighting is to take one's belt off and whip your opponent and this was made all the more amusing when the young lad discovered why he wore a belt in the first place and his trousers fell down. The older guy took advantage by whipping him violently until a copper arrived to drag the young guy off to the cop shop with his trousers still around his ankles and a significant crowd watching. We doubt we'll see that again soon.

Our good friends Del and Susannah were getting married on this day in her native Slovakia, so Dave and I were frantically trying to find a phone to speak to Banty, the Best Man. We got our message across but all sounded very somber and we were left wondering what was going on. We later found out it was a very 'interesting' wedding, which is probably all I should say... Oh, and congratulations once again guys!

We climbed to the top of the last pass, at 4390m, did a good few kms of flat and started the 100km downhill all the way to Nazca (590m). At the top it was freezing but things soon warmed up as we descended. We were really struggling to get to Nazca before dark, and there was nothing in between, so we were going as fast as we could on the most potholed road in the world, carving up the sharp turns on this amazing downhill. We later found Al's front brake pads had fused to the cylinder with the heat! The scenery on the downhill was amazing - you could see for miles and miles, across the tops of several ranges of mountains and huge sand dunes, as the sun was setting in the distance. Oh, and we were given the thumbs up and a big smile by a guy shitting right on the verge of the road. They love a bit of shitting beside the road, around here...

Day 144, Cuzco to Limatambo (83km)
Day 145, Limatambo to Abancay (120km)
Day 146, Abancay to Chalhuanca (127km)
Day 147, Chalhuanca to unknown village... (58km)
Day 148, Unknown village to Puquio (137km)
Day 149, Puquio to Nazca (166km)

Nazca to Lima
Days 150 to 154, May 5th to May 9th

You may not have heard of the Nazca Lines, but they're well worth a look. They're huge (football pitch and bigger) figures drawn in the desert hundreds of years ago by the indigenous Nazca people. Many theories exist as to why, but most are ridiculous. The most believable, in our minds, is that they are depictions of the gods they worshipped and marked sites for ceremonies etc. You can't really see them from the ground, so we took a flight in a light aircraft over them, where our pilot, Jorge, pointed out each figure and did some minor acrobatics in an effort to make us sick. A touch expensive, but well worth it, we reckoned.

Ica had a bad rep: everyone told us not to go there or to be very careful if we did. We stormed into town and found that the hostal recommended in the Lonely Planet guidebook had been flattened. We decided to check into the flashiest hotel in town, mainly because they claimed an inclusive, all-you-can-eat breakfast. We also found a nice restaurant and had some decent wine, so our experience of the famed Ica was a somewhat middle class one! Still, a copper did recommend we move back to the main plaza in case we got mugged when we were trying to get out of town...

On the way to Cerro Azul we came across the ocean - which we hadn't seen in months. This whole section of the coast is all desert - the beach just continues on into the distance. Strangely it was very humid and misty, reducing vision and meaning we didn't see much of anything for days. San Bartolo is like a British seaside town and provided our last stop before heading into Lima, the biggest city on our trip.

Day 150, Nazca
Day 151, Nazca to Ica (156km)
Day 152, Ica to Cerro Azul (182km)
Day 153, Cerro Azul to San Bartolo (91km)
Day 154, San Bartolo to Lima (54km)

Lima
Days 155 to 157, May 10th to May 12th

We stayed in the uber-flash district of Miraflores, so didn't see much of the dangers that we'd heard about. We didn't do much sightseeing in Lima, mainly because everything we tried to go to see was shut for some reason.

We found Delta Airlines' office, which is the first one on our entire route so we were well prepared to read them the riot act about their treatment of us. Unfortunately the only person we could see was the receptionist so we made do with writing out a sharp letter, and had her type it up as we waited and fax it to their customer care departments in both London and Santiago.

We went to the central post office to pick up a parcel which had already been from Bristol to Mendoza, Argentina, back to Bristol, and hopefully to Lima. They're as hopeless as Royal Mail though so they were of no help and we accepted that we're not going to get these spare parts for our panniers until they are returned to Bristol once more and we pick them up in person! Thanks for all the effort though, Scowtie - we owe you big time.

Unfortunately my guts took another turn for the worse and I was feeling really bad. This was to prove very bad news for me as we cycled on through the desert...

Lima to Macara, Ecuador
Days 158 to 167, May 13th to May 22nd

Getting out of Lima was looking difficult - we basically had to go through the city centre which we'd been warned was very dangerous. The first spoke-breakage of the trip means we had to call into a bike shop to get it replaced on the way out of town, and the owner turned out to have just recently won the South American Mountain Biking event and been given the shop to run by Trek. He was a nice guy, didn't charge us anything for the work and advised us of a safer route out of town. His advice, or route, turned out to be a bit ropey, but we made it out safely thanks to an impromptu police motorcycle escort. Somehow I missed the spectacle of a naked madman running down the fast lane of a 4-lane motorway the wrong way...

We broke our daily distance record into Trujillo, hitting 196km. The next day we declared a rest day and while in a juice bar, a friendly old woman asked if I was Al's dad. I told her no, I was his brother and have just had a tough life.

On the way to Pacasmayo we were stopped by a couple of cops who told us the next 10km is known bandit country so we'd better ride fast! They radioed ahead to their colleagues on the far side and told them to look out for us. As predicted, we didn't even see anyone.

In Chiclayo I was feeling really bad and the shits had become a real issue. Leaving the hotel in search of a restaurant for dinner I fell down a manhole, which amused even me. By this stage I wasn't eating anything in an effort to sort my guts out, but with such long cycling days and no fat to burn I was really struggling for energy. Unfortunately the next day was a huge one across the desert to Piura, with nowhere to stop in between. Despite frequent shit stops for me, including one at a roadside cafe which had an outdoor toilet with a vulture sitting on the top of it, we made it to Piura as it was getting dark and we'd done a whopping 223km.

The next day entailed a trip to Clinica San Miguel for me, where the doc put me on a diet of soda crackers, rice and chicken for a week, along with some severe looking tablets. We'd only got about 40km to do this day to Sullana, so decided to watch the Champions League Final in a bar before leaving. Extra time and then penalties made us panic as it left us with less than two hours before dark, but it all proved worthwhile when the imminently likeable John Terry, of Chelsea, slipped and fell when taking his penalty which would have won the game for them. They went on to lose. Ha ha.

The next day seen a huge change in scenery as we were into the jungle and heading towards Macara on the Ecuadorian border. We crossed the border not only with no Ecuadorian currency, but with no idea what the actual currency was...

Day 158, Lima to Chancay (102km)
Day 159, Chancay to Barranca (121km)
Day 160, Barranca to Casma (187km)
Day 161, Casma to Trujillo (196km)
Day 162, a well earned rest day in Trujillo
Day 163, Trujillo to Pacasmayo (113km)
Day 164, Pacasmayo to Chiclayo (113km)
Day 165, Chiclayo to Piura (223km - yup, you read that correctly...)
Day 166, Piura to Sullana (42km)
Day 167, Sullana to Macara, Ecuador (137km)

Our thoughts on Peru

If we heard one more shout of "Gringo!" we may well have battered a Peruvian! They're very "in your face" compared to the much more polite, friendly and reserved Bolivians, Argentineans and Chileans we've met. That's a huge generalisation, of course, and we met many very friendly people who were very helpful. Ok, they don't have a clue what a kilometre is, much like the Bolivians, but once you know not to bother asking how far somewhere is, this becomes less of an annoyance!
Another annoyance is that the vast majority of Peruvians seem to be out to try to eke money from you. Everything costs money, and frequently we were asked to pay much more than the normal price just because we were tourists. A Dutch cycling couple, whom we met on a few occasions, even told us that once, when taking a picture of 2 flamingoes on the beach, some dude rocked up and asked them to pay him as the flamingoes were his! On the face of it, Peru seems to be quite cheap, but we found our money didn't go that far in reality.
We also felt much more "on edge" than we had done, and there seems to be some sort of macho pride in existence where everyone beams when they tell you that their town is the most dangerous in all of Peru!
Having said all that, we loved Peru. There's so much to see, the scenery is magnificent, and cycling through it was incredibly interesting. Would I go back? Yes, but it's not at the top of my list. There are a few things in Peru that you simply should not miss, such as Machu Picchu and the Nazca Lines, and there's enough to keep you busy for months of travelling around.

Col

The Bolivian Labyrinth

2008-06-29T18:02:00.001-07:00

You might have noticed I've stolen half the title from Gerald Brennan so you may fear a half serious travel piece. I wouldn't get too worried on that count given that any attempt to mix the themes of 'cycling' and 'Bolivia' can only result in the absurd. Absurd physical demands did approach the serious, but more 'seriously ridiculous' than anything else. Ridiculous as some of the routes we cycled were improbable, and improbable is a good word to use in relation to many things Bolivian: the outrageous scenery, the exhausting routes, the sorry history and the fascinating state of current affairs. What is probable is that if you were to go to Bolivia you would have a very enjoyable and interesting time as it is very beautiful and friendly, and things have a tendency to happen in a a country that is the geopolitical embodiment of the 'Latin American question'. So you should go, though I wouldn't take a bike; it really is a seriously ridiculous and absurd thing to do.

In Bolivia it's like historical things are always afoot. There lots of history to time available, most of it unfortunate and little of it making much sense. It is as labyrinthine as the roads and as hard to follow as the maps on which things tend not to join or add up. We can make the road map join up: our route was from Villazón on the Argentinean border, through Tupiza to the Salar de Uyuni. From here we curved anti-clockwise through Potosí, Sucre, Cochabamba and on to La Paz; respectively a large colonial silver mine town, the pretty colonial period capital, a modern, busy and warm city and the world's highest capital, stunningly situated and very attractive. On the 'incident' front, during our journey four of the nine provinces that make up Bolivia became no-go areas for the president as they tried to claim independence, major sectors of the economy went on strike, blocked roads and staged city centre punch-ups and the man trying to keep the whole show running turned out for a ninety minute ding-dong affair at the miners cooperative stadium in Potosí, during which he slotted one home from the penalty spot and dribbled round a large dog that had wandered on to the pitch. If it is hard to imagine what being Head of State actually involves on a day to day basis it is even harder to think what one would do in the face of seeming national meltdown. The normal response in Bolivia has been 'get booted out by the military' so the fact that to this day Evo Morales survives in power is testament to his alternative course of action: play footy. Obviously, I like his style.

Of Big Evo more later. While the transport lobby were kicking off in Santa Cruz state and the president's eleven were kicking off on the pitch we were kicking off with 317Km from Villazón to the world's largest salt flat at 3700m above sea level on the altiplano at Uyuni. The route we took was staggering both scenically and bodily. Al noted that this remote spot, the very wide purple bit on your Times World Atlases, while certainly 'alti' is not very 'plano'. The change from the panoramic country in north western Argentina to here was that now we climbed into the mountain scenery itself, still through gorges of bright coloured, folded and fluted rock but also up on to ridges and shoulders of green mountains up to 4300m, overlooked by the volcano Cholorque. We looked across vast distances westwards to the snow peaks on the Chilean border and eastwards to the Cordillera de Chichas. The 'road' surface was bare rock which deteriorated to sand in the dunes before Uyuni and for a period of time in the middle was water - we arrived in the town of Atocha by way of a wide river. 'Improbably'. There must have been another way into town judging by the looks of wonder as we emerged from the valley but then Atocha doesn't get many visitors, although its houses, that seem chiseled out of the yellow craggy surrounds, and an active pithead are more instructive as to a working Bolivian mining community than the city centre of Potosi. It is a poor place but the communities on the mining strip of the Bolivian altiplano, historically one of the worlds richest and most varied, do not reflect the enormous riches underneath (zinc in this case). The majority of settlements here owe their existence to a mine, shops full of miners kit and the odd mini-bus full of knackered miners being above ground indications of subterranean activity. Leaving Atocha a remote, crowded and ramshackle miners cemetery was another. Large ghost towns also exist up on mountain sides so, dead or alive (and the era of vast silver and tin production is gone), the mine leaves its mark on Bolivia.

Contrary to what might be expected the Salar de Uyuni would be the best surface we enjoyed in the first week and a half in Bolivia. It might be salt but at least it is packed down. Of course, it provides other challenges: navigating is odd given that everything is white, and the sun starts to attack from new angles. I burnt my bottom lip in a nasty way that would not heal until Cusco and the misery was compounded by the prominence of soup in the Bolivian menu. Nonetheless, the crossing of this dry sea was memorable and waking to see dawn after camping on a rock 'island' surrounded by distant volcanoes was a glorious experience. Cycling on to Potosí was more gruelling than glorious. We managed it in two days but really should have taken three as we finished the second well into the dark. The only other cycle tourists we met during our time in Bolivia managed to hospitalise themselves on this stretch so maybe we really should have taken the bus. This would have denied us some epic ascents and we would have avoided the misery, oh absolute misery, of the final turn around the base of the Cerro Rico which overlooks the city. Some sort of ghoulish struggle on these slopes seems to me an entirely appropriate way to meet this hill, one could be labelled the world's most important mountain. Yes, more important than Roseberry Topping. It was so dark and wet on our way round I thought Al (leading the sorry procession by virtue of having a working torch) had taken a wrong turn and we'd started the mine tour early. Why this ravaged and lowered cone is so important can be found in the famous works of Eduardo Galleano so I won't bore you by repeating it all here as if I'd just thought it up. So we can just note that over 8 million people died here in the worlds largest silver mine down which 10,000 people still work (silver is not exhausted as Galleano thought, though second in importance to tin) in conditions which can reduce life expectancy to two years for operators of heavy machinery. I would recommend a visit down the shafts, although the industry that has sprung up around it is pretty macabre, the attitude of many visitors depressing, and the conditions themselves pretty nasty. I think the shock of being below ground in such confined conditions (tunnels are hand dug and require crawling) can render objective commentary difficult and it would be more interesting to hear the impressions of a European miner (for example) than someone with my soft background. Talking of which I was gutted to find I managed to smack my head on every plank and strut down there and then get lost, which begs the question; what are bandy legs good for if not for getting about down 'pit?! 'Rock all' I guess.

Back above ground there were fireworks in the main square of Potosí to celebrate anniversary of the founding of the city and fireworks in our toilet to mark the 12th hour anniversary of the consumption of an iffy quinoa soup. The inhabitants of both were kept up all night by the rumblings. I spent a good couple of days trying to track down Evo who was in town for the celebrations, Potosí being a 'loyal' province for Bolivia's first indigenous leader. This support is no surprise as exploitation of its massive subsoil wealth has left little but poverty despite over 400 years of production and it is thus home to a large number of disgruntled people who would support any attempt to retain the proceeds 'in house', which would be the basic principle of the current regime. But Potosí is now really the emblem of the Bolivian riddle (huge natural resources - South America's poorest country). The present day wealth comes from different subsoil reserves in the area known as the 'media-Luna; four provinces in the north-eastern jungle and chaco zones from which Brasil and Argentina buy their natural gas requirements. Big business and now appropriated by the state. The prefects of these provinces have claimed independence, pretty much prohibited Morales from entering and rejected the Bolivian nation. Of course they would be making the same worthy appeal for autonomy if the gas reserves were in the other half of the country and they were living in a shed on twenty quid a month. Ho hum. Anyway, in a bizarre reversal of roles I attended all the civic functions in town while Evo avoided me by playing football until our paths crossed in the street and I was able to deliver my personal message: "Evo, get the Uyuni - Potosí highway tarmaced"! He's a big lad and certainly the sort of bloke you would pass to and expect to get the ball back from. Incidentally I've now seen him take two penalties (he managed a game in Lima when we were there) and he always sticks them the same way. I'm not going to reveal which way in case the CIA are reading this and send a goalkeeper to stop one in a bid to undermine his authority (as per the plot to shave off Castro's beard). As it is I've now seen a bit of Bolivian professional football and there is no goalkeeper in the country capable of stopping anything. Any country performing worse than the Bolivian national team should be utterly ashamed of themselves: Perú take a bow!

Back on the road and the cycling became substantially easier as the route to Sucre was paved (220Km). This is a very charming city and, whereas we were the only cyclists of any sort in Potosí (no air and comically hilly), we entered town in the company of friendly local racing cyclist, Guido. White colonial arcades and charming plazas here. We scored a pirate copy of windows and could upload photos again! The road from here to Cochabamba (441Km) illustrates the wild variety of the countryside in Bolivia. We had arrived from austere mountain tops and now descended hairpin roads to lush tropical valleys of Amazon tributaries, the paved section ending as we tackled 40Km-long climbs on cobbles (Paris - Roubaix anyone?!) and coped with lows of 1500m to highs of near 3800m, finishing with a day of limestone / pennine scenery that made it seem more likely that Bakewell would be found on the other side of the hill and not the amazon rainforest. The night before Cochabamba (2560m) we stayed in interesting accommodation in the truck-stop town of Epizana where the delights of the 'Epizana Hilton' were rejected (no shower, floor of mud) for the now infamous 'Hotel Tunari' in which I'm not sure if we were more scared of entering or leaving the 'room'. During the night a herd of pigs caused a row by trying to break in and we thus decided upon a crack-of-dawn escape, which was thwarted by the evil owner press-ganging us into moving a fridge through a muddy sea into her back room. To no thanks. Pah!

From Epizana we would be on tarmac until, well, Boa Vista in Brasil! (On that note some people have expressed admiration for our cycling about on all sorts of rubbish up to this point and I have to say, thanks, but I took no pleasure from it. I'd tarmac the lot!) Before La Paz (413 Km from Cochabamba) we entered the land of the long climbs, dragging up steep pulls for two days to La Cumbre at 4496m above sea level which will be our highest point of the trip. We made a slight descent to the bleak altiplano around Oruro, passing through grey truckers towns before the excitement of La Paz. When you have to go down a steep hill to enter the world's highest capital city you know you've been monkeying about at silly heights. Nonetheless it is a true plummet from the featureless plain into the canyon that houses the long and thin city, a drop that we accomplished in a freezing hailstorm. The setting is really dramatic and we added our own theatre by arriving in the main square shattered, cramped up and frozen to the handlebars. There is something truly comical in a state of desperate physical exhaustion amidst urban civilization. Comical for everyone else. What is appropriate to an arrival on a mountain top is ludicrous in a city centre where everyone else is ambling about and drinking coffees in street side cafes, but such was our condition on our arrival in La Paz. To thaw-out required the 'shower for an hour' project. So, anyway, everything about La Paz surprised and pleased me and I think it would be an excellent place to visit - without a bike of course. I want to thank Maria Isabel for showing me round and helping me be trendy in cool Sopocachi (!!!) - ¡Isha, q eres una estrella tía! There is great theatre, excellent galleries and a very beautiful post office. No, really. While I was knocking about here the Montgomery boys were proving they had gone from cycling zeros to heroes by tackling the worlds most dangerous road on an excursion from town. I adopted the 'I don't go to the office on a weekend' approach instead and missed out on trashing someone else's bike for a change. La Paz is fascinating.

I can honestly say that the climb back out of La Paz to the mayhem of the 'Aymara' city of El Alto was preferable to the descent - a reflection of the horrors of the latter rather than any joy had in a 90 minute haul up a motorway. The views were tremendous; what a strange place to stick a city. Now it was only one day to the shores of Lake Titicaca, or more accurately the off-shoot called Lago Huiñaymarca, where we stayed in a hostal owned by a local reed boat builder. Blue, blue, light blue in the middle of the bleak and ancient altiplano. How very improbable! It was a straight forward day for myself and Montgomery junior but Burns was suffering with faintness caused by a stomach bug (finally defeated in Ecuador, yes, miles away) that made progress of any sort quite heroic. There is a photo in the Bolivian albums showing what an effort this was, truly admirable, as there are photos which should link to most of the places mentioned in this blog. Apologies for the delay in the posting of it but I think you should go and look at the place for yourself. Take some oxygen. Don't take a bike. Evo Morales might still be at the helm - ask him if he's got that road tarmaced yet.

Midd

Cyclists without frontiers

2008-05-25T12:43:00.000-07:00

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

A Salt Overdose: Salta to the Bolivian border

2008-04-05T18:05:00.001-07:00

We're tired of Salta, despite it being a really nice city. When 'Empanada making night' in the hostal comes around for the second time, we can't even bare to watch everyone else make them and then scoff them ourselves, without paying, as we did last week. It's Sunday again and it feels like we're about to start a working week as we arrange chores to be done in the morning, thinking we're getting out of town. Of course Monday comes and goes - not without the odd argument with customs - and we're still stuck here waiting. Tuesday comes, though, and we're leaving, regardless - 9 nights in one place is far too long for this type of trip. Waiters already recognise us from previous visits where we have succeeded in eating shared platters for a multitude of people between just the three, or even two, of us. Our persistently dodgy guts mean the toilet in Cafe New Time has become our home away from home and they turn the rugby or football on as soon as we enter.

Leaving Salta, we are excited to be on the open road again, and genuinely glad to have left the city. Before we left, we were the not-so-proud, and not-so-confident, owners of battered rear racks held together with string, wire, welds, rivets, a cable tie and a large bolt and plate arrangement. We'd been patiently awaiting for these since our first breakages, almost 8 weeks previously, on the Caraterra Austral, Chile. In fairness to Old Man Mountain, the manufacturers of the racks, they had sent replacements to us immediately, destined for Puerto Montt in Chile as requested. It wasn't their fault that the Chilean postal service had decided to attempt to deliver them to a bike shop during siesta time and then promptly lost them (or sold them to one of their mates who ran a mobile ice-cream business from the back of his bike). We waited until Mendoza to appeal for more - this time three racks as Dave's had finally given up - and OMM sent them, no questions asked. Actually getting the package from the postal service in Salta was a completely different kettle of fish.

Oh, and we managed to get absolutely smashed for the first time on the entire trip! At least twice! Unfortunately for yours truly the last of these nights nearly ended in tears as, in search of some local ladies on the dance floor, I instead found a couple of large hairy men who forced some heinous drinks down my neck and then grabbed my ass as I was making my getaway. Definitely time to get out of town!

Anyway, the bikes are ready again so the show must go on...

Day 102, Salta to Jujuy (99km)

We get up early and Dave and I ride to the post office, and customs office, noticing that the guys from the bicicleteria across the road have thoroughly unfixed our gears and greased up our brakes. Thanks, guys. We leave Al to pay the remaining bill in the hostal, but they're of the opinion that we don't owe them anything. Al agrees, por supuesto!

Nothing happening at the post/aduana office until midday, we're told, so we go and pick up the laptop - with replacement hard disk fitted and filled to the brim with pirate software. The abundance of free wireless Internet connections available around the Plaza 9 de Julio make it easy to complete the vast piracy operation, and we haven't lost much from the hard disk failure 36 hours previously.

Ah, I have fond memories of this bike rack! Here, posing in a little cable-tie number which is holding the entire ensemble together...

After some hours, as described by Dave in his previous post, we get our new racks. As my old one is currently held together by a large cable tie, I decide to fit the new one immediately, to the bewilderment of our neighbouring coffee drinkers, outside Cafe Monaco. The old one goes in the bin across the street with a satisfying clank - another breakage, probably, but this time I can laugh about it. We do some speed-ordering and speed-eating (nothing new there) and hit the road again, for the first time in 9 days. Cue more bemusement from the locals as we roll out of town with 2 new racks mounted on top of 2 old ones. The thinking is that we'll ride the old ones into the ground before changing them. This only takes a couple of days, obviously...

We leave town late, about 2:30pm, along a cycle track surely devised by the writers of the film Deathrace 2000, and make it into the rolling hills. It's gently uphill for 40km or so, with the scenery getting ever more lush with every passing km. As we reach the top and start descending it's positively jungle-like, with deep gorges completely covered in deep green vegetation and the road winding through them, constantly revealing a new part of the valley or a further part of the terrain ahead for tens of kilometres. The local wildlife are out in force to watch us fly by at high-speed: cows, pigs, goats, sheep, chickens, parrots, random-rodent-things-with-bushy-tails and the like.

Hmm, please let us past... Just two (look closely) of the many spectators on the road as we leave Salta.

Having left Salta so late in the day, and having about 100km to go, we're not surprised when it's dark five minutes after we ride up to the the first outdoor bar seats on the plaza in Jujuy. This isn't Tierra del Fuego mid-summer, now, and it's too dark to cycle at 7:45pm. What this means for us, effectively, is a) getting up and on the road earlier, and b) more enforced time in the bar at the end of the day. A nearby hotel is splashed out on and we fight over the single towel in the triple room, head out for some food, and have a good night's kip (yet another sin mosquito, thankfully).

Day 103, Jujuy to Uquia (121km)

A decent hotel breakfast buffet is properly taken advantage of and we get out of town quickly to avoid the backlash from the remainder of the hungry guests. A welcome tailwind helps us along a fast road filled with drivers hell-bent on putting us in the crash barrier. Al has yet another hairy moment as a bus driver proves his is bigger.

The tailwind has really whipped up and we're really flying as we go down the other side of the mountain. We stop by some rough sheds by the side of the road, which seem to constitute the pueblito of Tumbaya, and try to find some food. Each, erm, establishment, has different food on offer and as we make our necessity for huge quantities of meat clear, we're forwarded on in succession until we find one, a tiny old woman of about 90, who declares that she's up to the challenge. Lamb asado with corn on the cob, cheese, bread and potatoes filled with protein-rich maggots are all eaten with mucho gusto and we hit the road again.

35km further down the road, with a 400m gain in altitude, we reach Tilcara and stop at the local service station. We plan to make it to Humahuaca this evening, but it's still 42km away, with a 500m altitude gain, and time is marching ever onwards - only 2.5hrs of light left. We attempt to leave but are postponed by an onrush of fans and pose for some pictures with a young Paraguayan girl and her father who had seen us in Salta two days previously.

Reaching the quaint village of Uquia, 8km from our intended destination, with twilight upon us, we decide to stay here rather than go on. It's more off the beaten track and we reckon on cheaper accommodation and food. We turn out to be wrong on both counts but both are very nice!

Day 104, Uquia to Abra Pampa (104km)

Yesterday's intended destination, Humahuaca, is reached before 10am, and it proves to be a very interesting, if uber-touristy town. BTW, if you want to dispose of a computer hard-drive with some confidential information on it, I can recommend the bin at the North-West corner of the Plaza in Humahuaca.

Today's a big day for altitude gain and after 72km of rolling roads we climb into the village of Tres Cruces. At 3780m above sea level, this is the highest any of us has been, on land, and we're not surprised that every little hill has had us struggling for breath much more than usual. We're now firmly on the altoplano, though we don't see much evidence of the plano part of this...

Spurred on by an Exocet dog, which thankfully gets it's calculations wrong and buries it's head in the ground when climbing the bank towards the road, and me, we make the last 28km in a touch over 50 minutes. The shorts live another day, which is actually a bad thing.

Finding food in Abra Pampa proves difficult and we're almost tempted to stay in the empanada-making-facility (two ladies in a tiny kitchen) on the corner of the plaza to see just how many we can put away. We make do with a mere 16 and walk about town for a long time before finding someone willing to feed us.

Day 105, Abra Pampa to La Quiaca (75k)

Brekkie's not up to much but you get what you pay for, I guess. We make up for it's shortcomings in our usual way: find a bakery and eat everything in sight.

This local lady seems to realise the railway doesn't run on this side of the border! Puesto del Marques, Jujuy Province, Argentina

Some incredibly boring, straight road follows, through the tiny pueblitos of Puesto del Marques, La Intermedia and Pumahuasi, and after a good few hours I find Dave deep in discussions with the lady at the tourist information office in La Quiaca. This place is the border town with Bolivia: Argentinean border post on this side of the bridge; the Bolivian post on the other side as the town becomes Villazon. Our Lonely Planet guide has informed us it's much better to stay on the Argie side of the border, if one has to, so that's our plan.

Squeezing our bikes through the entrance to Residenciale Merced, we find the place already overtaken by cyclists. There's a group of 8 Argentineans here to start their two-week tour down to Salta. We take smug pleasure in telling them that we have come all the way from Ushuaia and that it took us only 4 days to get from Salta to here. In fairness they're taking a much longer route, and they're all nice guys and girls, so we swap some stories before heading our separate ways for the evening. If you're reading guys - hope it's all going well/went well!

Deciding to pass up the apparent certainty of a good meal in the soulless Hotel Turismo we try an unknown restaurant on the corner of the plaza. Manuel from Faulty Towers makes an appearance as our waiter and it's instantly apparent we've made a mistake, though we persevere. Unfortunately.

The next day we're attempting to cross the border into Bolivia. Why do I say attempt?! You'll find out in another blog post, soon, so watch this space! We're pretty excited about the prospect of a new country for the first time in over 3 months, but the reports of the road conditions and the constant altitude are weighing on our minds also. Be sure to tune in next time as we're either going to be cycling in Bolivia, sitting on a sofa somewhere in the UK, or somewhere much, much more scary...

Col

Now... where were we...? Mendoza to Salta

2008-03-19T04:52:00.001-07:00

Well, we were in Mendoza, a long time ago and a long way away. If the writer were in a more charitable mood there would be an apology for the delay to the regular readership (hello mother) but, after enduring a painful 'Argentinean custom' (see below), charity is thinner on the ground than Colin's punctured back tyre was on our arrival tonight in Argentina's northernmost city of San Salvador de Jujuy. What events have unfolded in the last three weeks. We have had 'duckgate' that led, most unfortunately, to 'rackgate'. We managed all of the cliches in two weeks of epic cycling; mountains were magnificent, deserts eerie, towns sleepy, markets vibrant and ravines, uhm, ravenous... or was that just us? We invented a whole new style of cycling that involved floating. We broke all our previous records for distance travelled, heights reached, black pudding eaten and bike repairs realized. Then we broke the hard drive on the laptop and thus we arrive at the excuse for the lack of on-line activity. Happily nothing of great importance was lost, just my CV and the latest blog. What a shame: it was a marvelous, rambling work of fiction chronicling with shameless romanticism my recent activities with only a passing glance at the facts... NO! I'm too ashamed to insert the punch line to that one here. Luckily for every one concerned it means that the whole thing has to be rewritten in haste on our new, improved and most likely illegal laptop, meaning that, as with one of our Argentinean meat BBQs, all that will be left are the bare bones of the matter. In a few hours we continue up, in every sense, to Bolivia, with two wheels, five rear racks (?!) and three idiots on our wagons. So, if no apologies for the unavoidable delay, an advance 'sorry' for the unrevised content. Please read in conjunction with the photo album to get some vague idea of the plot. !Adelante!

Day 80. Mendoza - Villavicencio. Feb 25th. Dist: 53KM

We leave with confidence at an all time high, the result of a week off in Mendoza and having completely forgotten everything about cycling. So, now that we're hardened cyclists we'll ignore all local advice and cycle up the unpaved mountain road towards the Andes rather than the paved main one. Grrrrrr! Whoops: our knees no longer bend. Owwww! We got quite dispirited during the first part of the day as the road played performed an optical illusion by appearing flat but actually going up. No such problem when we rounded a corner to find it going straight up a cliff. Actually, the prospect was quite shocking and some hysteria set in. We talked up the idea of tackling the ascent and much coffee and chocolate cake was promptly consumed. Al then pointed out we'd got the time wrong (chilean watch...), the mountaineering was called off and we spent a fretful night camped at the foot of a hill even more improbable than the climb to the last pub on Dave Leslie's cycling stag-do.

Day 81. Villavicencio - Valle de Uspallata. Feb 26th. Dist: 97KM

The climb. Good grief it was a monster. We woke up and staggered round the tent with unbending cowboy legs trying to think of ways of putting it off. Nothing came to mind so up we went. 30KM up to 3100m. Very few funny things happened, though it was intensely beautiful and the Snickers bars sent by the good people at Merlin Bikes ensured we were over and down to Uspallata with energy to spare. We used it in trying to outrun thunderstorms as we turned north up the high valley under the gaze highest mountain outside of the Himalaya, Aconcagua. Well, that's a bit of a lie as, Fitz Roy style (the mountain of thoughtless analogy horror), it was hiding behind cloud. Not to worry, we miss the storms and camp in splendid isolation in the high pampa. Look, the isolation was splendid! This is a great leg of the journey for cliches... No, but it really was splendid...

Day 82. Valle de Uspallata - Calingasta. Feb 27th. Dist: 123KM

Barren splendour anyone? Lots of it about today. I could have been the only person in the world... oh, until a member of the Argentinean Honda Racing Team appears from out of a sand dune to tell me "I used to live in Melton Mowbray". Righto... Here on the sand flats filming an advert it appears. Solitude duly shattered, albeit by cool, friendly people, we cycled on, over dust and rock until reaching an unexpected green sliver of a valley leading to the small town of Calingasta. Here we cheer when the campsite has no showers, a textbook excuse for staying in a hospedaje. Good job we did have the first wash in three days as tonight we meet Cecilia and Marella who are hitchhiking the around the same route as us for the next few days. So starts a race between our two groups to isolated destinations in which we always lose but pick up the consolation prize of having places to eat arranged in advance by delightful company.

Day 83. Calingasta - the middle of nowhere. Feb 28th. Dist: 72KM

Complaints from one of our equipment suppliers regarding previous blogs make me hesitate to detail why we didn't leave Calingasta until the afternoon, I'll just note we did get to meet another creative mechanic who had just the sort of big bolt we needed to get Al's bike on the road again. It was the final touch to what is now the Frankenstein of the bike world. Eventual progress was slowed by a road exhibiting two nasty traits: it went uphill and was made of sand. We therefore camped in the middle of nowhere, the sun setting to set the Andes ablaze with crimson and Colin sitting to set the pan ablaze with spaghetti. Broken fingernails all round the next time we got round to the washing up which was in....

Day 84. Middle of nowhere - San Jose de Jachal. Feb 29th. Dist: 138KM

I've forgotten to mention everything was in the process of being astonishingly beautiful. Are you looking at the photos (the ones without us in)?! Well it was. Ah, apart from the road which was astonishingly atrocious as it was more or less a dry riverbed for 40KM and made us all pine for 'uphill and made of sand'. The following week we would meet a some real riverbeds and we would be pining for the 'dry' bit. Violent jarring of teeth preceded violent gnashing of the same as we saw on the map we'd swapped cycling off road for cycling on one called 'the hill of the wind'. Not a pleasant combination for cyclists. Happily it took place in staggering scenery, today featuring a canyon that we failed to take any photos off as we were all too busy trying not to fall into it. We spilled out into the town of Jachal where humiliation was waiting in the form of a local bike race which had brought the rather large population out in force to line the route. The tedium of watching real cyclists going round and round was alleviated by whistling and laughing at us negotiating the same route the wrong way round. Marella rescued us in the main square and after some rather demanding days we made a one-off exception and ate in a very nice restaurant....

Day 86. San Jose de Jachal - Villa Union. March 2nd. Dist: 152KM

Oh no we didn't! We were back in the same restaurant the next night! And why were we still in Jachal? Well, I really can't say (see day 83), but I did get to meet the town welder on our unscheduled rest day and, on day 86, we set off with my bike back one piece. Out of San Juan and into La Rioja. Red crags and, at last, a day mainly on tarmac as we find ruta 40 again. Cecilia and Marella look like they are going to lose this race to Villa Union until they pass us on the final leg in a mental health minbus, presumably supplied by La Rioja government on hearing how long they have had to spend in our company of late. All that hard work building the myth of hardened cycling explorers is now completely undone by another night in a restaurant. It looks like the only thing we're exploring are the possibilities of the local wines. Oh well... I'm getting figs Al, yes, figs, figs and vanilla!!!

Day 87. Villa Union - Chilecito. March 3rd. Dist: 117KM

A climb. A canyon. A thrilling descent. What? Again?! The days are merging into one as we make pleasing progress through these provinces of the pre-cordillera. But it's a really nice one. The earth has gone very red and we're in mining country, although Chilecito looks like no pit town I can think off having no cricket ground and there being some miners. In these out of the way places we appear really odd to the locals. Hold on, I've just checked the photos: we just appear really odd.

Day 88. Chilecito - Salicas. March 4th. Dist: 124KM

Great news for the writer and reader: absolutely nothing of interest happens today in La Rioja! We cycle and it is very good.

Day 89. Salicas - Belen. March 5th. Dist: 101KM

Colin can't bear the void created by the previous day's lack of incident and sets out on a single handed mission to provide loads of it today. He starts fast by being bitten on the backside by a beetle, which passes for incident in Salicas, and is distracted enough to miss the road to Belen, turning down the journey north into Catamarca to start another lap of La Rioja. Al sets off after the Mark Thatcher of Limavaddy to let him know but sails past Burns the Navigator who is now in a cemetery taking a photo. Al flies down the road chasing a man who is behind him and, when they finally get it together, resists the temptation to send him back to the scene of his photo shoot for a more permanent stay. It is possible that the junction to Belen was obscured at the time of his passing by the coach loads of tourists, here on excursions to see what many experts reckon to be THE-BIGGEST-ROAD-SIGN-IN-ARGENTINA-COLIN-MONTGOMERY. We are finally all reunited and find ourselves in Belen, Catamarca, home of a strangely large bag of crisps. Everything is still very pretty by the way.

Day 90. Belen - Santa Maria. March 6th. Dist: 183KM

We're all quite pleased about the effort today (look at the distance, look at the distance!!), not least as we managed in true yahoo-style: setting off absurdly late and finishing in the pitch black. I met a chap called Seba who was also on a bike and we had a conversation for over an hour, which he found a lot easier than me given we didn't stop our bikes and his had a motor. Then there was a tarantula I would say, roughly, ooh, the size of my bike wheel. I had a fit. We spent a lot of time going uphill on sand which was no fun, then a lot of time going down on tarmac which was. We crossed pampa below snowcapped mountains and found a large thunderstorm making it's way up the valley we wanted to descent into. Half an hour later we were congratulating ourselves on letting it rumble up the valley side before heading down. Half an hour after that we were cursing ourselves as the flood water was pouring across the road in spate rivers. Lots of spate rivers. Crossing these was more than a little bit exciting as they were quite wide and fast. Oh, and it was now pitch dark. A sort of 30m diagonal slide in the inky before hitting dry land was the result, and the locals peering out of doorways in the string of little villages we passed on the way down into Santa Maria looked genuinely shocked to see us emerging from the mountains. Our hospedaje had a sticker on the door saying 'catholics only' so we stick Gerry Adams beard up front and cross our way into some cheap digs, hoping St Peter is running an equally slack ship at his front gate.

Day 91. Santa Maria - Cafayate. March 7th. Dist: 91KM

Sand and wind, all of it moving the wrong way very fast. My sunglasses duly fall apart for the fourth time and I see nothing of our brief trip through Tucuman province, though there is nothing I couldn't tell you about the white line between Santa Maria and Cafayate, it being the only thing I did see. The only interesting thing about this line is that 5KM outside of Cafayate there is a tarantula sitting on it. Nnnnggg!! Lots of vines, very pretty still...

Day 92. Cafayate - Coronel Moldes. March 8th. Dist: 133KM

All the way to Salta today at last! Erm no, cos we're knackered and have to stop in Coronel Moldes! Today the canyon scenery reaches absurdly impressive proportions in the Quebrada de Cafayate which has even more old and weird rock than Col's CD collection. Rolling, green countryside awaits as we turn towards Salta and the appropriate cliche would be 'lush'. Coronel Moldes is one of our least likely stops yet but we are lucky to find the fantastic Casona de Moldes and it's charming owner, Maria Laura. A fiesta to celebrate International Women's Day takes place in the small town square and we al listen to lectures from prominent local feminists on the place of 'woman' in the post modern work place. Oh no, there is cowboy dancing and every girl gets a flower instead! Adelante!

Day 93. Coronel Moldes - Salta. March 9th. Dist: 64KM

I haven't changed my cycling shirt since Calingasta, over 1100 KM away. It wakes up before me and tells me to get in and start cycling. The scenery has gone very English Summer, but like a good one from a film, not a real one sitting on a motorway. We reach Salta where we have a longer stay than planned as we wait for spare racks to arrive from Old Man Mountain, who have been excellent in their support of us. The delay is nothing to do with them, but rather the customs house in the city. I'm really running out of time to explain this... there was an argument concerning a small wooden duck, it turned out a couple of days later I had to deal with the same rubber stampers of toy ducks I had antagonised to get our racks out of a warehouse and it descended into a farce. Madrid negotiating tactics sort of got the job done, an armed guard helped out and, well, we thought we'd never leave pretty Salta at one point: a colonial city that hasn't sorted out the 'post' yet. Here we are though, back in the rhythm that saw us tick off nearly 1500KM in 13 days over 6 provinces. All a bit much to take in and make sense of perhaps, unless you were here and paying really close attention to the road, in case any more spiders appeared....

Midd

Mendoza - The Hit and Runs

2008-03-10T12:06:00.001-07:00

It's two weeks since we left Mendoza so this blog is a little late in arrival, but better late than never. I hope. We rolled into our current destination, Salta, yesterday afternoon for another rest period of a few days after a couple of fairly tough weeks on the bikes. It was great to spend more than a couple of days in one spot and actually get a complete rest from cycling, if not bicycle maintenance and get a feel for a city.

As Col has already mentioned in his last post the approach to Mendoza became a little more eventful after we had passed the beautiful vineyards and associated Bodegas on the outskirts. As I cycled along the hard shoulder on the way in to Mendoza I thought I was being treated to yet more encouragement from the locals by the way of two kids waving me on - actually what I was being treated to was two kids waving me down so they could mug me!

As this was my first time being victim of an attempted mugging it took me a second or so to realise the little thugs weren't trying to help lighten the load on my rear rack to avoid any more damage to it but, rather, they were trying to half-inch my panniers. I tried to put in a bit of a kick to enable my escape but being in a high gear and almost at a stop from their initial grab this plan didn't exactly work. Rather, they caught me again and made me fall off the bike. I got to my feet and I have to admit the first thought I had was to let them take the bike and all the gear, after all they could have had a knife. This thought didn't last long once I'd surveyed my attackers in more detail: two scrawny teenagers who looked less able to throw a punch than I do. Thug 1 attempted to delay me by sticking his clearly empty hand under his t-shirt and pretending to have a weapon. Despite this ingenious tactic I decided to slap him, or as it turned out give him a disappointing glancing blow to his chin, which he returned in kind before legging it. This was a result as, although I was pretty pissed off at this point and clearly wanted to batter him (not in a chip shop sort of way, obviously...), his accomplice was making off with my bike. I legged it after Thug 2 and again had a bit of a result - the eejit hadn't realised just how heavy the bike was, nor how feeble he was. He duly dropped the bike and legged it after his mate, leaving me with mixed emotions - I was unscathed and had my bike and all the gear on it, but was hugely disappointed I didn't get a decent opportunity to smash one of their faces in. By this point quite a few motorists had pulled in to lend their assistance and it was good to see the kind of friendly, helpful Argentine people we have been meeting right throughout the country.

Anyway, those young twats Behind us, we got to our chosen accommodation shortly after and settled in for the week. For us this means emptying everything from our panniers, creating a disaster zone in our room and creating a pile of laundry which includes every item of clothing we have except those we are currently wearing (which, in all honesty, could probably do with a wash as well).

Tuesday morning arrived and Col and myself set off for school. By that I mean we had enrolled for a crash course in Spanish, which after three months of struggling along with Spanglish and the help of Dave we thought it about time we made more of an effort. The nice folks down at the college seemed very relieved to see us: seems our vagueness in relation to when we would arrive was a bit too vague. As we set about our first class with our tutor Dario, it quickly became evident that he was an excellent teacher and we can only thank him and Lilo, our other tutor, for putting up with our Spanish mumblings and long, dumb looks all week. That said we both enjoyed the course (which surprised me due to my hatred of languages at school) and felt a little more confident dealing with questions the Argentine public frequently had for us. That said, due to the amount of cycling over the last two weeks, we haven't had much time to build on or practice what we did learn.

Other notable happenings during the week included Col and myself being stranded, by the way of flooding, on our way into town to meet Dave. Although Mendoza has a huge network of deep storm drains to deal with the severe rain that happens frequently, they simply couldn't cope with the deluge that night so we were left standing on a street corner until the torrent of water on the streets subsided enough for us to perform some form of long jump to clear the deep channels of water at the edge of the road - a jump that almost resulted in a broken ankle for myself as I was a bit optimistic about the distance I could clear.

Another night was spent on the rooftop terrace of a bar watching a Spanish film by the name of Volver. Fortunately there were subtitles for our benefit and it turned out to be quite an interesting (if not a little weird) film.

Another point I feel should be mentioned is our inability to actually stay out for a night and have a few beers. We've tried repeatedly since the start of the trip to have a big night out but we simply keep failing - once we get to about 1am we all fade and have to call it a night. The Saturday night before we left Mendoza was no exception but given the fact we had the bad news that our Grandmother had passed away the previous night it's hardly surprising that we weren't in the mood for a big night out. It's times like these which make it a bit hard being away from home but it seems like everyone has dealt with it pretty well and it's just a relief that she didn't have to suffer any more.

A final point to note was the catastrophic case of the shits we all picked up from a burger joint in Mendoza (which will go unnamed). Now a dose of the runs is never a good thing to have but when you're constantly cycling and eating huge amounts to fuel your body it does result in what could be described as an uncomfortable week. But I suppose a trip to South America wouldn't be complete without a dose of the shits, would it?

That pretty much covers our time in Mendoza and after reading how boring and un-humorous this post is I think I'll sign off immediately.

Alastair

¿What's cooking, Chef Midd?

2008-02-22T12:10:00.001-08:00

Chef Midd helps you plan the menu for your own cycling adventures. As with many things in life its a question of balance - you're going to be generating a terrible hunger but the more food you carry the heavier the bike will be and the hungrier you will become. Oh, and the more likely it is that your bike will fall apart. As with most things that are a question of careful balance Chef Midd has been a spectacular failure, which may be why his bike is now held together by wire and tape. Never mind, perhaps you can learn from his mistakes - there are plenty to chose from. Whatever happens, don't forget to pack the porridge...

Captain Beaky from Belsize Park asks: "I'm running a bit late for a life changing cycling adventure through South America and, having given my pals a three month head start, I'm going to have to go pretty quick to catch them up. What sort of equipment do I need to and can I buy it at Heathrow Terminal 4"?

Hola Captain Beaky! An easy one to start with this. The stove first: We use an MSR Whisperlight which has the advantage of burning just about anything, always starting and looking quite cool. There are some downsides. It always works because it is actually designed for use on a windy day on K2 and so, down at sea level, it burns gas at the same volume and temperature as a space shuttle on take-off. Thus cookery is a less than relaxing affair. The two available temperatures are 'off' or 'surface of the sun'. Anything resembling a simmer can be ruled out and all foodstuffs will be ready to eat after 30 seconds of cooking. The temperature can be varied by holding the pan further away from the jet, but this is a bit impractical when your pan handle is as effective a conductor of heat as ours. The only alternative is to stir the contents really fast. As regards cutlery and crockery it is essential to cut down on weight - one spoon, one small sharp knife, one fork, one plastic plate and one multi-purpose mug is all you are allowed. Making your life a misery by carrying only these items frees up space in your panniers for more essential items. Now when you can't decide between the Merlot and the Tempranillo you can take both bottles, throw in a Malbec to boot and crack your bike racks with the weight that way. Genius. I don't think much of this will be available in Heathrow Captain but please pick me up a Toblerone.

Colonel Montgoomeny writes from somewhere in Patagonia to ask: "It's six in the morning and I'm just about to set off pedaling up a mountain, round a glacier, through a gale and the such. Got a breakfast recipe Chef Midd"?

Another easy one! Cycling breakfasts couldn't be much easier Col. Montgoomeny as they all, without any exception ever, are based on porridge. A word on porridge - don't compromise on quality Colonel. For many people The Quakers is just a nickname for Darlington Football Club but their other important contribution to society is the perfect oat and we're all converts down here where, for once, the Quakers sit at the top of the table. So for a morning such as the one you're about to face I recommend: A litre of porridge, into which should be mixed 4 tbs honey, 4 tbs dulce de leche, 4 tbs jam, 1 fistful of dried bananas, 1 mug of sugar and half a mug of salt. Chase it down with two mugs of very strong and sweet black coffee and get on the bike immediately before the shaking becomes too violent. This way your pulse rate should be in the mid hundreds before you've even started up that mountain and not only will you not need to eat for the next 100 KM you probably won't be able to blink either.

Gerry Adam's Beard writes from somewhere in Neuquén to ask: "At the back end of last year my owner went for a boozy night out with his pals in Belfast whence some joker shaved me off and stuck me on the face of a passing youth, a certain A. Montgomery. As if this wasn't bad enough this clown then took off to South America where he now abuses me on a daily basis: In the morning I am smeared with porridge, in the evening by pasta sauce and between times I'm coated in jam and promptly set upon by horseflies. There's rice in here from Tierra del Fuego and we're halfway to Bolivia! Also, and I don't mean to be sensitive, but party to this assault is a man who is very orange... Chef Midd, is this a sectarian issue?

I thought I recognised you! Fear not, this is perfectly 'normal' behavior as A. Montgomery is a cyclist. After days spent biking up and down mountains and nights being kicked by his brother in a tent the size of a shoe box it's a miracle he can coordinate hand movement to get food near his head, let alone his mouth. Look at the positives - you store nutrients he can consume throughout the day simply by licking his lips, you filter out foreign bodies from soups and are a mobile ecosystem all of your own. His friend isn't orange but Strawberry Blonde and some people find it quite attractive. We can all come to the dinner table together and follow the roadmap to, erm, Venezuela.

Colonel Montgoomeny writes from somewhere in Chile to complain: "Chef Midd, why am I always last to finish my spaghetti and thus last to the biscuits? Is there anything I can do about it"?

I'm afraid not Colonel, it's historical geography at work. To explain: At the height of the Roman Empire Emperor Hadrian set out from his hometown of Sevilla to find land and people of comparable beauty. This he finally discovered in Teesside and, seeing things were going downhill rapidly by the time he reached what is now called Newcastle, he drew a line on territorial expansion, built a wall and called it a day. So, the Italian knowledge of how to use a spoon and fork to eat spaghetti never made it to your homeland of Northern Ireland. Your friend who is annihilating you on a daily basis in the speed eating stakes is simply more civilized being, as he is, from Adriano's 'Sevilla of the north' (Middlesbrough). Civilization might not be apparent given we're talking about eating 300 grams of pasta in under 4 minutes but it is so. Stick to Alphabeti Spaghetti in future, you'll probably have enough left on your plate to spell out 'Save me some pudding' while your pal's already on to the pealed grapes.

Marcus Sanderson writes from the northern outpost of civilization to ask: "Chef Midd, I'm also from Middlesbrough! Would I enjoy a cycling adventure in South America"?

Sandy?! Afraid not, no. There are no 'parmos' down here. I repeat: No PARMOS!!

Dr. A. Nosequé - Medaigual writes from a learned place to tell us: "Chef Midd, you and your pals were a disgrace. For thousands of miles the basis of your diet was Nestle chocolate, a disgusting 750 grams a day. Lining the pockets of this evil multinational was hardly the road to a post capitalist economy was it? A least you stopped this filthy habit at Puerto Montt you imbeciles. Well done for realizing the errors of your ways.

Crikey Dr. A. Nosequé, we only stopped cos it started melting north of this latitude. Col, do we still have the Nescafe? Chuck it out quick! Can we keep the Nestle powdered milk? It's the only sort we can get to dissolve... I'm feeling a bit unworthy and confused... Next question!

The Buntys from Battersea ask: "We are scientists Chef Midd and want to know if any technological advances have been made on your trip with regard to cookery"?

Phew, hello the Buntys. This is a yes! In the 1840s Charles Goodyear discovered the process of vulcanizing rubber. In December 2007 Chef Montgomery extended the process to Asparagus Soup. This discovery has many uses. Soup can now be carried in one's pocket, used to repair cracked tires and, in one of those accidents that mark the progress of science, when spilt it acts as a sealant for tent groundsheets, impervious to temperature changes. When he finds the right shaped pan he's going to make the worlds first asparagus bike tire.

British Customs ask: "Chef Midd, nearly all professional cyclists take interesting dietary supplements that send their red blood cell count strangely high. Do you use such supplements in your cooking"?

Dear sirs, absolutely not. If you can't get by on porridge what's the point? If the red blood cells still need a bit of a charge we recommend an evening eating only morcilla while reading some D.H. Lawrence, but it's not very scientific.

Colonel Montgoomey writes from the Fitz Roy Base Camp: "Chef Midd, something terrible or hilarious has just happened at breakfast and I need your advice fast. Let me paint the picture: I'm in a tent below the west face of Mount Fitz Roy in the Andes. It is tanking it down outside and has been all night. It is also blowing a gale and freezing. My idiot mate got up at dawn and, regardless of the conditions and the fact he only has a pair of plimsols for footwear, set off up the mountain for 'a view'. I think he gets it from his father. Anyway, he got back about 15 minutes ago defeated, drenched and desolate after 2 hours sitting under a rock in a cloud. To cheer himself up he started the porridge but, given there are penguins being washed past outside, he had to try and do it inside the porch of the tent. Predictably enough, just as it was ready, the biffer sent the whole lot over with his boot. The other climbers in the campsite were woken by some pretty choice Spanish and the stove went for a journey on its own out of the door. This was funny enough but, after stomping out, retrieving the stove and putting it all back together better was to come. To minimize time balancing the pan on the stove he made the porridge mix first this time, using the last of our water and food in the process. After going through this process he started to heat it up, only for the stove to immediately run out of fuel. He is now stirring the cold mix round and round in silence and I think he might be crying. It sits before him, an essay for a canceled supervision, a 48 slide Powerpoint presentation for a project that never got funding, a love letter to a girl who dumped you by email before you made it to the post box. I don't think he wants to ask anyone else around here for spare fuel cos they're all serious climbers and he's dressed like a cyclist from the 1970s. Chef Midd, my question is... Would this be a good time to 'do his head in' with some smart remark?

No. This man is obviously on the edge of some sort of breakdown and... hold on... this is all a bit familiar Colonel Montgoomeny...

Fiesta! Zapala to Mendoza

2008-02-22T12:01:00.001-08:00

Continuing our journey, ever North, on the infamous Ruta 40, which stretches some 5000 kilometres from tip to tail of Argentina, we rack up some serious distances and finally get some maps for the road ahead!

The beard's are coming along nicely, but to be honest, they're each living on borrowed time. While they provide a low maintenance and permanent sunscreen, we're simply losing too much food in them and are at risk of starvation as a result. The only reason they're still adorning our ugly mugs is that we haven't found a barber who looks like he can handle the operation, but it can't be long now before a brave Argie steps up to the plate. The heat has turned us off Egg Day somewhat, but we're still committed to it so keep reading and give us your bets on total eggs down. Appetites in general are still going through the roof, and with a 1kg-of-dried-spaghetti-meal on the horizon, along with the absurdly low price of quality red meat, all the evidence points at them getting bigger rather than smaller. Maybe when the beards-come-food-filters are gone things will start to calm down. It's also the season for festivals and we've caught a few on our travels so we're hoping to get a chance to rope a calf or rodeo-ride a wild horse sometime soon...

Fame Academy, Day 63, Zapala to Las Lajas

Faced with the choice of making it to one of two towns, 59 and 227k away respectively, we wisely opt for the lazy option and make a late start to our day in Zapala. Even our best efforts to make a quick getaway are thwarted as we try to scoff a breakfast of 18 doughnuts down by the railway yard. Firstly, the only Pole in town, a nameless old lady who's still got a thing or two to say, latches on to us and tells us not only her life story, but that of every foreigner in town. She's rudely interrupted by the local television crew who descend on the scene and point a camera and microphone in our general direction. While the shy, retiring Montgomerys claim a very true inability to speak the relevant lingo for this operation, D.Middlemiss is only too happy to step up to give a rather lengthy interview on his thoughts on everything from the weather to South American politics. Whether Al and I should have told him that he had the larger half of a cream factura hanging from his beard all the while, is not up for discussion.

Finally rolling out of town in the early PM, we encounter a few unexpected showers, a minor climb, and a Belgian couple cycling into Zapala. Turns out that they've seen quite a bit of the continent, but rather than use their bikes in the conventional sense, it sounds like they're happy to use them as luggage only as they have hardly cycled at all. Watching them flinch at the side of the road every time a vehicle goes by makes what they're saying seem sensible: they're fleeing Argentina because of the bad drivers. Now far be it for me to suggest that they've made something of an error in deciding to cycle through South America but, hey... Anyway, they were a nice couple so I won't bag them too much. After all, they're not the only people we've met to give us bad advice on the road ahead...

With no further alarm we pile into the small town of Las Lajas and are quickly informed that it's the town festival this very night. Excited at the thought of candyfloss and fairground rides, we turn up at the allotted hour, in the field at the end of town, to be quite amazed by both the sheer number of people here and the lack of death-metal-talent on the big stage. The parents and grandparents seem quite unfazed by the kids on stage chanting destruction destruction destruction repeatedly, but we're much too prudish for this sort of thing so decide to comfort ourselves in a large bag of empanadas. The comforting is postponed by a few minutes as we rescue said empanadas from the ground when the bag breaks on the stroke of Dave exclaiming "quick, grab the bottom before the...". Checking out the outskirts of the feria, we find some childrens' go-karts and ponder how amusing it would be to do this same trip with all three of us on one of these babies. Some more traditional acts come on stage so we join the masses and enjoy the mood for a while before we need more comforting. Another Quilmes each, some Choripan, papas fritas and hamburguesas do the trick and we get to bed at a very respectable 3am or so to leave the rest of the town to their party.

The draw of a cold beer. Day 64, Las Lajas to Chos Malal

I wake, already knowing that I had one burger too many the previous night, and am confronted with a litre and a half of porridge for breakfast, lovingly prepared as usual by our AM Chef, D. Middlemiss. We have a choice today: a normal sized day or a record breaker. The late start is at odds with the latter, but with that much porridge and a good ol' tailwind behind us we fly past our first destination and onwards towards Chos Malal.

We're glad to meet Phil again on the road, the nicest motorcyclist from Nottingham since Michael Elphick's Boon, and he stops to share some stories and yet more good route advice with us. We share what we've been told with him: tonight is Chos Malal's festival. Phil tells us he'll have a cold beer waiting for us in Chos Malal and roars off into the distance muttering something about a couple of beautiful mountain passes he's planning.

Some long, but not too tough climbs are followed by a final 20k of downhill, during which hardly a pedal is turned. Even the expected climb into town doesn't materialise and we coast in truly knackered but satisfied by our trip record of 167k today. A quick spin around and we find the first bar which, for a change, isn't on the seemingly omnipotent Plaza San Martin. Before we can all dismount (a somewhat lengthy operation after such a long spell on a bike...) Motorcycle Phil strolls up and buys the beers - which are cold - just as he promised! Next stop campsite; tent goes up; showers had; back out and we frequent the only recommended restaurant where Motorcycle Phil has just got the first beer in. What a guy. A naive goat and a couple of innocent cattle are tonight's quarry, but they never stood a chance with the hunger we'd built up. I'm sure I saw Phil wretching as we polished off our food in 46 seconds flat. Apologies, Phil. Oh, and apologies, too, for passing on that dodgy advice about the town festival being tonight...

This is too easy. Day 65, Chos Malal to Buta Ranquil

Sore legs don't swamp our confidence, but a knowing raise of the eyebrow from Motorcycle Phil over breakfast brings us back down to size when he gives us brief details of the road ahead. He's not surprised we did a record day into Chos Malal, but when we hypothesize that it should be easy to do one hundred and something kilometres today, all he says is "you've got to get out of Chos Malal first...". Thankfully he wasn't inferring that he, himself, had some grisly plan for us, but we did soon find that 'missing climb' from yesterday.

37 kilometres were covered in searing heat and not-insignificant headwind, without so much as a hundred metres of appeasing flatness nor mollifying downhill. A good few kilometres of downhill followed, but we were only allowed to relax for mere seconds as the next major climb appeared at the bottom. The same happened at the top of this climb, and the next, and onwards, infinitum... Maybe Che Guevara had the right idea, after all.

On reaching the small town of Buta Ranquil, however, we were delighted to finally get our first taste of Andes cerveza - something Dave and I had been waiting patiently for over 4 years for! It turned out that we'd stumbled, yet again, on the town festival so we supped up and rode a couple more k's to the site of the festival. Unfortunately we'd missed the exciting rodeo events and such, and were instead subjected to some local girls who seemed to be in a bizarre competition to determine who could sing the most out of tune on the big stage. No matter; 3 more goats met their maker and we had a relatively early night before the staring gauchos took revenge for the goats...

The River Wild. Day 66, Buta Ranquil to almost Pasarela

We're now on a very, very dry section of our route (yes, I realise that's at odds with the title...), and despite upgrading our water-carrying capabilities, we're still woefully short most of the time. It's a tough, very hot day in the saddle and by the time the sun starts to set we're still well short of our only chance of any sort of civilisation. A quick meeting is held in the middle of the loose ripio road and we decide to stick our very limited lights on and try to make it the 15 or 20 kilometres to a rumoured kiosco just past Pasarela (just because a place is named on the map doesn't mean it has anything there!). After a couple of kilometres we realise it's virtually impossible on the loose surface and set up a hasty camp beside the road. We're almost out of water and need to cook, so in the complete darkness I head off to the river, which we can hear somewhere close by, with two bottles. In the almost complete darkness I thought I'd come across something akin to Niagara Falls, with a huge cliff leading down to a vicious rapid, so I decided to shelve the idea and return empty bottled. Our only 2 litres of water were used to cook a quick pasta meal and we hit our scratchers with thirst that could only be understood by the likes of M. Delaney and S. Forbes...

The Driest Campsite On Earth to Malargue, Day 67

'Waking' after a horrible night's sleep with our tongues stuck to our cheeks, due to thirst, we packed up and hit the road in record time - no water for porridge after all. I took a quick walk down to check out the massive cliff and rapids that had scuppered my chances of getting water the previous night. They had, somehow, morphed into a small hill and a trickling brook, but I'm sure it was different the night before...

Numerous cyclists had told us of the horrors awaiting us on, or rather in, the road to Malargue. The final 30k had assumed an almost mythical dread in our collective minds, but we consoled ourselves with the knowledge that we hadn't met a cyclist yet who had given us road advice which we would term as acceptable, never mind good or reliable.

For a couple of days Dave had been powering ahead on the smooth surfaced sections and Al and I were simply unable to keep up. We had no idea what had caused this amazing transformation into potential Tour-winning cyclist. Until we caught up with him in the small town of Bardas Blancas, that was. Turns out his, erm, toilet policy had left him with 2 full days to do on a full tank, so to speak, and hence his rush to get to civilisation!

We decided to do some hard drugs before the big climb, and so hit the coffee and Coca Cola in some style. The road wasn't great - classified as deteriorated pavement - but it was quite easy to cycle on if you kept your wits about you and tried hard to choose a good line while watching for traffic. Stopping after every 15 or 20k, we reached the bottom of what had been suggested to us would be a big, tough climb, and took onboard some food and water. About 20 mins later we were over the top of it and coasting down the long downhill. It really wasn't a climb at all worth talking about, but I guess we'd have been more upset had the advice and reality been in reverse.

Pint bottles of cold Andes awaited Al and I when we rolled into Malargue, and despite the town's name sounding like a disease colony it was actually quite nice and prompted us to stay for a day.

A rest day in Malargue, Day 68

Good job this was a rest day as we'd spent the entire night slapping ourselves, literally, every couple of minutes to attempt to kill the dreaded mozzies. A lot of lounging went on during the day and the only thing of note to happen was that we attempted the world's first suicide by manner of overeating mashed potato. Failing, we went to bed expecting to be eaten alive again by the mozzies but, amazingly, they left us alone. Maybe they don't like mashed tatties?! Quick, patent that someone!

Overcast, with Part Time Showers. Malargue to El Nihuil, Day 69

With an electrical storm closing in around us, we raced it to El Nihuil, won, and quickly found camping Club de los Pescadores. Faced with the non-choice of putting up the tent now or after a cold beer, we got 'stuck' in the bar as the rain poured down almost as fast as the Cerveza Andes. We sensibly shelved the idea of cooking and, after advising the staff that we were cyclists with huge appetites, asked them what their largest meal was. Chicken, came the confident replies, along with gestures of rubbing swollen stomachs and wiping sweating brows. Promptly delivered, promptly dispatched, were the said chicken dinners, along with an additional bowl of bread. The waiter looked scared as he wondered how we'd left such clean chicken skeletons on our plates (think of the movie, Predator...). After he'd consulted his friend, the chef, he came back with half a goat; we think partly by way of apology for getting the effective size of the chicken dinner so wrong, and partly to see how we would manage with the additional food. Two more bowls of bread please, and seconds later the half-goat was no-goat. G-l-oating in our success [sorry, that's awful...] at beating the chef, we left them in silence and put up the tent.

It was only then that we discovered that our questioning of the girl at the front desk should have been much more in depth and scrupulous in regard to the showers, and less so in regard to what she was doing tonight (it was Valentine's Day, she'd told us...). The showers were only open from 8pm to 10pm, and it was now gone midnight. Stinking. Unfortunately we were stinking, too, so a quick cowboy-wash by the dishwashing-sink was required before bed...

El Hihuil to San Rafael, Day 70

Cruising downhill into the Canon del Atuel in the morning proved just as beautiful as Motorcycle Phil had promised. Even the nasty climb out of it didn't dampen our spirits, about 40k later, and we hit the tarmac again towards San Rafael.

Passing the masses of stalls by the side of the road offering rafting and other white-water experiences, we narrowly avoided some nasty falls when the smarter operators pushed their bikini-clad hotties into the road to intercept us. Those obstacles overcome, the products on offer by the side of the road changed to homemade jams, cured hams, olives and locally produced wines. Somehow we avoided these also and eventually found the campsite, 6k out of town.

With various things to take care of each, we split up and arranged to meet at any bar by Plaza San Martin at 9pm. When Al and I reached town we were amazed to again find ourselves amidst the town festival. This time, though, it was a biggie. The harvest carnival was in full swing, with the most beautiful girls from each of the surrounding towns being towed, waving and blowing kisses, down the huge, wide streets behind tractors, on massive floats. Fantastic, we thought, as we ogled the girls who were, quite literally, on display. A short while later our thirst took over and we rode through the crowds to the town square. Which was closed for remodelling and didn't have a single bar within a 2 block radius of it. Hmm, best made plans and all that. A couple of hours of aimless looking amongst the crowds and we found Dave, who'd thankfully found more bars than we had been able to.

Next day the small Bodega of Iselin was visited and the resulting purchases were found to fit nicely into bike bottle holders. With the liquid taken care of, we decided to do our first asado (Argie BBQ) back at the campsite. Despite a huge electrical storm closing in around us again, we found a suitable butchers and went in. The absolute beast of a man behind the counter suggested what we should have and how much of it. He bellowed some joke about how he had sold the skinniest goat in the world to the the last Englishman through his door; we laughed and walked out with about 5kg of meat. The resulting asado was, and we don't say this easily, the largest meal of meat any of us had ever had. It was true carnage and probably lucky the sun had disappeared behind the massive storm clouds so no-one could see the animals feeding at the end of the campsite...

San Rafael to San Carlos, Day 71

Our day on the road started a brief spell of confusion after Al and I thought a couple of locals walking down the road were pointing and shouting to tell us that Dave had gone into a house by the side of the road. As Al checked out round the back of the private house and found a family enjoying their Sunday dinner, it finally dawned on me that the locals were actually telling us to get off the road and cycle on the cycle path!

The Romans have obviously been to this part of the world as the road to San Carlos is die-straight for the middle 100k or so. Once we'd hit the top of the hill, after climbing ever so slightly for a couple of hours, we were greeted by another electrical storm. A thorough soaking was only avoided due to the wind turning in our favour and we outran the storm into San Carlos. Finding the campsite wasn't too easy but once we had we were more than happy: it was basically the beautiful back-garden of a rich Argie with a huge house and a penchant for fast motorbikes. We pitched the tent under some trees and hung a large percentage of our clothes and equipment out to dry, cooked and went to bed.

About 30 mins later that electrical storm caught up with us and provided a light show which that-French-twat-of-a-musician-whose-name-I-can't-remember would be proud of. While no doubt amplified by being inside what amounts to a plastic bag, it was the heaviest rain and loudest thunder which we'd ever witnessed.

San Carlos to Mendoza, Day 72

Thankfully the sun was shining when we woke as all our gear was totally soaked and had to be stretched out over the tennis court to dry. When finally dry enough to pack the gear away, we hit the road for the final 110k into Mendoza, dreaming of a week off the bikes.

The first third was uneventful; the second quite beautiful as we rode past vineyard after vineyard, including the likes of Chandon and Norton; the final third somewhat scary. As we were forced back onto Ruta 40 to enter the city the road became a full-blown motorway with either non-existent or horribly potholed hard shoulder. The drivers refused to indicate when taking turn-offs, trucks flew by inches from our shoulders as streams of cars passed on the far side of them and every white-van-man in the vicinity seemed to want to hit his horn or shout at us from as close as possible. Dave and I hit the gas and stuck to the white line by the side of the road; Al took the seemingly safer route on the rough hard shoulder. We stopped to wait on Al and he soon appeared at the bottom of a small rise. Next time we looked around there was a build up of cars around the area where he had been so we got a touch worried, and this was made worse by a driver pulling up and telling us about some incident with our amigo back there. Sprinting down the hill (the wrong way on a motorway...) we seen Al emerge and were thankful as he seemed to be ok. What had happened was that two teenagers had stopped him and tried to steal his gear. While Al tried to slap one of them, who was holding an imaginary knife under his shirt, the other was trying to make off with the bike. Thankfully for all, imaginary knife boy decided to run off, leaving his mate alone and completely unable to manage the weight of the bike. With an angry bearded animal approaching rapidly, the guy chose to drop the bike and run off himself. By this stage some motorists had stopped, one of them being an off-duty cop, and the scene changed from attempted mugging to traffic chaos. No harm done, but we've been a touch on edge since getting to Mendoza.

Col

Over the Mountains: Puerto Montt to Zapala

2008-02-07T16:11:00.001-08:00

Adios Huevon, hola Ché. We have left the Chilean Pacific and reached the Argentine Pampas, two different oceans both sweltering under the same clear sky. Summer is in full swing down here and from the bathers in the sea to the boaters on the lakes everyone is enjoying the sun. Even cyclists, sweating over mountains, round lake shores and across deserts have been doing their fair share of 'basking'. Between the coast and the dry interior we've passed through the Patagonian Lake District. Alpine-style towns bursting with families enjoying the school holidays make for somewhat strange but relaxed ports of call, accentuating the emptiness of the scenery of the final two days as we leave the crowds and push into the province of Neuquén. Pablo Neruda escaped persecution in his homeland and Ché Guevara pushed his motorbike in different directions across these mountain passes. Nothing especially momentous happened or will result from our crossing, but then again we did find a place called 'Chin Chin'! Bottoms up, here's to the return to Argentina and Quilmes at 4,50 pesos a bottle...

Day fifty four. Puerto Montt - Petrohué. January 30th. 85 KM

Where there's sand, there's a beach.

Why rush when the journey is the destination? Why is the world chasing itself around when we could sit back and enjoy the view? Hmmm, indeed, quite, muse, stroke beard... Cojones to all that, we've not seen a main road since 2007 and cycle out of town down the hard shoulder of a motorway. We pause only so I can stand next to the road sign for the aforementioned town. To stop childish idiots like me from doing exactly this they've put the sign in the middle of the central reservation. Check out Eddie Murphy crossing the motorway in 'Bowfinger' for a similar interpretation of the Green Cross Code. Off Ruta 5, through the town of Puerto Varas and round the metallic sheen of Lago Llanquihue. The perfectly conical Volcán Osorno looms over all. A day of tarmac ends with a new road surface for us. Sand has been blown down the route from our campsite for the night; the beach at the western end of Lago Todos Los Santos. We take the plunge - Col swims and I sink as normal. Al exhibits more reserve and is rewarded by not being bitten to bits by midges or sun burned.

Day fifty five. Petrohué, Chile - San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina. January 31st. 57KM

Three men in three boats.

The day starts with a two hour crossing of the lake, the crown of Volcán Osorno peeking monkishly out of a fringe of cloud behind us. Just when the day was shaping up to be easy going for a crossing of the Andes the ferry timetable made things a little more interesting. The second of today's three voyages left at 5 PM from a place called Puerto Frias, the other side of the mountains. Our fellow passengers had no trouble getting there with 40 minutes to spare, despite the 800m ascent in just 8KM on a surface of sand on rock in a humid 30 something degrees. However, they were in a bus. We found it a bit of a tighter schedule. Especially as we had to get off and push round the hairpin corners; surface, incline and bike weight trumping leg power and balance. Even Col had to dismount here and he can cycle over almost any terrain, his balance testimony to years of practicing sitting still. This combination of Tour de France mountain climbing and the Plymouth Navy Gun Run got us over the border and on to the next crossing with minutes to spare. Here we came a bit of a cropper with regard to the fare. Acting on the advice of the ferry company in Puerto Montt we had prepared for the crossing like the Owl and Pussycat, packing some money and plenty of honey. Is that right? Anyway, we should have gone to sea with more money than honey because we didn't have enough. The fee had disappointingly gone up in the two days since leaving town and competition in the marketplace was thin on the ground. The invisible hand of price had formed an invisible fist and punched us below the belt. Our plums hadn't been so bruised since the fruit bag joined me in the Austral pile-up. All four wallets were emptied and a combination of different currencies left us with exactly one US dollar to spare. We helped out with the currency conversion rates so perhaps the fit between total cost and ready cash wasn't quite so uncanny as it might seem. Note to the Owl and the Pussycat - just take money next time. Chilean customs are going to rob you of your honey anyway.

The final ferry of the day was reached without incident. It was full of tourists from Bariloche and the only reason we didn't pollute the generally refined atmosphere with our disheveled appearance was that we were diluted in a huge sea of North Face and Lowe Alpine clothing. I can't really get away with calling this a ferry anyway - there was a couple from Cheam, Surrey on it. It must have been a 'Launch'. They were very nice people though, and spoke to me despite the fact that I looked like a stowaway. In fact they would be far and away the most English people we'd met yet if it wasn't for our encounter with 'Dan' on a walk up to the base camp of Mount Fitz Roy a few weeks ago. Dan was easily identifiable as English from 200 paces as found him looking at a cloud. He was waiting for it to lift off the top of the mountain so he could have a view and I can't think of a more English pastime. When we went down from camp the next morning we met Dan coming back up for another crack at the view, despite having twisted his ankle the previous evening and it being cloudier than the previous day. He was so upbeat about the prospect of this cloud watching I'd nominate him as the most English man I'd ever met. When they carry him off Fitz Roy after 60 odd years of cheerful waiting in vain for the cloud to lift off the summit they should find a spot for him in Westminster Abbey. What a friendly bloke as well. Dan - we salute you!!

Oh yes - we then cycled to Bariloche amidst a complete lack of incident.

Day fifty seven. San Carlos de Bariloche - Villa La Angostura. February 2nd. Dist: 91KM

Hasta la Quilmes es muy barata siempre

The highlight of the rest day in Bariloche was our surprising effort in finding the local Marxist Youth Branch bar amidst a sea of mediocre expensive restaurants. A political statement to fit in was hard to come by - 'my father knew Lloyd George' seemed unlikely to signify anything in this place. Er, or century. What would 'he knows Hillary Armstrong' get you from a Marxist? A slap in the chops probably. We only wanted a beer so we just pointed to our beards and nodded friendly-like - the fridge door to the cheapest Quilmes in town was opened. Great party. The following day's cycle to Villa La Angostura was made easier for Al and his steed after the bike shop in Bariloche repaired the repair work done by the bike shop in Puerto Montt. The photos of Lago Nahuel Huapi speak for themselves, making this a nice short entry.

Day fifty eight. Villa La Angostura - not San Martín de Los Andes. February 3rd. Dist: 92 KM

La ruta de los siete Lagos. Translation: a right hard day on a bike.

This would have been a beautiful day on the bike if either the road was not the dustiest yet encountered or if not every man and his dog had decided to drive along it at the same time as us. As it was we floundered through a dust bowl for the first 50KM, during which time we saw next to nothing, and spent the remaining distance trying to resume breathing as normal. When we finally hit tarmac again I looked over my shoulder to see Colin emerging from the clouds -all he was missing was a lamp and he could have been emerging from a shift down Wearmouth Colliery. The restorative measures taken involved two lakes. The first was a swim in Lago Villarino which was a good idea. The second was a lemonade drinking session which wasn't. Movement of any sort after the latter was awkward - we only made it five yards back into the heat outside the cafe and we were asleep on the floor in the front garden. We got on with the cycling only after the owner turned the sprinklers on. With 20 odd KM still to go to San Martín and up high in the mountains we found a campsite run by a Mapuche family. We tossed a coin to decide between batting on or declaring. Col got out the double headed coin reserved for such occasions and we all cheered when it came up 'stop here'. Machismo preserved by the fall of a coin we had notable showers: the lads of the family were building the roof of the shower while we used it. They unfortunately nailed the tarpaulin on while I was in there, plunging the operation into darkness as they covered the window at the same time. Despite all indications there was no repeat of my Granddad's construction antics (Headline in the Express and Star: 'Wolverhampton Carpenter Falls Through Roof') so at least we washed one at a time. We ate the best empanadas of the trip to date around the family's campfire and watched the vastness of the night sky unfold above us in the clear mountain air, as it is wont to do round here.

Day fifty nine. Las Taguas Arroyo Culebra - Junín de Los Andes. February 4th. Dist: 81KM

There is only one barbers in San Martín de Los Andes and he's shut on the annual 'Día de San Martín de Los Andes'. Which is February 4th.

We thought San Martín de Los Andes the most appealing town in the area and enjoyed a half day loafing around, catching up with some reading on the beach etc. We then went for a haircut which didn't happen as, despite it's charms, San Martín has the lowest ratio of hairdressers to heads of any town in Argentina. Fact. The only one which we found was shut as everyone battened down the hatches for a procession to mark the town's anniversary. This seemed to consist of a number of military parades so we left in the evening cool for a fast cycle to Junín de Los Andes. This tranquil and shady town was bigger than we thought, a realisation we marked by losing each other. The second interesting demographic statistic of the day is that Junín de Los Andes has the most bikes per head of population of any town in Argentina, leading to lots of false alarms when searching for two other cyclists as darkness draws near. Once reunited relief overcame recrimination, which was probably a good job for me as I was the likely criminal, and we immediately declared a 'we're not cooking tonight night' and ate in a bar by the town square. Here we fell into conversation with 'The Bloke from Bahia Blanca' who we made an immediate connection with, his town's football team being the support act when we went to watch "The World's Greatest Football Team" (Pablo Villa, yet to see Wolves play) Boca Juniors play a few years ago. Anyway, whatever the reason, our man decided he should buy us water and leave it strategically placed on the road ahead tomorrow. We were entering the desert.

Day sixty. Junín de Los Andes - La Amarga. February 5th. Dist: 131KM

Flush that? With this? Are you having a laugh?

We set off at the crack of dawn. Two reasons: firstly, in December the Argentinean authorities changed the hour to increase evening light and reduce energy demands, putting dawn within reasonably easy reach even for the late risers amongst us. Secondly we never really got to sleep anyway as we'd pitched up in the world's noisiest campsite next to it's most irritating occupants. It was hard to resist waking up in the morning and returning the favour by disturbing their sleep by shouting out 'Hi dee Hi'! So we didn't. Disappointingly no one seemed bothered. We could have done with screaming chainsaw man from El Sordo!! We cycled off into the Castilian-esque landscape under a clear sky which promised a hot day. It delivered. Happily so did 'The Bloke from Bahia Blanca'. In an superbly humane gesture he'd left the 5 litres of mineral water where he said he would. More touchingly, the house he said he'd leave it in had been reduced to rubble so he must have back tracked to leave it with some workmen who, after Colin and I had idiotically charged past, managed to halt Al and deliver the gift. From Junín to Zapala there is no town and water is pretty scarce. Rarely has it tasted better. The day rolled on and the humidity rose. Long climbs across barren mountains. A thunderstorm loomed, making all of us nervous, especially Colin who was the tallest object for hundreds of kilometres around. We raced for a dot on the map called La Amarga which turned out to be a very pleasant dot indeed. The only house in the area provided essentials such as cold beer and a free spot to pitch our tent, sheltered from an imminent storm that never arrived. It also provided a truly remarkable toilet facility, the gruesome use of which required nerve and balance in equal measures. Welcome though it was we could be picky and complain about the moving floor of ants we'd erected the tent on. On a broiling night this meant we could leave only a small section of the zip open to ventilate the unshowered contents. A small window of opportunity, but one a large animal tried to take advantage of to break-in at about four in the morning. You can probably imagine, this led to 'not a little excitement'.

Day sixty one. La Amarga - Zapala. February 6th. Dist: 85KM

He was from Stockport; he should know a dump when he sees one.

We rose traumatised from the nocturnal scuffling and sized up likely culprits for the intrusion. A wonky-eyed hound looked pretty guilty - I wonder if his eyes were wonky before the night's rumble? We managed to get away early enough to beat a road blockade staged by local Mapuche at Puente Picún Leufu, a protest at local labor discrimination. An unlikely traveler we met coming the other way might not have been so lucky. Emerging from the desert haze, slowly he appeared. Nope, not Omar Sharrif in Lawrence of Arabia but Steve, a yoga instructor from Cheadle. He was lost but not at all bothered. He also cheerfully informed us that he had just come from our intended oasis for a day's rest and labeled it a "dump". At this stage we thought he was really from Stockport in which case he would know what he was talking about (je je je Mancunian amigos!). However, it later turned out he was from the 'posh end' and probably operating higher standards than us scruffs. We arrived in the middle of siesta with plenty of time to test his theory and checked into a hotel for military or police employees. Not quite sure how we managed that one, but the bikes should be safe.

So Steve was proved wrong and Zapala turns out to be a large but quiet resting place with a leafy square, a nice airy library for writing blogs and a population suitably bemused by our appearance, in both senses of the word. Not many people take their vacations in central Neuquén, but that's no bad thing for those who wheel up here, on the road to San Rafael and Mendoza.

D Middlemiss

Pablo Neruda Crashed My Bike: Coyhaique to Puerto Montt

2008-01-29T15:22:00.001-08:00

"Under the Volcanoes, beside the snow-capped mountains, among the huge lakes, the fragrant, the silent, the tangled Chilean forest..." Pablo Neruda

Puerto Montt glistens more than a little in the sunshine today and here we are, at the head of the Reloncavi Sound and the end of the Carretera Austral. We're relaxing in the warm summer weather for a couple of days, and why not? The bikes are undergoing intensive care, under the spanner of a 'Doctor Marcelo', and we are thus reduced to the status of pedestrians again. No bad thing. Puerto Montt is a good place to amble among fish markets and along sea fronts. Happily skipped by most visitors including other long distance cyclists, who might prefer seeing places to people, we rather like it. Then again, when you come from Middlesbrough you tend to have a high tolerance level for urban ugliness. Regardless, the city marks the end of a significant section for us. The 1240 KM of the Austral have been visually and physically intense. We completed them in a pleasing 17 days though this speed owes little to cycling competence. We were driven by the feeling that time alone in Chile's frontier region was reducing our bikes to scrap. The relief at entering 'civilization' with the basic elements still attached was palpable. By the end I'd stopped looking down at the bike for fear of spotting another breakage or noticing the disappearance of something or other. Eyes were glued ahead and the legs motored round as components flew off around us. Besides, there were plenty more interesting things to look at rather than bikes between the town of Coyhaique, the capital of Aisén, and here, the start of the 'Lake District'...

Day Forty Four. Coyhaique - Lago Las Torres. January 20th. 143 KM

The only time we listened to a weather forecast yet. It was wrong.

The extremely helpful and friendly Gunter and 'Arnie' (sorry mate, I've forgotten your name but all your information to date has been spot on so many thanks and I hope we bump into each other again soon), of previous "you will make it" fame, promised us 5 days of rare sunny weather the previous evening. We left in a downpour that continued for three hours. It didn't matter though as the road was smooth and the going fast. The only thing I suffered from was nostalgia for the Lake District as clouds and drizzle rolled down green valleys. Perhaps it was the parrillada the previous night (Richard Virenque hasn't pumped so much blood into his system before a day on the bike) or the body reveling in a return to porridge after two rest days - either way we reeled off 90 KM before lunch. Then again, we only had lunch at four in the afternoon... I'll teach these Ulster boys some Mediterranean hours yet! The rain abated but the road fell apart and started what would be a week long process of bike and rider erosion. We camped by splendid Lago Las Torres whose mill-pond stillness was not only hypnotic but also the reason why I failed to catch any trout with a fly rod borrowed from the local fishing guide. That and the full moon, his poorly tied line, my cycling shoes clunking on the rocky shore... Oh no, you never lose the most important thing about fishing: the excuses.

Day Forty Five. Lago Las Torres - Puerto Puyuhuapi. January 21st. 100 KM

It was the day when nothing went wrong

Porridge and dried bananas. This is the future! Things went so well today that deeper thoughts than these were surplus to requirements. A village called Amengual, one of the many to have been founded during the building of this road under the Pinochet regime, proved more welcoming in morning sunshine than some of the guide books would lead you to believe. This proved to be the case with more of these 'tin villages' found on the route form here on northwards. It was breakfast here before a sharp pull up to Portezuelo Quelat. Boring cycling note: these hairpin 'ripio' climbs not only hurt but require more concentration than normal road hills. Looking around, swatting flies or adjusting caps to a more jaunty angle can move you off the worn line in the road, on to the loose sand and eventually off the bike as traction is lost. Trying to start again on these inclines is more amusing for the observer than the participant. However, as this was the day when 'nothing went wrong' we made it through the Reserve of Quelat, past hanging glaciers, through crowding foliage and out of the forest to the sea inlet at Puerto Puyuhuapi. The place is as charming as it's name. An early morning walk around the shore line the next day revealed no trace of WW II submarine shipyards which were suspected to exist in this German community. Nothing but a bloke collecting mussels in a wheelbarrow and a long view to an outrageous snow mountain miles away to the south across the sea. It was bathed in sun, but the day would prove to have it's moments of shadow... dun dun dur!!

Day Forty Six. Puerto Puyuhuapi - Villa Vanguardia. January 22nd. 89 KM

Right. This was the day when everything went wrong

Any Wolves fan knows all too well that promising starts precede staggering collapses and end in bewildered head shaking. Today was a Wolverhampton Wanderers season in a day, with the happy exception that by the end of it some upwards progression had, somehow, been made. Early morning cycling alongside Lago Risopatron was a sensory overload. George Emerson would have been inspired to climb his tree and start yelling his creed "Love! Beauty! Porridge!". In this version however it wasn't Lucy Honeychurch who came round the corner to complete the scene but rather the Montgomery boys to wreck it. The rear rack itself, as opposed to the less important brackets, had cracked on Col's bike. Al's, showing admirable brotherly solidarity, had decided to snap as well. Being somewhat fundamental elements of the operation it was a solemn and slow party that slouched into the village of La Junta, not least as we were now carrying what we could on our backs and the temperature had risen into the mid thirties. I tell you though, these Monty's are more resourceful than Royal Dutch Shell's 'available oil' accounts - and happily a lot more reliable! After an afternoon with the good people of La Junta we had more racks ordered under warranty on the way to a bike shop in Puerto Montt and the current ones welded, stapled and hammered back into some sort of shape. The latter task was completed by the town mechanic. I marveled at his handiwork as he gave me them back and thanked him profusely. "They won't last" he said. This man must be a Wolves fan too!

As I picked myself a little bloodily out of a ditch about an hour later I reflected that 'eventism' would lead to more than one paragraph for today's blog. Here it is, my anatomy of a bike crash. Mam, you need not worry - look, both my hands are still working to type this rubbish. Anyway, when you and our Dad tried to find this website you actually wrote 'dot' rather than '.' so the chances of you ever reading this are slim and my sisters will edit it out... Euphoric at the unlikely resurrection of our equipment I bowled along the valley of the Rio Frio. ExxonMobil, who don't tend to deal in euphoria, will tell you that accidents are not actually accidental but the inevitable result of a number of factors that could have been avoided. The bores! Excess speed down a hill, the presence of a truck stirring up a cloud of dust and my lack of sunglasses or goggles form the basis of this triangle at whose pinnacle sits my painful prang. I managed to prize my eyes apart just enough to realize I had gone off line a touch and was heading straight off in the gravel as the road turned to the left. Steering and braking in this stuff is like steering and braking on ice or in snow - in other words, you shouldn't do it. Given I was heading into a rocky wall though I'd left myself little choice. The front half of the bike and D Middlemiss turned left. Pablo Neruda, Joseph Conrad, the rest of my hefty mobile library and the back half of my bike kept straight on. I should have got the audio books on my ipod.We were now still aiming at the wall but all going sideways. One final attempt to turn things around got us all going in the same direction again but, strangely, this direction now seemed to be underground. It was time to get off. Stu Eynon - we were wrong to slag off Charlotte Bronte in English Lit after all! We never believed Rochester could have time to get out a speech while falling off a horse but I remember saying quite a lot as I sailed over the bars and towards my ditch. It wasn't as printable as "What the deuce is to do now!" though. The Monty's turned up at my bike at about the same time as I made it back to find it pointing the wrong way in every sense. Nothing serious was broken and, spookily, that which was had been ordered by Colin the day before "just in case". He is a witch.

Unsurprisingly the day ended by us stumbling on a man who made cheese in his little hut in the middle of nowhere who showed us round and gave us some samples. When the photos become available you'll see this is not the figment of delayed concussion.

Day Forty Seven. Villa Vanguardia - Chaitén. January 23rd. 110 KM

Chaitén 'in four days' and a very strange fish stew.

Al's otherwise tremendous first aid has bandaged my elbows up so tight I've had to stop waving at other road users as it looks like I'm giving them a fascist salute. Other than that things are going rather well. We find a house in Villa Santa Lucia that serves us homemade jam and cheese. This sticky brunch and the impossibility of getting it all past the beards means we spend the rest of the day being pursued by hordes of enormous flies with orange heads. There is a steep climb and descent to large Lago Yelcho - we take a break to bathe in the river that flows out but in the end only Col has the 'huevos' to take the plunge and he's back out 5 second later. It was a bit chilly. The day however is ferociously hot and we are forced to do battle with the lowest form of all road surfaces: freshly laid ripio is sand covered with tennis ball size stones. It is nearly impossible to pedal across this moonscape even on the flat. For 10KM of this lunacy we only keep going at all because stopping invited a swarm of biting flies. Al demonstrates the virtue of a high elbow in one's cover drive as he racks up a huge kill-count of these rascals. It all ends wheeling along in tranquility though to the first sight for weeks of the sea actually looking like the sea at Chaitén. The sun sets across the bay and we eat a fish stew called 'Curanto' that is still giving me trouble now. Pinning down what the problem ingredient was is impossible as the feast includes not only most things that swim, but plenty of what walks too. A ferry leaves from here to Puerto Montt but to complete the full length of the Austral you can continue up through the virgin temperate rainforests of Parque Pumalin. Which, amazed that we made it here in only four days from Coyhaique, is where we went...

Day Forty Eight. Chaitén - Caleta Gonzalo. January 24th. 61KM

Environmentally sensitive camping = cold showers

Parque Pumalin is really incredible, and not just in it's jungle scenery. It is the world's largest privately owned Natural Park, a 'deep ecologist' called Douglas Tompkins, the founder of North Face, having bought it all up to protect it from exploitation in the 90's. 0 out of 10 to the Chilean state for selling off their own country to whoever rocks up with a brown paper bag large enough but full marks to Mr Tompkins who, unlike the hoons of Endesa and Co. further south, is protecting it rather than attempting to flood it all. Further thoughts on all this chaos not for discussion here. Anyway, the result is a fitting end to the Austral for us, dense Alerce forests cut by fjords and rivers are overlooked by snow-capped fells. After a shuddering descent we camp at a place called Caleta Gonzalo and wait for the morning ferry. Another day of oppressive heat and the passed-up prospect of a cold shower in the dark means that the funk in our tent is thicker than a misjudged porridge.

Day Forty Nine. Caleta Gonzalo - Baños Termas Hornopiren. January 25th. 10KM

Bish bash we were taking a bath

Tompkins might have become disillusioned with the world of marketing but he hasn't lost his knack. We are happy to give in to consumer culture in his twee cafe cabin while waiting for the ferry and it is organic muesli with organic honey and organic fruits for breakfast. I couldn't find the Guardian Media section to complete the picture though. A 6 hour ferry crossing through the mist to Hornopiren reveals a tiny town with TWO Methodist churches. Where was the coal mine?! Dad, they need to get you out of retirement to heal this clearly divided congregation - and then sell off the surplus building for a loft conversion job. This 5 minute tour of Hornopiren and District Circuit precedes a thwarted attempt to make ground to Puerto Montt. A combination of factors lead to this short day of which I think we can say the most compelling was Al being run down by a car. It is hard to relate exactly what happened though as it was Al and not one of the two twits who got bumped you might find it easier to believe that our idiotic motorist was in the wrong and not the law abiding and on-the-correct-side-of-the-road at the time cyclist. Al is so considerate he even shouted "Car!" seconds before it ran into the back of him. I'm looking forward to see if the pattern repeats itself in the future: "Dog!" - bite - "Hole!" - thud etc etc. Happily, despite my best efforts at first aid, little harm was done to man, though machine was a bit of a wreck. Our moronic motorists got out and, surprisingly, rather than checking on the condition of the poor sod they'd just walloped suggested we should take more care. I suggested they might have been going a little fast. I was informed you could do 100 KM on this road. We all looked at the farm track we were on and the blind corner for a few seconds. Then there was a scene. Laureano Turienzo, the full breadth of the Toledo vocabulary you taught me got an airing - many thanks! Colin chipped in and for once translation was not required. They left in an attempted hurry but stalled the car and at least we got to laugh at them before settling down to an hour and a half of bike reconstruction. The silver lining to this cloud was that the crash had taken place just outside some thermal baths - no further excuse was needed for an early camp and a long twilight soak in the Patagonian forest.

Day Fifty. Hornopiren - Puerto Montt. January 26th. 97 KM

Puerto Montt goes to the seaside and ZZ top rock up on bicycles

Leaving the baths behind we enjoy the day to Puerto Montt incident free. A Brazilian cycling couple heading south are good company for a quick chat. They look a little worried and I realize with our bandaged arms, shaggy beards and bikes held together by wire again we are not a good advert for the road ahead. We're in good spirits though as we take a final ferry and reach... could it be... too good to be true... tarmac. We should have gone faster from here but now we're free wheeling past the population of Puerto Montt as it takes to the beach on this sunny Saturday. There are many pressing tasks to complete in town but they can wait for the most demanding of all - a cold beer and a long snooze. Now for a haircut. The ZZ Top look is provoking fear in the eyes of the locals rather than the hoped for glances of admiration and something clearly needs to be done. And so in half an hour or so I will exercise the delicious power that is ordering Colin's haircut for him. What will he leave with ladies and gentlemen? Given he a speak a little a Spanish and a no understand a mucho my money would be on a mullet, no?

I watch a TV for the first time in weeks and WHAT IS THIS I SEE?? Chilean TV reports that Kevin Keegan,the manager of Newcastle United is trying to buy David Beckham. Errrmmm????? Am I just coming round from a barmy dream? Is it actually the early 90s again? Is John Major still in charge? What am I doing in Puerto Montt's public library in Chile?? I need to be in The Boro revising for my A Levels. Yikes!! Taxi!! The Airport please - I've got to dash!!

D Middlemiss

Egg day cometh!

2008-01-27T11:54:00.001-08:00

Ok, I see you sitting there browsing through the cycle diaries web site (as you probably can't be bothered doing any work) and you see the link "Egg day cometh" and you're thinking, "what's that all about then?" It's simple, really. We're going to see how many eggs we can scoff our way through in one day. You may ask why (I have) and it's a valid question.

The story begins with a guy by the name of H.W. Tilman. H.W. Tilman was an old school explorer who ventured around the world, presumably in a tweed jacket and smoking a pipe, in the period around the 1930's. When Tilman and his traveling companions would reach a destination, perhaps after cycling thousands of miles on bikes with no gears, they developed an obsession with eggs. They would set off chasing the sound of a chicken to see if they could acquire the necessary eggs to satisfy said obsession. It has been recorded that a group of four of them managed the fairly significant feat of devouring 160 eggs between them in one day. After hearing of this feat (and after having a few beers obviously) we thought it would be an idea to try and emulate this 'achievement' by having our very own 'Egg Day'.

The basic plan of egg day has been laid down and with some forward planning we hope to attempt it soon. The problem is we require the necessary eggs at the start of the day (scrambled for breakfast is our current thinking) and some appropriate cooking facilities. We simply don't have a big enough pan with us to cook enough scrambled eggs and our Whisperlite stove will most likely burn them to the arse of the pan anyway. So after cooking our scrambled eggs in a hostel of some sort in the morning we then plan to take some hard boiled eggs with us for lunch and snacking along the way. The end of the day will be a combination of omelettes and poached eggs split between an early dinner and a late supper (again we're probably going to need a hostel here to facilitate the cooking process).

We have a figure in our heads of how many eggs we can get through but for now we aren't going to mention it as we're interested to see what figures you lot can guess and we don't want to influence your decision making. Who knows, perhaps you want to set up a sweepstake between a group of yourselves to make the event more entertaining! Or how about have your very own egg day and you can join in our challenge and perhaps make yourself violently sick as well - now wouldn't that be fun!

Due to the excessive eating we've been doing this conversation has also led to other variations of egg day being discussed. So far the possible eating feats that have been discussed are as follows:

ice cream day - 1Kg of preferred flavour to be eaten in one sitting

porridge day - 4 litres of porridge to be scoffed (by Dave) in one sitting

steak day - 750 gram steak to be eaten in one sitting (side orders optional)

bananaman day - who can eat the most bananas in one day?

Any other suggestions as to possible theme days drop us a mail at thefellas@cyclediaries.com

Alastair

My Kingdom for a Horse

2008-01-27T11:14:00.001-08:00

El Chalten, Argentina to Villa O'Higgins, Chile by cycle, foot and no horse, January 7th to 9th 2008

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin... Our story starts in the sleepy little town of El Chalten, Argentina, which is a very newly established settlement (22 years only, by most accounts) and acts as a hub for active-minded outdoor types to partake in various activities in the mountains and foothills of Cerro Torre and Fitz Roy. As we arrived in the rain, we were pleased to wake the following day to beautiful sunshine. The following day yours truly was displeased to wake to a heinous sunburn. All those lessons from my past were not heeded, once more, and the cycle continues (pun unintended, honest). On the following two days the weather returned to it's rainy best and unfortunately the clouds continued to obscure our view of the peaks which we hiked to see, but nothing ventured nothing gained, as a wise man once said.

Our objective was simple: get from A to B, via C, D and E using our bikes, two ferries and possibly a horse. More explicitly:

37k by cycle from El Chalten, Argentina, to Punta Sur, Lago del Desierto
45min ferry to Punta Norte, Lago del Desierto
22k by horse, or not by horse, to Candilaria Mancilla, Chile
2.5hrs by ferry across Lago O'Higgins
7k by cycle to Villa O'Higgins

The reality was hell. With a bike. Not exactly on a bike, but definitely with a bike. While we haven't weighed our bikes when fully loaded up, we reckon they're coming close to 45kgs each when we're stocked for 5 days or so.

All set for the off, in El Chalten, we procrastinate for quite a bit as we look towards the rain in the valleys where we are headed. We meet Christian and Olga yet again, who'd just arrived in town, on their bikes at 5am, following the decision to ride all through the night because there is no wind and a strong one is forecast. 217k in one day humbles us by a considerable margin, but we remain upbeat as we set off at 6pm in the pissing rain, towards the campsite by the ferry port, fuelled by the huge sugar-rush brought on by a large bag of facturas. Of course the rain continues all night as we camp and then as we cycle to meet the Viedma on the following morning as she waits to take us across Lago del Desierto.

Despite some hairy moments with rather large waves, the Viedma deposits us safely at Punta Norte, at the top end of Lago del Desierto. Here we get our passports stamped by an Argentinean soldier who looks to be about 12 years old, and has obviously either drawn the short straw when the postings were being decided, or has done something very stupid. His cohorts, who cohabit his allotted hut, are very welcoming and sell us coffee and biscuits for double the price they'd quoted five minutes earlier, but arguing for our change doesn't seem like it will win us much in the current circumstances.

It's here that we wait, mostly outside, for some mythical guy to appear out of the forest with horses to take us the 22k to the next lake. We're not alone, there being 3 French people and one German girl waiting along with us. The soldiers tell us that our saviour may not appear at all today due to the inclement conditions, so we prepare ourselves for a long wait and possibly even an overnight camp. Having to stay the night would be bad as we have to make it across this trek in time for the next ferry, which only leaves twice a week, for 5.30pm the following day.

Now we have to admit that we'd heard numerous reports about this 'trek', and especially about how tough it was without a horse. Having already had to spend the guts of a day of our trip hauling our bikes and bags up and across incredibly tough terrain (on our 'bird watching' trip north of Torres del Paine National Park...) we had been of the opinion that we could make this trip without a horse to take our bags. When it had rained for a couple of days straight, we decided to investigate booking ourselves a horse, and the day before we needed the horse had successfully made the online booking request.

At 4pm Ricardo finally arrived, with some horses. However, it quickly became evident that this guy didn't have a horse for us, so we tried to keep a stiff upper lip as the Frenchies and Germans got loaded up on their horses. The German girl hadn't booked herself a horse, so the young French guy, Stefan, offered her his horse in a show of manners and goodwill which made Mother Teresa look like Alan Rickman's Sheriff of Nottingham. This proved enormously good news for us as Stefan was free to help us haul our bikes up the first 100m or so of near vertical, horseshit lined track. This section alone took us about 15 minutes and the look on Stefan's face was beginning to change, somewhat. Unfortunately for us his tour of duty was cut short as the young soldier had ran up the track to catch the party to tell the German girl that she had to have her passport stamped or risk not getting into Chile. Stefan jumped at the chance, quite conveniently and understandably, to run ahead to tell her. Obviously that was the last we seen of Saint Stefan for some considerable time.

As if this lot wasn't bad enough, the rain had started to fall again, and the insects in the forest had taken an instant liking our our pale, gringo skin.

We knew, however, that it was 'only' the first 6k of this trek which was really bad, so we continued pushing, hauling, lifting and sliping (N.Irish people will, no doubt, know this term well) our bikes and bags for a total of 5 hours, without respite, safe in the knowledge that the last 16k or so would be easy in comparison.

Amongst this lot there were multiple water crossings to overcome, some amusing pictures of which are above.

On finally completing the 6k we were delighted to make out what looked almost like a vehicle track, and quickly mounted up for the first time in hours. While hardly the M6 Toll-road to Manchester, this was welcome relief, and we hammered down the track for a couple of kilometres before being confronted by a fair-sized river and half a bridge. Yes, the bridge was out, so it was time to get the bags off the bikes once more and wade across the thigh-high torrent multiple times with our gear before re-encumbering the bikes with their unasked-for luggage and cycling on. As you can imagine, with darkness falling, temperatures plummeting, insects swarming, and our clothes and footwear saturated, our moods were far from that of spending a sunny Saturday afternoon in the beer garden of the Dog and Duck watching the FA Cup Final on the big screen. Pictures at this point were out of the question and, anyway, you wouldn't want to see us suffering now, would you...

After that we started upon one of the best off-road descents that yours truly has ever experienced. Alastair was enjoying it, though he would have enjoyed it much more had his suspension forks not given up a couple of days previously, but he still claims it was enjoyable. Dave, on the other hand, found it 'boring' as one had to frequently slow down to navigate the large rocks etc. About 4k long and very rocky and technical, it was tough going in the semi-darkness, with fully laden bikes, especially with large cliffs appearing on either side of the track at points and pannier racks which were surely due to fall apart again at any moment.

At the bottom we found the Chilean border post and, once we'd ruined the carpet once and for all, the amazed young soldier stamped our passports and welcomed us to Chile. A further kilometre down the road we found refuge in the stilted house belonging to the crazy old mother of Ricardo [the horse guy], and we were safely in Candelario Mancilla. Bizarrely, answering the door was Cyril, a Swiss guy who we'd first met when on our 'exploring' trip, north of Torres del Paine, coming down the mountain with his girlfriend in a 4x4. We were next to meet him 3 days later while cycling out from the Glaciar Perito Moreno which brought a smile to all those involved as he knew exactly how we'd gotten there so quickly...

As it turns out, the 4 people who started the trek with us on horses were holed up there also, and had only gotten there about an hour before us. They were truly amazed that we'd made it at all, never mind that we'd made it that day/night so shortly after them. We removed our sodden clothes, handed them to Ricardo's mama, and she promptly hung them over a large bowl, in a corner full of electrical plugs. Our room was smaller than our tent, with our victorious navigator, D. Middlemiss, taking the bed and the Montgomerys happy on the floor. It was incredibly cold, but it was Chile, and we'd made it over the worst bit of 'cycling' that we would surely ever do in our lives, so we slept well and long, contented with our day's efforts and successes.

The next day was beautiful and provided us with an ideal opportunity to take over the entire balcony area at the front of the house by spreading all our gear out over it to dry. Alastair put his back into removing the horseshit from our waterproofs, while I fixed up some pannier damage and generally sorted out the kitchen bags. This balcony was a lifesaver, in the non-literal sense, but was a potential life-taker in the literal sense as the wood was mostly rotten and the whole thing is surely only a short time from falling down completely. This was also our first meeting with Fred, a dance-loving, booze-hating Aussie with a ponytail whom we were to meet on numerous occasions along the Carretera Austral. A thoroughly good bloke he is too!

5pm and it's ferry time again so we wheeled down to the port and jumped aboard the Hielo Sur with our fellow travellers. Once more the German reputation for astute planning and organisation was scythed to the ground by the German girl, Kathleen, as she'd somehow paid for her room twice and had to return to the house to collect her winnings. Two and a half hours later, and without incident, we were deposited at the top end of Lago O'Higgins (the same lake is named Lago San Martin on the Argentinean side), 7k from Villa O'Higgins.

Cycling into the town of Villa O'Higgins was very relaxing in the late evening and by pure chance we happened upon the same camping as Cyril and his girlfriend, and Kathleen. A passing fruit and veg truck was ransacked, the campsite-owner's girlfriend's 'closed' shop was used to buy a couple of bottles of Chilean red, dinner was cooked, wine was drunk and cycling and mountaineering stories were swapped with our friend Cyril until the inevitable bedtime was reached. Next day we were off to catch another ferry to Puerto Yungay, on a road which was to prove considerably different than that which was described by Fernando, the owner of Camping Mosco... (as dramatised by D. Middlemiss, in his last blog post).

Hasta luego,
Col

Crikey, we're in Coyhaique

2008-01-19T17:56:00.001-08:00

The sunshine pours down in Coyahiaque, the capital of the province of Aisén halfway up the Carretera Austral in Chilean Patagonia. The Austral is a staggering route, stretching from the city of Puerto Montt in the north to the village of Villa O´Higgins in the south. The latter is where we came in, crossing the border from El Chalten in Argentina in conditions so absurd only C. Montgomery can do the three day epic justice in a soon to be published and eagerly awaited blog. Suffice to say that in 'Heart of Darkness' when Kurtz wakes in the wheelhouse and yells "The horror, the horror!!" he isn't imagining the void at the core of human existence but rather visualizing pushing a bike through the mud for 20 KMs from Punta Norte, Argentina, to Candelario Mancilla, Chile. However, that story is for another day, and time is limited to describe the 8 days that took us from the very start of the Austral at the northern end of Lago O´Higgins ,through 630 KM of mountain, river and jam, to this oasis on the Rio Simpson. Let that mouse sleep awhile weary office worker, put down the washing up mother and let Esso Petrol stations run themselves for 10 minutes Señor Alvaro; the bike demolition derby is about to start.

Day Thirty Four. Villa O´Higgins - El Sordo. January, 10th. 73KM

In Spain they say if you meet a Galician in a lift he won't tell you if its going up or down. Our Gallego camping site owner in Villa O´Higgins did not betray his roots with his confident description of a flat road the 100KM it would take us to reach the Rio Bravo. The reality was that the road would go both up and down rather violently and, without any help from elevators, we were to find the going tough. Buoyed by the previous evenings purchases from the O´Higgins fruit man and shared wine with nice-one-Cyril (details to come from Monty Burns) we steamed out of town towing a heavy cargo of avocados. The Austral only reached O´Higgins some 7 years ago or so, the whole 250KM stretch from Cochrane being a remarkable feat of engineering. Having never made the leap from Lego to Mechano I'm not qualified to pass comment on construction projects but, as we pushed across the ripio to the sound of cycling components shredding themselves apart, I couldn't help but think a lick of tarmac would have been a nice finishing touch. 'Pinch punctures' seemed to be targeting Monty senior and myself which gave us plenty of time to contemplate the scenery of lakes and wetlands as we made our way slowly into a rather unwelcome headwind. Two irksome climbs up shifting shale was followed by a descent to the muscular Rio Bravo - the drop into the canyon on the right hand side focused the mind wonderfully. Even Colin used the brakes on this section whereas I stuck to upping my mint consumption to one a minute, finding intense sweet sucking a comfort in 'tight spots' as I do. It all proved a bit too much so we threw the towel in. We'd picked a bad place to chuck it, washing up as we had in a vast bog, the only way forward being another round of bruising hill climbing that I didn't need a corner-man to tell me I was in no shape to take. Never mind, I remembered a disused cabin we'd seen a KM or so back and, sure enough, it provided dry land to pitch the tent on. About a yard in front of the disused front door as it happened. Oooh look, no lock! We start cooking up tea in the disused hut. I went to fetch water from the nearby river and returned to find the hut had suddenly become rather more used than before. The lorry driver, whose house it turned out to be, had rocked up with two pals to find the Goldilocks gang making themselves at home in his gaffe. It was hard to say whether an international diplomatic incident had been started or averted by the mutual incomprehension between the three Chilean Bears and the Goldilocks brothers but Daddy Bear was evidently getting a sore head contemplating the scene. Truth be told, it looked a bit bad. It took some ridiculous excuses to, first, avert some kind of ruck and then, remarkably, to persuade him to let us leave the tent up. Frosty relations were hardly thawed by the bears waking up at 06:00 the next day and commencing a white noise attack on our tent. This consisted of loud music, some yelling and then, a little worryingly, some chainsaw action. A man's character comes to the fore in these sort of situations and it was truly inspirational to see the Monty boys sleep through this threatened assault. Come on lads, in the fairy tale Goldilocks gets to eat her porridge before it all kicks off and we only eat ours at 08:00. Al suggested going in to borrow some milk. In the end both parties rolled out of the hut together and the El Sordo Situation was over, an uneasy truce suiting the side who'd brought Allen Keys to a chainsaw fight.

Day thirty five. El Sordo - Caleta Tortel. January 11th. 77K

Surrounded by nature, away from the trivial misunderstandings that can occur when cultures clash, we fair rocketed the remaining 30 KM to the ferry crossing over the Rio Bravo to Puerto Yungay. Alas, our ferry crossing is populated by the full cast of characters from the last few days and, unluckily, this includes the rightful owner of the hut at El Sordo, friends thereof and his buddies in the army. The crossing is spent studying the wonderful landscape and avoiding eye contact. In reality (something this column rarely likes to flirt with) they didn't seem too bothered by now. On reflection this was probably because they knew what we were about to have to cycle up, a brutal climb up out of Puerto Yungay to the jungle-like mountain tops. Ropes rather than bikes would have been more appropriate. However, the only ropes we have are holding bits of our bikes together so we dug in and mint consumption went off the scale. The reward came in death or glory plunge to the Rio Baker valley and our first glimpse at this turquoise companion of the next few days. The Baker is a giant, down here winding it's way slowly through bright green forests, mountains hanging about menacingly in steamy clouds. We shunned the road to Cochrane and took a 44 KM there-and-back detour to Caleta Tortel where the river meets the sea, or rather the snaking inlets of the Golfo de Penas. We get a little drenched on the way but it's worth the soaking. This blog is too absurd to try and convey how beautiful this town is, built out of the cypress wood it was created to export. No streets, so no cars or even bikes, just wooden walkways over gushing streams and everywhere 'freshness' flourishes. Hmm... lets just say it is very beautiful. I was staggered. Literally. Cycling shoes don't go well with wet cypress and I enter town feet first with the control and elegance of piano dropped down a flight of stairs by Laurel and Hardy. I've rarely seen Col happier. Our Hostal is chaotic perfection, my room barely big enough for me, the bed and the spider I find under the pillow. There is no room big enough for me and a spider and so there is a scene. The admirable Burns deals with the situation with a shoe. Dinner is a delight because we don't cook it for once and the restaurant owner who is also the baker turns out to be the posty as well so all 'admin' is taken care of before the third bottle of wine turns up and spiders are forgotten.

Day thirty six. Caleta Tortel - Lago Vargas. January 12th. 55KM

Relief for all - I've got about 30 minutes to finish this blog so things are going to have to be rushed. What's that? You don't think I'm just knocking this stuff out thoughtlessly in some bar?? Er, one more cheers Al... Righto. This day starts perfectly with a walk around town that doesn't involve any bruising falls. We buy the last bread in town and eat it in the last shelter on the way out, waiting for the passing shower to live up to its description. It doesn't and some hours later we're soaked. We're also not going very far as Col's chain has broken for the third time today. It's had the decency to breath it's last right outside a closed campsite which we promptly put under new management, 'Nathan Stone style', and reopen. We start a big fire in a shelter and by the time the owner gets the smoke signal and makes a horseback appearance we're in full drying out mode. We're flat broke, no pence means no sense in asking what the price is. He tells me he's the owner of the campsite. I can only answer I'm the owner of the tent. Contemplative silence. Then best wishes all round and another free night on the road. It's all rather pretty despite the wet.

Day thirty seven. Lago Vargas - Cochrane. January 13th. 77KM

The weather turns and it's sunshine from here on to Coyhaique. Today's ride is beautiful although rather tainted personally by a puncture followed by the loss of my back wheel which starts a solo journey down a hill as I'm trying to go up it. Odd. The scenery is stunning, especially the zone known as 'Three Lakes'. The road falls to bits in the last 5KM and we're into to Hostal Ana Luz shakier than Shakin Stevens in 'His Ole House' (pick that cultural reference out!). The town is functional rather than picturesque but home to a rather nice bar. The owner is baffled by where Ireland might be. Near England doesn't help him much - 'like the Falkland Islands' he suggests? A good night to assume my Basque identity I reckon.

Day thirty eight. Cochrane - Puerto Bertrand. January 14th. 50KM

An Esso looms into sight and I'm off on the hill out of town in case someone wanders out and asks me to complete an audit. This is a stated half day and, after an enormous bread and jam late lunch, we're not ashamed by a rather puny 50KM. Our new friends, who pass us three times in their 4x4, tell us about a camping site further down the road. "You will make it" they intone in an Arnie from Terminator accent. We didn't make it. We stopped in Puerto Bertrand. The last were first today though - our campsite is a free pitch in front of the charming village, 5 yards from the gin-clear lake. The self-professed 'oldest resident' of the village grants it to us with the assurance that her daughter is the president of the Community Council, thus granting her the power to bestow free accommodation where and when she sees fit. The spot is next to the chicken coop and they are the latest locals to fail to stir sleeping Montgomerys when the next sun-drenched day dawns.

Day thirty nine. Puerto Bertrand - Puerto Tranquillo. January 15th. 70KM

Today was perfect in every way. We even got free coffee from a cabaña complex which normally plays home only to the rich and the stupid. The poor and stupid are also welcome! We meet charming Basques, but aren't they all... The scenery has got so picturesque it's ridiculous. In a hostal in Puerto Tranquillo we simply shock the obligatory party of morose Israelis with our eating feats. We conjure a meal sufficient for an army and I shatter the spaghetti eating speed record in the process of it's demolition. There is talk of a 'big push' tomorrow and we need fuel.

Day Forty. Puerto Tranquillo - Villa Cerro Castillo. January 16th. 114 KM

Colin was stung by the manner in which I took him apart in the eating stakes last night and he exacts his revenge over a monumental breakfast. Porridge and bread is followed by 18 eggs and all the bread in the place. Al wisely throws in the napkin and his leftovers join the fray. Cold-eyed Col eggs me under the table. I can just about finish the mountain before mounting the bike to ride up a mountain. Happily its a good 60 KM before we start to climb out of the Rio Murta valley, Lago General Carrera now behind us, so the breakfast has just about started to settle. Then we reap the reward. Egg and porridge fuels the hoped for 'big push' and we make it well over 100 KM through high country to a camp site near Villa Cerro Castillo. Despite the desire to never eat again at about 08:00 this morning the hunger was stirred enough to buy tremendous homemade rhubarb and redcurrant jams en camino. We add Mermelada de Leche to the feast from our lovely host Rosa's kitchen tonight.

Day Forty one. Villa Cerro Castillo - Coyhaique. January 17th. 114 KM

Porridge and rhubarb jam. We're off like a steam engine and, glory be, a paved road appears under our wheels. Life being as it is its paved straight up the biggest climb yet, 15km up from the Rio Ibañez to 1120m above sea level, the 'Hill of the Devil' to the highest point on the Austral. The jam is potent though and we grit out teeth and 'pop' the summit. Actually, gritting your teeth is a silly idea, painfully ripping out chunks of moustache as it does. Madrileños met at the top - thanks for the map amigos y un abrazo muy fuerte! We're getting a little smug with our progress and stop to start 'jammin' at a nice looking picnic table. Red tape arrives in the form of a park ranger looking for 3.000 pesos for the use of the table. I suggest it's a bit of farce. He suggests he's already doing me a favour by waving the entrance fee. Fine, I'll just move my jam sandwich the other side of the gate. Fine he says. I make a principled march the few yards down the lane. My plastic bag breaks during this moment of high drama. The redcurrant jam is dashed. We are assaulted by biting flies during the clean up operation and subsequent ditch bound lunch. I'm ashamed to admit there is much strong language regarding the park ranger. However, replacement jam is later bought and enjoyed over Coyhaique porridge in our garden campsite. The lesson? For us, jam is not just the preserve of the ditch.

I've been working on that last gag for 630 KM of mind boggling scenery on the Austral. Perhaps it's all just getting a bit too much.

Hasta Pronto amigos y un abrazo muy fuerte a todos

D. Middlemiss

The El Calafate - El Chalten Choo Choo

2008-01-06T07:05:00.001-08:00

Un abrazo muy fuerte a todos from the village of El Chalten in the top left hand corner of the province of Santa Cruz, Argentina. I write recovered from the stomach bug that laid me low in El Calafate, a bloated monument to commercialism that was no place for a man with little spending power and less appetite. If the retail hell of Calafate is enough to make the town council of Windermere blush the situation of Chalten begs more surprising and pleasant Lake District comparisons. The approach and the valley is the Argentinean St Johns in the Vale. The weather on our arrival is suitably English as well, but wait... behind those clouds and above the green valley sides lurk monsters. You can't just walk down to Keswick for the Guardian in the morning, pop up and down Mount Fitz Roy and be back in time for Auntie Jude's scones and the evening news. Oh no. You need a head for heights, very tight pants indeed and, in the case of Cesare Maestri, a 150 KG bolt gun to wander up the Cerro Torre. H.W. Tillman would NOT have approved of this sort of mountaineering vandalism, and Middlemiss senior, unlikely to be dissuaded by the technical demands, would doubtless be discouraged by the improbability of brewing up a cup of tea on the top. And so we wait for the peaks to produce themselves before moving on to Chile across Lago O'Higgins. Time to clean bags, bikes and beards, meditate on the grandeur of the surrounds and relate to you how we came to be here. Bilingual readers and fans of The Four Tops back catalogue will be delighted to know things are about to get a bit 'loco' in more ways than one...

Day Twenty Six. January 2nd. El Calafate to Estancia Luz Divina. 98 KM

We leave El Calafate at last. My system is completely flushed out, which is more than can be said of the toilets thanks to the efforts of C. Montgomery. We hit top speed and swerve wildly to avoid a demonstration by the Argentinean Plumber's Union, Santa Cruz Southern Branch, at the town limit. Whether they want Colin lynched or retained in town on the basis of job creation is unclear. Colin's resemblance to Vincent Van Gogh has reached uncanny proportions and provokes a day of artistic reflection. We start with a Turner - murky oils through which shafts of light reveal indistinguishable solids, consumed by onlookers with silent wonder. Yes, the morning porridge was up to usual standards. Someone seemed to have substituted our map by a Joan Miro abstract - a blank canvas with only one colored lined wandering around erratically before petering out into a row of dots; Patagonia's Ruta 40. We cover the first 32KM in wind assisted record time and enjoy a Carravagio lunch - the dried fruit being tastier than it looked. Sailing on serenely across the head of Lago Argentina we pass a Velazquez fool - Esteban is a cyclist who reckons he will reach Mendoza in one month. Big words delivered from a man pushing his bike on the flat as we cycle past, bewildered to find ourselves looking competent in comparison. His secret trick is revealed later as he speeds past... in the back of a pick-up truck, 'Likely Lads' Terry and Bob style in the bike race to Berwick upon Tweed episode. Back to the art and Miro was right after all - the line becomes dots and the road decays into rocky chaos. All the elements are there for the job but no one has bothered to put them together and the result is uncomfortable and irritating - Ruta Tracy Emin. All is shuddering agony for the cold last 25 KM. My vertical hold breaks from the shaking, Colin's head is transformed from Van Gogh to a Picasso. We see the journey's end on the horizon but Estancia Luz Divina is a blasted Dali - the closer we push our bikes the further away it seems to get. Just as the day seems likely to end in despair an Indian curry house wall mural appears - lush green pastures, a bright blue river and an absurdly beautiful mountain backdrop. But this is not The Star of Bengal in Tooting, it's Luz Divina in Patagonia and all is crazily real!

Day Twenty Seven. January 3rd. Estancia Luz Divina to Estancia San Agustin. 61 KM

Porridge at Estancia Luz Divina

Everything looks better after a bowl of porridge and we scoot easily across the eastern extremity of Lago Viedma. Oh dear, we all know by now that a couple of easy hours cycling is the precursor to a nightmare of some sort and we realize this one as we turn off Ruta 40 and on to Ruta 23. The Patagonian gale is back with a vengeance in our faces and any sort of progress is only achievable by forming the cyclists train - all aligned and taking turns at the front to shelter the others. Alas, dear reader, our train is not the High Speed AVE from Madrid to Sevilla. It is not even a slow but powerful coal shunter. It is the post privatization disgrace that is the branch line from Darlington to Bishop Auckland. On a Sunday. When there are engineering works. Replacement bus service from Shildon. The line has been sold out to weather's local highest bidder and the wind subsequently runs a mindless and monstrous monopoly over affairs. We're customers without a choice, it's this rubbish or sitting in a ditch going nowhere. We actually try the latter but it's even more dispiriting than 'the train' so our frequently stopping service resumes. Colin's coupling (knee) goings twang and he becomes Colin the Coach. The two remaining engines are running out of fuel fast. Our cycling style becomes that of a unicyclist on a tightrope - trying to closely follow a man riding at this sort of ludicrous rhythm is impossible. Behind this comical leadership there is more dangerous weaving about going on than in industrial revolutionary Lancashire. Spanish readers - ¡Estaba hasta las pelotas con el ciclismo! We spot a potential station - it's not mainline but we make a three man request stop and pitch camp on the northern shore of Lago Viedma in Estancia San Agustin. Tomorrow morning can't be this windy surely?

Day Twenty Eight. January 4th. Etancia San Agustin to El Chalten. 66 KM

Of course, this morning is actually windier than the previous day. It's back in to the train, which for me consists of 15 minutes of staring at Colin's backside from about a yard away followed by seven minutes of squinting into a gale, struggling not so much to catch breath as get it back out again. Then repeat. The air is at least cleaner at the front, although it's reshaping Al's hair from 'the thug' look to 'the Beaker from the Muppet Show' look. Things start to look up at Estancia Santa Margarita where we are welcomed in for free coffee. The effects of the wind after fighting into it all morning are truly remarkable. In the cosy kitchen Colin looks less like he's been out on a breezy day and more like he's been electrocuted. I note there have been no sheep or cows for the last couple of days. Perhaps when sheep reach a critical wool level round here they simply lose traction and are blown the length of Santa Cruz to the shearing sheds in Rio Gallegos. Sheared and more aerodynamic they can start the drive back west before the process is repeated. The city of Rio Gallegos probably owes it's importance as a wool and hide exporting center less to it's port and more to it's location downwind of everything worth getting out of Patagonia. Such are the unwired thought processes of a man condemned to spend all day cycling at walking pace into a tornado only inches behind Vincent Van Gogh's rear rack, as it were. Sheltering under a bridge over el Rio de las Vueltas we at last had our efforts rewarded. Out of the low cloud and round the corner of the fellside a Condor. It was first spotted by Al with the memorable comment (paraphrasing a little here) "Crikey, that's a big bird'. Identification was complicated as, unlike every time seen on TV, it hadn't arrived with a pan pipe soundtrack. We soon had it confirmed though as it neared and appeared to be about the size of our tent, though a good deal more stable in the wind. It eyed us up but soared on to something with a bit more meat on it - a rabbit perhaps.

Mount Fitz Roy from El Chalten

Well, that's enough for now I think. I'm off to see if international relations in our 'commercial' campsite have improved since last night when a returning drunk tripped over our tent and stirred our sleeping sardine can. Dangerous business upsetting a tent containing international mischief maker V Van Gogh like that I'd say, especially as his tent appears to be neighboring ours. If the only thing on fire on my return is our stove I'd deem it a victory for common sense, something readers of this blog may be forgiven for doubting exists at all in punishing, panoramic Patagonia.

David Middlemiss

Excursions to Paine

2008-01-02T05:39:00.001-08:00

So here we are then. Well, now, actually. We're in El Calafate, a very touristy town on the banks of Lago Argentina, and it's New Year's Eve. We got into town a bit earlier than expected, for various reasons (which will not be aired here for some time...), and that has allowed both Alastair and Dave to get a good dose of food poisoning in them. Midd's currently in bed (it's 15:45 at time of writing...) and Heed has just left me in the bar so he can go back to his bed for some form of siesta. Well, regardless, it's fiesta not siesta for me!

Having done another 'Mendoza' on the in-house facilities last night, we are glad to be getting out of the gaffe tonight to get amongst it in downtown El Calafate for the NYE celebrations and are scheduled to get out of town for good tomorrow morning. Ok, so there's no bendy stick involved this time, with experience having been on our side in this, erm, sticky situation, and we do have some random foreigners to blame the incident on, but it's still not an ideal situation. Anyway, I must get off this subject so I guess I should give you a rundown of what's been going on over the last week and a half or so since we left Punta Arenas...

Day 12. December 19th. Punta Arenas to Estancia Rio Verde
Leaving town late, as has become the somewhat expected norm, we fly along past the airport and are all agreed on ignoring the penguin colony which would take us over 50k out of our way, the way back being into a strong headwind. The decision is made to take the coastal route to get away from the tourist trail, the cars and buses, and also in the hope of some more impressive scenery, and we're generally fine with the fact that it means an unpaved road. After our longest day yet (101k) we finally rock up at Estancia Rio Verde, not knowing what, if anything, to expect. Riding around the back we are shocked to find a room full of yanks and Europeans enjoying a whole lamb being roasted over the parilla and some quality Chilean reds. Having obviously stumbled upon a very flash affair, and looking every bit the bedraggled cyclists that we are, we make a very easy decision to camp in the field with the horses (and skunk...) rather than pay over USD $100 for a room. Our first experience of quinoa is a good one, despite it being accompanied by the ever present tomato based sauce and chorizo, and it's all downed in typically frenetic style, to allow us to enjoy a relaxing bottle of red in the luxury of the restaurant. Our Chilean hosts, Sandra and Marcelo, are great people and seem much keener on swapping stories (and, strangely, mildly pornographic jokes) with us than entertaining their proper guests. Turns out Sandra is the only woman ever to swim in Antarctica and Marcelo is an electrician by trade, but an excellent chef. Despite them accusing me of looking like William Wallace and Vincent van Gogh, we leave on good terms.

Day 13. December 20th. Estancia Rio Verde to a ditch, Morro Chico
Even for us, this day takes ages to get under way. The wind is really bad all day and we struggle against it for 70k before giving up about 7k before a left turn would have faced us directly into the wind. The 'camp site' is a rough piece of ground beside the road, with foot long grass and an amazing ability to channel all the wind in Patagonia onto our trusty tent. Food is cooked and sleep is not had.

Day 14. December 21st. Morro Chico to Puerto Natales
We manage to stir at about 5am and get under way about 6am, having only enough water for a quick coffee. This is a record time for us but there's no air of jubilation as our attempt to 'beat the wind' proves to be 100% ineffective and the first 40k takes us nearly 7 hours, including water stops with the local Carabinero. Next thing marked on our map is Hotel Reubens and, again, we're scared to expect anything at all. We're surprised to find it chock-full of yanks who're being shipped about in absurdly large 4x4 people carriers. We each scoff a magical steak and egg sandwich and hit the road, turn the corner and enjoy a tail-wind for the first time in a L-O-N-G time. Cycling is fun once more and we absolutely fly down the mountain and into Puerto Natales where we stay at Hostal Lilli. Our biggest day yet, managing 112k despite the grueling start into the wind.

Days 15 to 16. December 22nd to 23rd. Natales.
Not much to do about this town, so we use our valuable time to yet again stock up on food. This time it's a monster shop as we've got to get food for 8 days or so on the road, as we can't be sure of getting anything once we leave. Kilos of rice, pasta, sauces, chorizos, canned fish, nuts, dried fruits and chocolate see our panniers reach the point of bursting and make us very nervous about the flimsy rack mountings. Oh, and obviously we stock up with 2 litres of vodka. It is Christmas, after all.

Day 16. December 23rd. Puerto Natales to Rio Serrano.
[Author: Al] Yet another late start, although at least this one was planned (to hopefully get the better of the weather conditions, which seemed to be more settled in the afternoon). Thankfully this worked out for us and we set off about 1pm to head for Torres Del Paine National Park (after scoffing 18 scrambled eggs and plenty of bread - another feeding frenzy). A good days cycling in great weather started to turn into a nightmare later in the day. Some steep climbs on unpaved surfaces started taking their toll, especially on me and I started to struggle somewhat. Whilst Col and Midd waited on a bridge for me to catch up they seen a figure waving to them - Olga. We met up with Christian and Olga (who are cycling the same route and arrived at the same hostal as us back in Ushuaia the day after us) and decided to cycle with them to the park together. The roads became less undulating but the surface became much rougher, and, just as things were going well, disaster struck. Cycling along happily, whilst chatting to Olga, Col's rear rack had what would be best described as a massive failure. The mounting clips broke and the rack fell backwards bending the rear deraileur into the spokes. What resulted was something akin to an international rescue mission . Our Spanish and German friends helped forge some temporary solutions with a combination of canvas strapping (for my rack which was on the verge of collapsing) and a mixture of wire, cable ties and copper brackets we had picked up earlier for Col's rack - these won't last! Repairs completed we all set off again and struggled on. More steep climbs on unpaved roads and the unwelcome emergence of a strong headwind caused me to almost break, with both hamstrings on the verge of imminent cramp. Things got so bad at a point we were all forced into pushing the rigs up hills as the loose gravel, headwinds and steep gradients meant getting moving was almost impossible. Midd was sent ahead to tell Christian and Olga not to wait for us as they were keen to head for a campsite inside the park which was out of our reach as it had turned 10pm. We rolled into the nearest campsite available to us - Camping Rio Serrano - and had the tent up, dinner cooked and eaten and 6 beers downed within the hour. After a hot shower the mood in camp was a lot more positive and we were soon off to the land of nod dreaming of the usual tailwinds and perfectly smooth roads.

Day 17. December 24th. Rio Serrano to Camping Las Torres, Torres del Paine.
A lay-in is soon scuppered by D. Middlemiss who is up-and-at-'em, urging his troops onwards. As he cooked up the porridge and coffee, Al and I took care of repairs to the bikes. Taking the easy option, my rear deraileur was replaced with the brand spanking new one we thankfully had the foresight to bring with us. The morning disc-brake-adjusting-session was just finishing up when I noticed that his rear hub was loose, forcing yet more comically futile brake adjustments. The 1k off the main road to the camping was, without a doubt, the worst road we'd ever seen. Record speeds of 4kph were reached while trying to make sure the makeshift rack mountings held firm. Which they didn't, obviously. More wire and cable-ties were employed as we were entering the Torres del Paine National Park. Weather on this day was absolutely superb and we were incredibly lucky to have such spectacular views of the Torres while there was no clouds obscuring them. We try to restrict our photo-taking, but the views are so amazing that the cameras are out seemingly every couple of kilometres. Mucho deleting of similar mountain photos are in our near-future. We have lunch in a restaurant set in the middle of a glacial-blue lake, which we reach by cycling over a small wooden bridge .
Remarkably, nothing else breaks for the entire day, and we find ourselves thanking Mr Montgomery for suggesting and supplying the roll of wire that has saved the day on a few occasions already. That said, about 30m of it should have been taken as we're fresh out already.
After spending the vast majority of the day climbing in fierce heat, we're rewarded by a very long and enjoyable downhill which takes us to the start of the 'nightmare 7k' which an American cyclist had warned us about earlier in the day. It turned out to be just that - 7k long and an absolute nightmare. No sign of an office at this campsite so we pitch our tent and grab a much needed shower before heading off in search of alcohol. First stop is out of beer so they suggest we try the bar - what a fantastic, novel idea! Couple of beers, a bottle of Chilean red and the staff turn the lights out and go home to leave us in the bar. Unfortunately they appear not to have been 'born yesterday' and have locked down the good stuff, so we end up in the tent shortly after midnight. This lack of boozing has us really perplexed!

Day 18. December 25th. Camping Las Torres.
It truly is Christmas day - 0 Km on the bikes so Instead of the usual punishment of cycling we decide on the slightly different exercise of hiking. Despite the tent turning into an oven shortly after sunrise we stick it out to about 9am when we get up, shower (we decide on washing at every given opportunity as these opportunities are somewhat limited), and pack a bag to head up to the Torres viewpoint. First port of call is the hotel down the road to check up with the folks back home and, after finding all is well, we set off up the track. Progress is good and we find we're doing the track in half the time estimated although the last section is quite tricky and takes the full 45 mins suggested. We reach the final ridge and as we come over the top we're treated to a quite spectacular view of the Torres. Christmas lunch consists of rice and mixed vegetables cooked up on our stove and after a lot more photos we start our descent where we stop for a beer in the glorious sunshine. We get back to camp around 7pm to find Christian and Olga camped beside us (we had passed them coming down the trail whilst we were going up). Dinner is cooked and afterwards they join us to get stuck into the vodka - they seem quite amused by the powdered fruit drinks we're using for mixers. We polish off one bottle of vodka and, surprisingly, common sense prevails and the bottle of Eristoff survives for another day.

Col and Al

Porridge Powered to Porvenir

2007-12-17T14:10:00.000-08:00

Punta Arenas, Chile. December 18th

Ten days after the first revolution we have made the transition from island to mainland life, from pedestrian to cyclist, from Quilmes to Cristal, from clean shaven to plain unclean and from Ushuaia, Argentina to Punta Arenas, Chile. Are you sitting comfortably? We're not!

Moments before departure on an epic adventure – Ushuaia, Argentina, with the Beagle Channel behind us.

Day one. December 8th. Ushuaia to Lago Fagnano. 99 km
Sunshine and warm breezes replace snow showers and hail and we're off. Ish. Suffice to say preparation never actually included riding the bikes (for me, add full stop here) fully loaded and thus we cycle to the waterfront due more to the effects of gravity than any grand departure plan. A good place to kick the expedition off though, the Beagle Channel is the backdrop for the obligatory photo shoot. Lack of roads in this part of the world makes for easy navigation and we're soon rounding Monte Oliva and up into the mountains on Ruta 3. After some 4 or 5 stops I'm thoroughly briefed in the workings of a disc brake though none the wiser in how to get mine to release the back wheel. Shimano thus ensure stately progress for the author and the Colliers Wood to Hackney training ride with the same problem on a different bike assumes an unwelcome relevance. My mother for one will be delighted to know I have little choice but to ride with the brake on throughout week one. Paso Garibaldi proves to be a sharp test for men with our restricted training opportunities (ahem) but once left behind we sail on to down to a camp on the shores of Lago Fagnano. The tent and stove come out of the plastic wrappers and both go up. Astonishing. Time to tell my fellow happy campers my big news - I'm cutting down on needless consumption by going without deodorant for the 8 months. Lights out to a tough crowd.

Just past the starting line – a touch north of Ushuaia, Argentina.

Day two. December 9th. Lago Fagnano to Estancia Viamonte (42km south Rio Grande). 89 km
The division of labour goes badly wrong and a man who later reveals to having no idea what porridge is meant to look like is handed the stove. Team morale survives only as my tirade of abuse fails to make it past jaws cemented together. I think up some cutting remarks but they are forgotten by the time I prise my teeth apart sometime in the afternoon and Col has to endure only angry scowling. Perhaps lack of verbal communication is the reason for us losing Al for 20 minutes in the two street town of Tolhuin. Hail and sleet are happily coming with what would turn out to be the week's only tailwind and we speed through rolling country to the pampa of the Atlantic coast. Colin, speaking for his backside rather than through it, calls stumps on the day and we are given a large empty lodge to sleep in at Estancia Viamonte. Fantastic accommodation for free the shower block smells like it was last used by the sheep - or perhaps the deodorant policy is already taking effect? A freezing night is enlivened for Al by a nosebleed suffered without being able to get his arms out of his sleeping bag. Colin and I try not to laugh too hard.

Home for night #2, Estancia Viamonte, Argentina.

Day three. December 10th. Viamonte to Rio Grande. 51 km
Fate suitably tempted by the previous night's diary entry of 'Easy day planned tomorrow...' we set off into the face of a minor gale which develops steadily into something Beaufort did not bother counting up to. It's enough to make me forget Col's labelling of my porridge as 'a bit runny'. The back brake becomes a useful ally in halting progression backwards to Ushuaia. The Rio Grande is crossed though we must confess to pushing over the bridge, forward movement being replaced by wind assisted sideways and nearly resulting in an early bath. Ayuntamiento de Rio Grande, larger crash barriers on the side of your bridge please - my swimming is bad enough without being bolted to a bike. Some fooling about in the bleak gas and logistics city of Rio Grande as we search for our campsite. The notion of putting up a tent being tantamount to posting it express service to the Falklands the kind people at the Club Nautico on the mouth of the river let us kip above the boathouse on a gym floor with bedding improvised. After a full day battling the wind to make 50 pitiful KMs never has the term 'crash mat' been more applicable.

Windy? No sh!t… Somewhere south of Rio Grande, Argentina.

Day four. December 11th. Rio Grande to San Sebastián (Arg). 89 km
Hell on wheels. After surprisingly being able to enjoy some Diego Rivera prints over breakfast in a petrol station cafe we pay a visit to the Malvinas memorial (Rio Grande and Rio Gallegos being major conscription zones for the Argentinian navy) and nudge our way out of town. The tornado seems to have subsided to a gale but it was merely gathering strength for later... A visit to La Misión Salesiana provides some interesting background on the oiginal native population. Skips over the reasons why there are none left now though. Animals evolved in and adapted to the extreme elements overtake us as we cycle. Snails and slugs for example. Heroically rejecting the last possibility of a camp in an estancia we press on to San Sebastián and are rewarded with a struggle against a rainstorm in the gloaming. The waterproof panniers prove excellent at keeping water out, the waterproof footwear as good at keeping water in. Somewhere in the unfortunately placed range of hills just before the 'town' it stops being fun. I try to cheer the troops by shouting that Col could do the remainig distance in 3.40 minutes at the speed he drives Bomber's Porsche but an hour later I'm still pedalling the bike. The truck stop at San Sebastián arrives just in time to save feeling above the neck although cutlery operation remains a distant dream for some time. Any port in a storm indeed but San Sebastián is something of a disappointment. A customs point and a bar are more or less the sum total of the place. It's conceivable that any buildings present that morning were whistling across the Atlantic in a Wizard of Oz style by the time we rocked up. We are allowed to 'camp' on the floor of the waiting room by customs however which is not so bad - a heater and a hot shower are available and all we need.

Day five. The Albatros bar. San Sebastián (Arg).
Downright fatigue demands a rest day which is lucky as outside our room / bus stop what little remains of the border post is slowly taken apart by a wind that relegates the gusts of the previous days to mere 'draughty' in comparison. Lucky day too for Juan, the owner of Bar Albatros, who has three captive clients for the day. Unfortunately for him they're not big rollers, though we clean him out of chocolate and peanuts before the cash dries up. Time to read, meditate and consider the facial hair situation which is unsurprisingly absurd. My chin looks like a Brillo Pad that someone has being using to clean a very rusty pan while Colin's face will be familiar to anyone who has read the illustrated version of Roald Dahl's 'Fantastic Mr Fox'. Al, having arrived with a crew cut last seen when Gazza was playing for Wallsend Boys FC, is sprouting hair the same length all over his bonce and thus merely lacks the word 'Dunlop' printed across the top to make the tennis ball look complete.

The Albatross Bar. Rarely have I been so bored, and sober, whilst spending an entire day in a bar. 2 million mph winds outside…

Day six. December 13th. San Sebastián (Arg) - Puerto Nuevo, Bahía Inutil. 87 km
We're off at 05:00 and enjoy an enforced breakfast in a ditch of the salchichon we're not allowed to carry into Chile. A previously unheard of pollen disease prevalent in Argentina results in our only confiscated item and it's honey sandwiches all round for the customs boys in San Sebastián, Chile, tonight. Balmy spring day with light breezes. The road has become unpaved, adding misery for the Montys whose 'culos' were obviously not designed with cycling in mind!! Over rolling pampa, westwards to Bahía Inutil where we visit a small cemetery populated by a handful of unfortunate settlers from the 1800's. "Drowned in Useless Bay" and "Killed by Indians" are the two legible inscriptions. Plenty of space for a plot for the employee of International Travel Maps, 530 West Broadway, Vancouver, responsible for our map of Tierra del Fuego who I'd happily inter some 30 minutes later. The Maltese Planning Authority know I'm no cartographer (send for a 'Physical' geographer next time you want slave labour, not a 'Social' one) but even I drew the line at inventing roads that didn't exist. The people at ITM just draw the line wherever they fancy. Clearly frustrated by the lack of man-made features on the survey, our creative cartographer must have enlivened his morning's work by dreaming up imaginary roads. As works of romantic fiction I highly recomend the ITM library. Just as we realise our map is the 'Beano' of the cartographic world my bike compounds the misery by falling to bits. Colin's eyes light up as he anticipates the chance to engage in more 'Mechano' but unfortunately the weighty box of spares that contribute to the breakage lacks one crucial part. In summary - bolts in Bahía Inutil, screws in Belsize Park. Ooops. Still, we remembered the wire and it still seems to be holding the pannier rack on some 150 km later.We push on to a stunning camp on the shores of Bahía Inutil where fish are bought fresh from the net from the only fishermen within tens of kms. The Cordillera Darwin brood far away to the south over the water and the night's sleep is disturbed only by Sea Lions growling. Or is that a Monty snoring...?

Fresh fish cooking on the camp fire, Bahía Inutil, Argentina.

Sunset at our stunning camp, Bahía Inutil, Argentina.

Day seven. December 14th. Puerto Nuevo - Cabo Boquerón. 73km
Strong headwinds again and we fail to reach the bright lights of Porvenir due to a late start and lack of water which forces a detour to an estancia and the help of a friendly sheperd. We later find out during this morning of tomfoolery we are overtaken by Cristian and Olga, the Amundsen to our Scott. We should have taken dogs!! Camp on top of a cliff on Cabo Boquerón (hola Malagueños!). Al and I experience a strange floating sensation when we enter the tent and lie on our air beds... ah ha, Col has knocked his mug over and we sleep in a lagoon of asparagus soup!

Day eight. December 15th. Cabo Boquerón - La Caleta de Porvenir. 28 km
We need not go into the reasons why the boat to Punta Arenas from Porvenir was missed today but the final head down, time trial style charge along the bay was rewarded only by the sight of the ferry steaming off round the lighthouse. Compensation comes in the form of the bar La Pica de Pechuga where our friendly host lets us sleep for free and use the facilities. We're also delighted to find a very nice German couple have also managed to miss the boat due to a mix up over the timetable. They look suitably ashamed at having tarnished their nation's reputation for steely efficiency. We eat nearly all the food available within 500 meters and I set some sort of unofficial record for speed eating a fish stew. I've developed the sort of ceaseless hunger that means I don't seem to have to put food in my mouth and chew it, just fixing it with a meaningful stare as it arrives on the plate results in it's immediate teletransportation to my stomach.

Day nine. December 16th. Porvenir to Punta Arenas by ferry.
I join a party of women from Arenas on the launch of our barman to do some dolphin spotting in the bay while waiting for the ferry. I appear to be a much stranger animal to my fellow passengers than Flipper and co. Finally it's adios to Tierra del Fuego and the two hour crossing to the small city of Punta Arenas. The back end of my bike needs some attention, my sunglasses have had an arm amputated and some serious darning needs to be done to my gloves after I tried to bite my finger nails without removing them in a moment of high tension. Other than that all is well and before the next leg to Puerto Natales the only serious oustanding task is a log on to Google and the introduction of the words 'Porridge - preparation of'.

¡Hasta Luego a todos!
David Midd

We've arrived!

2007-12-06T17:21:00.001-08:00

After 36 hours of lugging bike boxes and luggage about in buses, taxis and trains, and flights from London to Atlanta to Buenos Aires to Trelew and finally to Ushuaia we've arrived safely. Which is more than can be said for our luggage, thanks to Delta Airlines...

All was going fairly well until we tried to check in and were told by Delta that our tickets were invalid. Eh?! You what?! You sold them to us via an agent! Anyway, why, what the hell are you on about?! Well, sirs, US policy dictates that you cannot be in the United States more than 180 days unless you have an appropriate visa. What?! We're going to *South* America! I'm sorry, but we cannot let you board with those travel dates. We can change the return date to be within the 180 day limit, and for that we will be forced to charge you £100 pounds each. WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?! In the end we had to pay the cash and get on the flight as we had spent about 2 hours arguing our case and the flight was about to leave!

Basically someone has screwed up here big time! And we've had to pay for it. It seems Delta consider that we will be in the US for more than 180 days because our outbound and return flights are both VIA the US. Frankly this is ridiculous and we will be seeking legal advice to rectify the situation. Our agent, JustTheFlight.co.uk, aren't going to escape our wrath either as they proved absolutely no help and fobbed us off despite selling us tickets which were invalid. To make matters worse, we'll be charged the same fee when we change the dates back to their original ones! Yeah right.

Anyway, enough b!tching. Oh, hold on, I haven't mentioned the baggage...

We got off at Buenos Aires Eziza Airport and collected our baggage. One of our bags came off with basically the arse end of it torn off. Obviously angry, we searched the airport for a Delta representative for a solid hour and found no-one. Having another flight to catch from the other airport in BA, we were forced to leave. On opening the bag we found that a pair of once-waterproof trousers had a hole in them, a cycling jersey with a hole in it, a pair of socks with no heel, and last but not least a cycling helmet which was completely smashed and crushed. Total damage about £250. Add that to the £300 we've paid for flights and I'm sure you can imagine our mood... A stern email has been sent to Delta and hopefully we'll get 100% compensation - all the goods were 100% new, not even having been used!

Ok, b!tching done. Ushuaia is a really cool place. It reminds us of Alaska in the US TV series Northern Exposure. The Beagle channel is just out the window to the South as I write and there are snow-capped mountains rising straight out of the sea surrounding us on all other sides. Weather was very chilly last night but today was beautiful - blue skies, sunny, and it must have been in the high teens. We've spent our time building our bikes and stocking up with items that we forgot (or have been damaged). We're staying in a great little hostel with Hilda and Pedro who are taking great care of us. We've met a German dude who's been doing some cycle touring already and is waiting for a friend to join him here before they cycle all the way up to Canada/Alaska (dependent on time of year and weather). After a brief spell of slagging off our choice of cycling hardware and telling us how great his rig was he invited us to drink German beer with him in a local bar where we had just had lunch. We didn´t make it...

About an hour ago another German dude and a Spanish lady checked into our hostel with their bikes. They're doing basically the same trip as us. As we expected, we're far from the only people doing this trip!

Right, it's past ten o'clock and we have only had one beer all day. About time we corrected that with some commitment...

Hope you're all well.
Col