Torres del Paine or there and back again. Book 1.

Okay, last time i left you i was in a wood pannelled room in Puerto Natales.

Now, probably nine or ten days on, 25th dec, I'm in a chaotic living room/kitchen dining room/lounge affair with about 25 israelis and 15 or so chilenos, some of whom may be part of the extended family that own this place.  And I'm still in Puerto Natales.

Not that i have sunk into some civilisation worshipping slump.  In the intervening period I have been away for eight days.  I have delved into the unforgiving wilderness, pitched my tent by raging torrents and benign lakes, plucked succulent vanilla flavoured Triton biscuits from the bending boughs of nearby shops, and thought vaguely about whittling something once.  It's been a journey alright.

Set off from here on the 15th December, cycling on a rutted, gravelly road past some beautifully sited estancias on a long inland finger of the sea loch that puerto natales lies on.  I was following a road that from the look of things would lead me via a southern shortcut to torres del paine, not the main road that most of the tourist buses take.  After about 25km of slow going, I arrived at the estancia founded by Manuel Eberhard, a German naval hero of the early days of independent Chile.  The road turned into a private track that led only to a farm on a hill.  Damn.  Spoke to a couple of fence erecting guys, retraced my steps. 

Dead end sign not pictured.




I eventually reached the right road, which lay parallel to the previous one, but around 3km east.  But the sun was bright, if not hot, and the land looked suited to a hotter, more arid land, with Australian style scrub and trees either side, and sheer vol cliffs either side.  Towards nightfall the snowy peaks started marching down one side of the road, with the other consisting of lakes and beech forests.  With night coming, I found an unlocked gate leading down to a large sheltered lake, which seemed to be an unofficial kind of rough camping site; a few remains of campsites and logs lashed together for shelter were strewn around.  I made camp, and took advantage of the abundance of dead, dry wood to have one hell of a campfire to ward of the drizzle.

Spent the next day in the camp too, due to nothing more than laziness.  I'd like to say I spent this time profitably, but unless you count making haphazard attempts to play 'When the levee breaks' on the harmonica (and by 'haphazard', i mean 'utterly shit') as profitable, I probably didn't.  Oh, I also did some workouts with the differently sized logs lying around, which probably made me look like I'd watched Rocky IV a few too many times, and had seriously misjudged the similarity of my physique to Mr Balboas.  Maybe my VHS had a really screwed up aspect ratio.

Me, attempting to beat my cameras timer, and not quite making it.




17th December dawned.  Then, probably around seven hours afterwards, I got up.  Not quite as bad as it sounds - I'm pretty far south, and the summer equinox is approaching, but still not exactly a statement of intent. I set off for Torres del Paine. The road start heading up pretty swiftly, and deteriorating in quality pretty swiftly too, until I reached a road crew who were driving a steamroller back and forth.  The road was constantly snaking upward through a flint canyon, which must have taken a inordinate amount of explosive to blast apart, and an awful amount of work to move the shards elsewhere.  Still, I guess it will keep Chile in flint hand axes for centuries, should prehistoric living suddenly come back into vogue.  Anyhow, I reached the park boundaries, paid my 15,000 pesos (approx 20 quid), and wooshed across the grassy meadow, and through the winding lakeside road towards the nearest campsite.

Winding road, Torres del Paine masked by cloud in the distance.

There are some photos below of the Torres, the horns, or cuernos, are the structures with no snow on them, the sides too sheer for any powder to find purchase, with the taller, more conventional mountain peaks alongside. 

It had a pretty otherworldly, front cover to some fanciful sci-fi book vibe to it by moonlight, like another red moon might chase the silver one out from behind the clouds.   Or maybe the solitude is warping my mind.  Either way, a beautifully situated campsite, with shelters to pitch tents under, although 10,000 pesos, or £12.50, seems a trifle steep for a patch of earth to call my own. However, it was the only campsite by the road for 33km, and night was falling. 

Campsite Lake Pehoe.

The small distances shown on the maps of the region are deceptive by bike, as the roads undulate steeply, and are in pretty bad condition for a fully laden bike.  The constant rocks and corrugated sections that the bike cruches along mean that at the start of every day I have to attempt to re-true the back wheel, as the spokes lose tension constantly, and if the rim bends one way slightly this will rapidly deteriorate.  The back wheel has most of my weight, and the majority of my luggage resting on it, so it's probably taking over 100kg of weight - fine on a paved road, as there is no crunching downforce, but not on the ripio surface that makes up a lot of Patagonian highways.

Unidentified bird of prey poses in a self-conscious 'i am a far-seeing, noble beast' fashion.

 

Hosteria just up from the campsite.  As close as I could get without taking out a 20 year mortgage or selling my first-born into indentured slavery.  These places are seriously pricey.

The following day was slow going through the hills, as I cycled towards Las Torres Campsite, which is the kicking off spot for most of the hikes, but it was a beautiful, sunny day, and I amused myself by fooling about with my camera, taking many over-exposed, lens-flaring photos, and often managing to make my really pretty damn good camera take photos that looked like thirty year old polaroids.  I also started having my picture taken from moving cars on a regular basis, which has only been an occasional pleasure uptil now.  I like revelling in the idea that people either see me as a lone warrior, struggling against geography and the elements, or as some crazy gringo.  Maybe they're just amused at my clothes.

Got carried away adding photos.  Appears my blog is too big to appear in one part.  I'll post the next part tomorrow. Dx

addendum : puerto natales

Okay, you've had the sober post, now comes the drunk one.

Now this is verbatim what i wrote in the bar, before i met some friendly French/Columbian/Chilean folk.

I'm gonna give this shit to you pure and simple.  And yes tash, i am writing exactly what is down in my notebook.

I quite often question whether it is me doing these things that I do.  Not particulaly because they are such outlandish things to do, more because it is in my nature.  Am I me?  Am I here, cycling in a vast plain?  If a bear shits in the woods, with no one there, does it smell, etc.

And so this leads, ineluctably on, to the question, why am I doing this?  Admitedly it involves some very obvious pleasures; that of arriving at a city after days rough camping, new places, women, warm food, all these things are obvious.

But hell, I'm a solitary person by nature, unless I'm amongst friends or family.  I have tried to put about the notion that I am some kind of introvert, and friends rebuke this idea, probably thinking I am either deluded or trying to carve out a mysterious stranger motif for myself.

But when I'm by myself, in situations such as this (before i started talking to people, yeah?), I am an
introvert.  I don't try to make friends in a hostel, unless the other person has something obvious to recommend themselves to me, ie looks, charisma, humour.  I'm selfish, and will often immerse myself in books/laptop and headphones, to avoid the old routine of 'where do you come from.....' and will feel mild annoyance when an unwelcome spirit passes my boundaries.

Much like anyone else I suspect.

But yeah, reasons for this trip.

1. To do something epic that I can point to, mostly to myself, that I achieved something.
2. Boredom.  If not with a career, but with the idea that a career is the only way to function today.
3. Fitness. Manhood.  Surviving in the great outdoors. The Ray Mears method.  Climbing.  Hunting.  Fishing.  Spear fishing.  Doing tai chi in forset glens (haven't the foggiest how to do tai chi in any circumstance, let alone forest glens).
4. Finding something.  Don't know what.  Medallions in the Altiplano in Bolivia, enlightenment with the ayahuascas in Amazonia, elves in the deep forest of Chile, something else. 
  
I'm nothing if not a realist.

 Let me know if there's anything missing, my comments page looks a little dry.  And one question - do I need an Indiana Jones hat?  Because I want one.  But it's a goddam unaerodynamic thing to carry.



Oh, and in case you think I'm typing this later, and un-drunk, I have the following thing to say - "Oh, and Jons (? possibly Jos) If you're reading this, please why a Blainte chops, makes me think of you.  Think I need it on the Chenodenel.

My writing is illegible.  Drunk or undrunk.  After this i go on to talk about how pissed off Creedence Clearwater Revival must have been that the Stones wrote a much better apocolyptic song in
Gimme Shelter than Bad Moon Rising.  But I don't really think anyone needs to hear that (they apparently came out at the same time).  I was hitting a pretty scattershot approach at that point - if a song came on in the club, I'd write about it.

Take care.

Rio Grande to Puerto Natales

The last blog ended abruptly.  Well, okay, not abruptly.  In fact it probably meandered like a muddy, drunk river, winding its leisurely way through the grasslands and depositing many an ox-bow lake along the way.

However, I did end it before getting anything like up to date with where I am now, and for that I sincerely apologise.  I just didn't think anyone could take any more verbose crap stimulating thoughts in one sitting.

So, I'll cover what's happened up until now, as I sit in a cold hostel in Puerto Natales.  It's an old wooden place with low ceilings, individually carved chairs, and landscape paintings, photos and maps everywhere.  And a small ceramic stove in the corner with a metal flue, but this is unfortunately not in use.

Me now, figured that now I am an official member of the adventurers guild, I can get away with dressing like this,

I stopped in Rio Grande for two days, at the only hostel in town, Hostel Argentino.  When you're the only option in town, you don't need to go big on inventive names.  Just reassure people that this is an Argentinian establishment, and not, say, a stray Madagascan collective that got swept up on the shore one day.  Mostly a workingmans hostel rather than a tourist/gringo one, I'm not actually sure I took any photos of Rio Grande, but if I had, you'd see why.  Not an unpleasant place by any means, and a friendly bunch at the hostel, but a total frontier town, and not in a romantic bear-trapping and whiskey bar kind of way.  The town was on a windswept plain by the shore, the outskirts all warehouses and tin houses, the centre was wide, bleak streets.  This impression was not helped by the constant gale that blew for the two days I was resident, making walking in the streets a matter of bending double and forging on ahead.  This was the reason I stayed for so long; if walking is difficult, cycling is nigh on impossible.

Unless it's a tail wind of course. However, it's never a tail wind.  The physics of hot/cold air currents just don't work that way here, indeed the direction of wind seems actually dependent upon my direction, in that it will always arrange itself to be hitting me diagonally from the left front quadrant.  10:30, in fighter pilot parlance.  So, I get the wind trying to knock me off the road, but also impeding my forward progress, making it akin to trying to cycle up a hill which often tilts suddenly and without warning.  Anyone who's every played Super Monkey Ball will know what I'm talking about.  Nothing like a pop-culture reference that most people won't get, eh?

I'm thinking this new (? probably not) concept in paranoid meterology, that the distant interaction of hot and cold air with the terrain is taking place with the sole intention to strike me and make me quake with rage, could be my Phd subject.  I could be to weather forcasting what Niels Bohr was to quantum physics.

Anyway, I'll probably return to inchoate rants about wind at some later stage.  In fact, it's pretty inevitable.  I would like to point out, however, since my last blog referenced the importance of wine in its creation, that this rage is a sober-minded thing.  It is 11:44 in the morning here, the sun is not over the yardarm, and even basking in the warm glow of a civilised town, it's a little early for a glass of wine.

By the second day in Rio Grande, I had been joined in the hostel by three other cyclists who were heading the same way and had been driven inside by the wind.  One of them, a South African lady, Leana, had been on the road pretty much non-stop for 3 and a half years, through Africa, the middle east, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, pretty much all of SE Asia and Australia, which puts my journey in perspective!  Anyway, one of them decided to get the bus to PN, one was going to stay in Rio Grande another day, and unsurprisingly, Leana set off some time before my lesiurely start of 12:30pm.

So, it was a steady slog northwards to San Sebastien.  Wind was making hard work of it, but not impossibly so.  The landscape was pretty uninspiring; endless flat plains, punctuated only by occasional automated gas pumping stations.  There were however, slightly more excitingly, a few small cantilever oil pumps dotted about, slowly rocking away.  The only real event of note happened when I was cutting my lunchtime dried salami in an inadvisable way with my pocket knife - managed to slice open my left forefinger.  Thankfully for music fans worldwide, it was deep, but not deep enough to hit bone or nerves, so you can all rest easy - I will play the piano again.  It's pretty much healed now, thanks to my proficency with a tube of Germolene and a dressing.  Anyhow, the day ended at San Sebastien, a collection of shacks by the sea, and the point to cross over into Chilean lands.  I asked at the petrol station / hotel whether or not I could pitch my tent in their grounds, as the hotel was closed for renevation (to be honest, the place looked like it hadn't been used since the mid-70s).  They very kindly invited me to stay in one of the rooms anyway, free of charge.

The landscape of northern Argentinian Tierra del Fuego.  Good bits are definitely in the south.

This pretty much sums up all my experiences with Argentinians and Chileans.  Almost to a man / woman they have been friendly, welcoming and helpful, whether they are dragging you to the bar to be bought Fernet and coke, helping me carry my bike to the airport bus in BA, and negotiating my passage on said bus with my monstrous amount of luggage (cheers Alejandro!), or helping me fit my front rack in Rio Grande.  The mechanic who helped me out with this last one didn't speak a word of English, but still we chatted for a long time about bikes, he showed me a large collection of photos of him cycling with his daughter, and wouldn't let me leave without a postcard of some Tour de France cyclists.

This kind of generosity and genuine happiness makes me realise I really need to do some knuckling down on the whole 'speaking Spanish thing'.  I've been learning so far more on a need to know basis, constructing phrases and memorising them when I need to use them, rather than any more structured study.  I fondly imagined I would be putting in a couple of hours a night after cycling, but even if I'm not ready to sleep immediately I tend to be so tired that I put off the Spanish in favour of either reading 'Fabric of the Cosmos', about current developements in string theory and cosmic evolution (yeah, languages are so daunting for me that this seems like a bit of light relaxation in comparison), or, at the moment, listening to 20,000 leagues under the seas.  I have fond memories of Journey to the Centre of the Earth, also by Jules Verne, from when I was about nine, so I thought this might be worth a listen (i prefer reading, but audio books are a wee bit lighter).  My advice to any prospective readers - don't bother.  It's more or less just a recital of species of coral, fish, and various underwater flora, including Latin order, genus, family, or a listing of the latitude and longitude of various islands.  It's also read by a selection of people who volunteer to record for a free audio book site, which is a laudable endevour, but seems to attract people with either a robotic, mogadon taking voice, or people who have considerable difficulty even reading the words out properly.

Enough sidetracking.  Woke up, went through customs rapidly.  A no-mans land of 15km awaited, which was bleak, but with a slightly more dramatic, rolling-on forever esque tone to it.  There were pink flamingos standing around in the salty lakes, guanacos and cows grazing.  Went through Chilean customs.  Another stamp in the passport.  Set off across the wide expanse of northern Tierra del Fuego.  My map shows a paved road for the next 140km, but such a construction was not in evidence.  Thankfully, it was a decent ripio, with only small corrugated sections, and thus reasonably easy to cycle on.  Even driving rain and hail didn't dampen my spirits, and I made a good 50km until I came upon a hut in the middle of nowhere.  I should emphasise that in this time I passed about 4 estancias (ranches), and for the first hour and half passed no traffic whatsoever.  Flat lands either side, no vegetation above knee height, occasional sheep.  I was ready to drive on, but the hut seemed a good omen.  Built for cyclists, or certainly used by them, it had cartoons and time/distance logs on the wall ofwritten by the people who had passed through.  Most of them were doing a similarly epic trip - loads of Alaska to Tierra del Fuegos, a few Santiago or BA to Ushuaias.  No door, the beds were steel frames, and the stove was a) trashed and b) there was no fuel for 60 or 70km in either direction.  But hell, any port in a storm, and this was more than welcome.

The hut and its walls

Oh, and there was porn on the floor.  Not a stash, or a magazine.  Just a single torn out black and white picture of those parts of a woman that a gentleman like myself cannot mention in mixed company.  Wouldn't want my wife or serving folk to hear such speech.  I just mention it because of the prevailance in the UK of the species bongobush.  It is a well known fact that under any hedgerow, in a lay-by or derelict building, you will invariably find torn out (always torn out, and scattered to the winds, the bongobush only lays its eggs singularly) pages from the Sunday Sport, or even from racier, more artistic publications.  Just wanted to let people know that even in a land the other side of the globe, with different customs and sensibilities, the bongobush still prevails.  Unless it's some Viz reading cyclist planting them in various locations and taking photos.  And there can't be that many of us that fit that description.

Pornography bottom right.  I'm not making this blog 18+ for that.  If it scars you for life, tough.

Awoke the next day at 6am, intentionally.  Was a bright and sunny day, although the sound of the wind whistling through the fence was an unwelcome threnody for the night (okay, i'm actually trying for the 'most pretentious word use' here).  Had some porridge, and then some salty pasta and sardines.  Water running low.  Then set off.  The wind leapt to greet me, and I probably struggled on for ten km.  I was pretty much alone on the road, but was fighting a constant battle to stay moving both forwards and in the right direction.  I'd be leaning into the wind, always ready to steer into the wind as it gusted and was going forwards at a walking pace.  A quick walking pace maybe, but not when you count the rests that were necessary.  But the most irritating thing, and when I say irritating I mean flashes of dark angry light in the mind, shouting at the sky, yelling anglo-saxon expletives into the heart of the tempest, pulling the handlebars up in such a rage that my heavily laden front wheel would buck into the air like a BMX.....the most irritating thing was being driven off the road into the deep gravel by the wind.  I must have looked a pretty crazy sight, balaclava, hat and sunglasses on, waterproof to protect me from the chill, screaming blue murder at the uncaring atmosphere.  I made less and less progress, resting more and more, in the lee of a hill, or a rock, as it became apparent that however hard I struggled, I was barely going to get any distance that day.

So, when a retired German couple from Munich pulled up into a motorhome, and asked if I was Ok and did I want a lift to Porvenir, I took them up on it.  The shame blossoms again writing this, and if I had really needed to I could have got water from some stream/ditch (the words are pretty interchangable at this time of year up on the plains), or, more sensibly, a nearby Estancia, but hell, this was someway from being fun, or even a fair challenge.  Goddam wind.  So, I rode with these guys for the 100km until Porvenir, after about 40km the landscape changed into a hilly place with canyons and arryos, it seemed considerably less windy and more hospitable, but hell, I'd taken the easy way out, and I might as well just ride all the way to Porvenir, where there awaited vast, steaming piles of empenadas, chocolate and juices.  But never again.  Never, for the remainder of this trip am I going to take a lift.  I've got to win back my lost honour - films and books have taught me there will be a hard quest ahead, fraught with peril, but it may be possible in the end.

Spent a night in Porvenir, colourful tin roofs aplenty, then took the ferry to Punto Arenas, where I spent four days in a beautifully restful hostel, El Fin de Mundo.  I forgot to actually take any pictures, but great, big, single beds with luxurious duvets (had my dorm to myself all but one night), a conservatory area with a massive pool table and murals everywhere, and a tv room where the owner and his friends were constantly playing classic rock.  And an effectively all-you-can-eat breakfast with cereal, bread, twenty different condiments, meat, fruit, juice, coffee.  Ahhhhhhhh yes.

Didn't really do a great deal, apart from quite a bit of writing, and read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (not nearly as good as Cryptonomicon, which is not a big slight, as I love that book, but still worth picking up).

Of course, I hadn't come this far to sit around reading and listening to classic rock.  I've probably done enough of both to last me a lifetime, and will probably have another couple of lifetimes worth under my belt by the time I ascend to Valhalla.  Now was the time to leave.

So, I set off on Friday 10th December, and this was the most joyous day of cycling by a long shot. Started off workmanlike, went through a freakish 5km strech where the heavens had obviously just emptied snow and hail several inches deep onto the road and surrounding fields....then just stopped at some invisible border.  But after this conditions were perfect. The sun shone!  The wind was slight, and was even at my back for one unbelivable stretch!  The road was smooth, and went through hills and plains, next to lakes, and mountains came distantly into view by the end of the day.  So, this day probably cycled about 165km in about seven hours, then slept in another roadside hut-cum-bus-shelter.  This isn't the transient/drifter like scenario it would be in Britain; there are huts opposite every Estancia so residents can wait for buses or hitch, but this is still a sparsely inhabited land, and most of the huts won't see anyone for days or weeks.  Besides, unfurling the tent, sleeping bag, mat, bags always leads to inertia in the morning as I lounge around, and takes time to securely fasten everything to the bike again.

The next day, the wind picked up again, and after I had travelled 50km I was a tantalising 35km from Puerto Natales.  A ridiculously small distance.....but not cycling into a near hurricane.  Seriously.  It was pretty damn close anyhow, so I camped behind a ridge, and slept as best I could whilst my tent whipped around me.


The view on the second day out....mountains approaching.....slowly,

The wind was hardly better the day after, but with a whole day in front of me I couldn't afford to lay up, so I inched, metre by metre, towards the town.  The spectacular mountain ridges became clearer on the horizon, wreathed with mist and cloud, the bay which Puerto Natales lies on sparkled beneath the late afternoon sun, and the ridge which streaks back from the town loomed, pointing at the journeys end.  So I made it in around 8:45pm last night, possibly the happiest I have been so far this trip! 

And I only wanted to make friends.....cows flee from my comradely embrace.

Me and Mr Beaver, making sure the message gets through

  

Approaching Puerto Natales, my glee can be seen shining off-screen,

What the hell.....more me, in current hostel.  There's a woody vibe.

Lovely hostel, town full of cafes and wooden buildings housing tour companies.  So, I'm going to lay up today, speak to my folks on Skype, hopefully watch Man Utd vs Arsenal, and eat a great deal of grilled meat and drink some wine.  And then....Torres del Paine.  Distinctive 'horned' mountains, around which there is spectacular trekking country, so plan on exercising some different muscles for a change.  Can't wait!

Dave x

PS, Small things that are great -

Peach yoghurt with fruit cake crumbled into it.
Chocolate.  However much I am carrying will get eaten.  No restraint.
1.5lt of drinkable wine for £2
Kiwis are cheap as hell
So are avacados
Guanacos hoppolling around the forests (yeah. don't bother. it's not a word.)

Ushuaia to Punto Arenas

Hello!  Well, things are underway.  But, not quite in the rapid, eating up kilometres like they were chocolate way in which I naively hoped.

Firstly, I rigged the bike up, attached my saddlebags, rucksac, jerry-rigged handlebar bag, said farewell to the friendly folk in the Ushuaia hostel, and left.  The wind had been picking up for half an hour, but I thought the rattling, whistling and whooshing must just be sound effects, a bit of atmosphere to create the right 'end of the world' feel for the start of the journey.  Left the hostel, went twenty metres down the road to the junction, stopped to wait for a gap in the traffic.  Almost got blown over whilst waiting.  Checking out the meteorological stats later, the wind was apparently 70km/h, with 100km/h gusts.  I decided to wait for the next day.  Later experience would prove that I had probably erred on the side of caution, as later events showed this to be a minor squall.

Feeling chargin, and a sense of shame at being so easily defeated, I decided at around 5:30pm to climb the Martial glacier just north of Ushuaia, by which time the wind had died down somewhat (by del Fuego standards anyhow).  Enjoying some bracing hail on the way to the foot of the mountain, I then took a path through some beautiful forest towards the glacier, before becoming convinced that I had in fact taken a circular route, and not the summit path as I had hoped.  Some ducking and diving work through the forest followed, then a successful effort at fording a small river, and I swiftly hiked up the mountain; time was getting on, and although it stays light until 10:30pm-ish, I didn't really want to be stuck up an icy mountain in the dark.

The Martial glacier is not really a glacier in the stereotypical sense of the word, it is just a large patch of ever present snow at the top of the mountain, which, at around 1200m, is pretty damn small by the Andean standards, of which it forms just about the last outcrop.  Still, it appears a lot higher than it is by the conditions that prevail up there, basically by dint of the whipping gales throwing powder into the air, with the microclimate ensuring a constant stream of snowdevils whirling and eddying around the upper reaches of the glacier.  This explains my general get-up in the pictures below - it was certainly cold and windy enough to numb any exposed skin in no time at all.

Looking up at the Martial Glacier

Attempting, and failing, to capture the snow eddies

Looking down towards Ushuaia and the Beagle Strait

Me, knew the balaclava was a good purchase

After sledging down from the top on my arse (intentionally, I'm not quite that much of an unco!)

Anyway, the next day I set off for real.  Took it relatively easy the first day, and probably only cycled about 80km, not helped by the fact I set off at 2pm after some red wine fueled fun the night before.  This, and the fact that I had to climb and descend over the two corderillas that dominate the bottom of Tierra del Fuego, meant I felt reasonably happy at calling it a day.  Unfortunately, once I had come down from the spectacular mountains, there was nowhere particularly inspiring to spend the night, so I ended up tucking my tent into a little alleyway into an inpenetrable scrub forest.  The problem with wild camping here is that I'm not aware of the unwritten rules that prevail in this part of the world.  Invariably, in every part of TdF, you will be cycling along, flanked on either side by never-ending fences 10 metres back from the road.  Camping in this 10 metre buffer zone is obviously okay, but did Napoleon leave his undefended baggage train on the main Austerlitz to Vienna road?  I haven't the foggiest, frankly, but as a comparable military strategist, I suspect not.  So, I chose to camp behind the fence, in a postion where my well-honed senses would be able to detect the tell-tale snap of a branch as an interloper closed on my position.  Accordingly, I was plagued by dreams of off-road motorcyclists hunting my tent, which segued into a bizarre mixture of a Streetcar Named Desire and an imaginary 1950s Argentinian gangster movie as my sleeping mind did some calisthenics.  Despite this,
I awoke refreshed.

Disturbing glimpse into my unconscious mind nonwithstanding, I offer some pictures of the Corderillas,

Actually, they're all pretty much either between the ranges, or after, but a suitably bleak theme is evident

Not really an attempt to get political, more an attempt to look piratical.  One which I fail with flying, Jolly Roger-style colours.  Taking one timed photo is enough, so this'll have to do.

Top of Garibaldi pass.  Don't know if it's named after the biscuit/Italian general.

Towards Tolhuin














After 40-50km of beautiful cycling the next day, I came to Tolhuin.  Water and caffeine levels were low, and the Panaderia del Union in Tolhuin is apparently an unmissable treat in these circumstances.  Tolhuin is a collection of loggers shacks, but the aforementioned bakery serves as a central hub for people from miles around; the area for which Tolhuin is the central village probably has a radius of 100km.  It has a great selection of empenadas, a selection of cakes and chocolates which would not be out of place on Upper St, and an aviary with parrots, toucans and parrakeets blaring their song out to allcomers.  After Tolhuin, I tried to get some distance towards Rio Grande in the remaining daylight hours, and it did indeed start to feel like the beginning of an epic journey.  The wind was enough to make cycling difficult, but not impossibly so.  More importantly, the landscape was like nothing I've ever cycled through before.  The mountains were grand, but in size and scope not too dissimilar to Scotland.  After Tolhuin though, the grasslands undulate for tens of miles in every direction.  Not in a flat, uninspiring fashion - that was to come - but with endless rivers meandering through the flat plains, hills rising here and there, and forests of dwarven trees bedecked with old mans beard keeping company with the road.  In a way it reminds me of the Teletubbies.  The land looks similar in places, rising and falling in such vast swathes that everything appears pristine and almost featureless; the only marks on the land at all are shadows and light cast by the sky on the undulating terrain.  Depending on your personal bent, you could say it almost looks like the world before most flora and all fauna was created (I'm thinking the Magician's Apprentice by CS Lewis, before the creation of things), or like a gaming
RPG, where the topography and physics engine has been established, but no detail has been added.

I'm aware I'm probably getting the gaming/programming terminology wrong, but hell, that's how it struck me.

Anyhow, camped in a magical forest type arena, photos below.  Saw loads of Guanacos stamping their feet and running from me, and a few red-headed woodpeckers flashing across the green woods, then went back to my tent for my camera.   Needless to say, such opportunities did not repeat themselves.  Also met a very friendly chap and his family from Rio Grande who were having a camp fire and playing football, who told me which side of the road/fence to camp on.  Apparently the left (heading north) is okay, but not the right.  He also invited me to stay at his place when I was passing through Rio Grande, but I respectfully declined, thinking the next day I would be well north of the city by nightfall.  I was wrong, and will go into this, probably, if this blog is anything to go by, at length, but for now I think it's time to stop babbling.

Okay, just to confirm, I'm not in Rio Grande now.  I'm not even in Argentina.  I'm in Punto Arenas, in Chile.  But my travails across the featureless plains of northern TdF are gonna have to wait until next post.  I plan to stay for two days when I get to Puerto Natales, 300km north of here, and will update everything then.  But yeah, the events in this blog happened a week ago.  I don't really go for structured, well thought out blog posts.  I make notes in my book when things happen, and then usually, after days rough camping, I get into a hostel, have a few glasses of wine whilst writing, and just write what comes to mind, totally ignoring my notebook.  I also mean to detail what I'm carrying at some point, probably in the next post, as this might cast some light on why it is so goddamn hard to cycle with the wind.  Basically, with bike and luggage I'm probably carrying getting on for 45 -50kg, possibly more when at full water/food levels.  Will take photos at some point of fully loaded bike, but suffice to say, it's quite different from cycling with no luggage, and lifting it over fences/up stairs is a reasonable feat, even for someone of my herculean physique (ha!).

Until later, x

Oh, actually, few more photosof dwarf forest camping ground. 

Southern Atlantic in distance!

Yeah?  Yeah.  Yeah!  Cheers for hat P, still going strong after twelve or so years!  It's seen so many staunch comrades come and go, but it never gets lost.

Yeah, formatting issues with text and pictures.  May sort out in future.  Yeah right.