I shouldn't have left you.
I'm in the splendidly named Villa O'Higgins. Named after the illegitimate son of a Sligo-born viceroy of Chile and his native mistress. Why the Spanish crown were enlisting Irish dudes to rule their empire I'm not sure, although I suspect it involved the craic in some manner. It's a small town of wooden houses with corrugated tin roofs on the shore of Lago O'Higgins. No ATMs, a few small places selling basic groceries, and loads of onery chickens and proud cockerels wandering the streets. But it does have a municipal wifi network covering the town, and so i'm writing this today. There will be no photos, as this would require me dedicating several hours to each picture I upload, but I'll write down a few things.
Perring back into the mists of time, I seem to remember my last blog was after I'd been to Torres del Paine. Well, since then I've celebrated the new year in a barren semi-desert, sending a few solitary toasts out to folk, been to El Calafate, where I laid up for a while with a cold and a nice case of sunburnt, cracked lips that made eating a painful experience - not the thing you want when an all-you can eat meat grill has been on your mind for the preceeding three days. I then headed out to Perito Mereno glacier to check out some ice. And damn impressive ice it was too. Massive house-sized chunks calving off, crashing into the pale blue waters and sending monstrous ripples towards you, and thunderous crashes echoing off the glacier wall. After that, onward to El Chaiten, and yet more cursing, placating, raging and challenging the heavens and their attendant flatulant gusts. The plan would usually be to arise at 5am and cycle for six or seven hours before the wind became intolerably strong. Then I might spend an hour or two walking over a dry river pan, stepping over the various skulls, vertebrae and femurs of animals swept downstream with the winter thaw, until i got to the lake and could refill my water bottles.
However, eventually, after an early start, I made it to El Chaiten at 8am. The landscape changes markedly in the last 30km or so, from arid grasses every which way, to glacial rivers and occasional stands of trees. El Chaiten is ringed by rocky outcroppings, rising a couple of hundred metres into the air, and has the air of a town half-finished. There are hostels, wooden planked restaurants and artisanal brewery pubs, and a vast amount of unfinished sub-structures for what may one day become cabins, hotels and houses. It's a small town that basically exists for tourists who come to hike around Mt Fitzroy and the surrounding peaks, it's damn expensive to buy food and drink, but it's a pleasant place. The only nod at nightlife it has is a tango bar, which is a great-looking two storey wooden pub, open til six am or so, with a proprieter and proprietess who take the tourists through some tango steps, and resemble the head vampire and succubus from an old Hammer horror film - the women is pretty much a more vampish Mystic Meg (for my UK audience, that one).
Anyhow, I hiked in the Fitzroy range, which is lenga forests at the low altitudes, and ice-blue glacial lakes, rocky scree and vertiginous outcroppings at the upper heights. Some stunningly beautiful places; I've got what even my self-critical personality reckons are some shit-hot photos of Lago Las Tres, and some pretty badly done shots of Fitzroy at dawn. No, I wasn't just getting to bed after a hard nights drinking in camp. Yes, I may have just been getting up for a piss, and dawn was a happy coincidence, but still, it's one of the must-see scenes in Argentina, and my photos don't come close to doing it justice.
Anyway, after this I cycled the 40km ripio to Lago del Desierto, a beautiful ride through forests, mountains and rivers that are pretty much the stock in trade round these parts, only to find that the ferry was 'not working'. Not sure whether this was because the pilots were unavoidably drunk in town, or because of a mechanical fault, but it necessisated a couple of days camping. After I had tired of this diversion, I did a quick reccy on the lakeside track, which was a seriously slippy and steep travck around trees, boulders and streams, but I decided it was doable, if hard. So, packed my stuff into my rucksac, so my bike was easily liftable, and got ready to go overland. However, when I got down to the lake, I realised the boat was finally ready to sail, so took an easy 45 minute ferry, as opposed to the day long portage on the hill trail.
At the other end, you meet the friendly Argentinian customs officials - the less busy the border stop, the less people appear to give a shit about searching bags for contraband onions or salami, and camped there for the night. The friendly german bikers awoke me at 8am to see if i wanted to use the horses as pack animals to take my luggage (a horseman takes over luggage if you want to pay), but, as a man confident in my herculean strength, I declined. If only I had declined and then got out of bed, I would have saved two days. But no. Such is not my way. Instead, after much snoozing of my alarm, I woke at 1pm, and finally got going at half three - I was under the impression that the ferry the other side went this morning, so any rush was unnecessary and pointless. After consultation with recently arrived travellers, I realised the boat returned at 5pm to pick up cyclists, but by that time, such information was definitely pointless, as I was not going to make it. So, I climbed up the muddy hill trail, fording streams, bike on shoulder, scooted over the middle sections, and wheeled down the far side. The reputation of the pass was slightly overplayed - it wasn't particularly hard - but I still had a wait of two nights the other side. So.....I waited, sitting on the dock of the bay, camping in an estancia, and here I am.
So, tomorrow I set off on the Carrera Austral. The root of it, Villa O'Higgins, is a locus for cyclists, passing through from north or south, and the hostel/camping ground where they all congregate, El Mosco, is justifiably famous, a wooden lodge with beautiful art on the walls, whale ribs hanging outside, and a bunch of friendly folk passing through, and an extremely helpful and charismatic owner. Am getting ready to live on straightened rations for the next five or six days - there are no cash machines until Cohaique, so my diet will be pasta, porridge and occasional injections of apples, chocolate and hopefully fish, if my skills are up to the catching. The rivers and lakes are fly-fishing meccas, with trout and salmon thronging the waterways - whilst waiting for the ferry I spotted occasional trout leaping to the surface for flies, so i will see if my spool of wire and small hooks can tempt any fish in - I have no real equipment apart from that, so am going to see if the scaly beasts can be tempted by worms, and supplement my dinner with some protein. Either way, am looking forward to the route ahead - the landscape is a breathtaking combination of glaciers, waterfalls and forests, there are thermal pools, a town with no roads, only wooden walkways, and beautiful camaping spots aplenty.
So....salud! Speak to you all in Cohaique. I'll do a more self-indulgently winding, blathering, blarneying blog then. x
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