We were now faced with an unexpected difficulty in our daily schedule; it was unpleasantly hot from about 2-5pm, although very nice biking from about 5:30pm to 9pm (remember, it's not dark until 10 or later). However, finding somewhere to pass a few hours mid-day was not easy, and riding from 9am to 9pm daily is more of a grind than we wanted. Today we decided to try having lunch at a restaurant in La Junta and then hanging out for a couple hours until the heat went down. Most of the town was closed when we arrived (we were just learning about the "everything is closed from 1-3pm routine"), but we found one restaurant willing to serve lunch in the form of a green salad, hard boiled eggs and a couple rolls. And queso fundo - which appeared to be from the same farm we had just bought at. The salad made us both queasy and we really needed a break afterward so we hung out in the park for quite a while watching the kids play.
Around 3 the market re-opened and we went looking for
provisions. Again there was no bread, only fruit cake! (Pan de
Pascua). We bought some beans, cold drinks, and other supplies. While
re-packing the bikes a pick-up truck stopped off and a couple
Europeans whom we recognized from the ferry trip a few days back
jumped out, said "gracias!" and the truck sped off again. We wondered
if it had taken them 3 days to hitch down this far or if they were
just taking their time.
Rolling south toward Puyuguapi we started seeing signs for a campsite ahead - confirmed by the lying bastard. The signs started looking promising, even enticing as pictograms of coffee cups and food were spaced at periodic intervals along the road. We were quite ready to stop for the day and happily turned off when we reached the grand entrance to a place which had (seemed) to advertise "cabins and camping" at the head of a lake. The place appeared to be a rather upscale resort, presumably for Santiago types who would come down by float plane or boat up to Puyuguapi. We were suddenly very aware that we were a couple of rather grubby, grimy, sweaty, stinky bicyclists, but that hadn't stopped us yet, so we found the office and inquired about camp sites. "No camping, only cabins" they told us. I protested that the sign on the road had a symbol for camping, and they informed us that the sign was 6 years old and really should be replaced soon, but there was an actual state camp-site another 4km down the road. We decided we weren't grubby enough to splurge on a cabin and went to the state site, which turned out to have slightly scary running water, reasonable sites and was completely deserted.
Next morning we descended once again to the coastline town of Puyuguapi. Here we went through the bread-chasing routine again. Store #1 did not have bread, but said that store #2 definitely sold bread, and while walking to store #2, we saw a "Se Vende Pan" (we sell bread) at yet a third shop. Store #2 also had no bread today - no reason given, just simply "No hoy" (not today), so we went to the third shop, which repeated the "No Hoy" and we were back on the fruitcake wagon again.
The day was overcast with occasional very light drizzle, a welcome
relief on our still-healing sunburns. (do you have any idea how much a
forehead sunburn hurts and itches under a hot bike helmet peddling
uphill on a hot day? I wish I didn't either). The road ran along the
coast for a while before turning inland again, apparently toward
another mountain pass as indicated by the lying bastard with a grand
total of 3 contour lines to cross (which translates to around 1500 ft
to climb in this particular case).
By some statistical anomaly we met most of the other bicyclists we'd see for the trip on the road this day (and one the following morning). The first two were two American early-20-somethings who had in fact gone down Chiloe (not having asked about the boats) and then found that there was a ferry to Puerto Cisnes which they had taken. They had less than 2 weeks left in their trip and were hustling back to catch the next ferry out of Chaiten. Coming over the pass we met two Norwegians and a Swede (I think..... they were all Scandinavian anyway). They had 10 MONTHS to play, had started at Ushuaia (furthest southern city you can fly to) and were heading for Alaska! They were also hauling a laptop, satellite phone and other such geek gear, so it would be a well connected 10 months.
We had seen cryptic signs leaving Puyuguapi about the road being closed from X to Y points, but were having trouble matching the occasional random numbers on signs on the side of the road with X and Y. We camped around km 169 hoping that the road wasn't really closed at km 165, or at least, not closed to bicycles. In the morning, another European biker with excessive free time went by and reported much construction but that the road was open. However, after biking a full 4km in the morning we came to a set of barricades and a guard who informed us that the road was indeed closed for the next 5 km until 2pm. Ah well, we needed a break anyway. The weather cleared and we continued on to Villa Amengual, a pretty little town ringed by mountains. The sign approaching said "Pop 152", but they had the (only) main street all torn up for paving. Can't stop progress I guess. They had a pretty large store for the population, but still no bread.
Shortly after Villa Amengual we found to our great horror that the
road had been recently "improved", which is to say, smoothed, grated,
and spread with fresh gravel. The washboards had been smoothed out,
but on bike tires it was like biking on gravel. Our already slow speed
slowed to a crawl and we crept past another lake and eventually found
a camping spot. This one turned out to have an active cow population
which wandered through our campsite all night but didn't try to eat
the tent.
The hell of improved road continued in the morning, broken occasionally by unimproved washboard. We met another cyclist from Ushuaia and assured him that the road would get better, but he had an even better promise for us; "The pavement starts about 10km north of Villa Manihueles" he told us. This was well before the pavement is indicated on the map and very welcome news. We stopped by Lago Aguirre Cerda for lunch and then plunged into the next construction zone. Hot asphalt was indeed being laid on this hot day, and after slogging through the freshly grated, soft dirt on the shoulder, we were allowed up onto the heavenly smooth black surface. With a downhill run, and the wind at our backs, our speed easily doubled and we flew the rest of the way to Manihueles.
In the afternoon we continued to fly down a fantastically beautiful
river valley. Spring was in high gear, everything was green and fresh
and there were lupines everywhere. We stopped for a bit by the river
to dip our feet in and debated about camping, but progress was so easy
we decided to press on. Stupid Americans. Always stop at idyllic camp
sites. After we passed up the river camping the valley widened out, we
lost site of the river and soon came to the road to Puerto
Aisen. There were plenty of fields, but only small putrid streams. It
was late and we'd already done over 75km for the day, but there was no
where to stay.
We decided to use the last of our water for dinner and
then do the last 20km to Puerto Aisen. It was flat as a pan, and
paved, but we were biking into a stiff wind and it was a long 20km.
We arrived with the darkness to a grubby little town, which we biked
around twice without seeing a
single hospedaje. How could this be?! No help from Lonely Planet -
they only mention Puerto Aisen in passing to say that it was once a
port but has since silted up. Finally we asked a policeman who
directed us to a place a few blocks down on a side street. 100km on
the bikes for our longest day yet. At least the grubby town had a
bakery! We treated ourselves to donuts, pastries and fresh bread
and made plans to move on to Coyhaique first thing next morning.
Well, second thing, first thing we wanted to go to the Lan Chile
office to find out if we could move our flight to Torres del Paine a
few days closer since we'd missed the first part of the bike
trip. This turned out to be a good move since upon presenting our
tickets, the booking agent informed me that, of the remaining three
flights on our itinerary, the first two didn't exist, and the computer
had no record of us being booked on the last flight at all! This made
us a bit of a problem, sitting there with tickets which stated we had
bought something which the computer explained didn't exist. The
ticket agent advised us that it would take hours to straighten out so
we elected to continue to Coyhaique and try again there.
Again we had a paved road with a rather stiff wind - this time at our
backs, and progress was swift. We had promised ourselves and easy day
- 60km or so on paved roads downwind should be a snap. The lupines
continued to be spectacular and the first 35km or so flew by. Then we
came to the end of the valley we'd been following and it was time to
climb. The road had been carved out of the northern valley wall, at one
point going through "El Tunel" before finishing the ascent to the
higher planes outside of Coyhaique. The wind was practically pushing
us uphill, but it was still quite a grind.
This time in looking for a lunch spot we were trying find shelter from
the wind, which came in the form of a couple old carts stacked with
wood at the crest of the ridge before Coyhaique. The carts were in on
"private land" through an un-locked gate. We opened the gate, wheeled
our bikes in, close the gate after us and went over to sit in the
shelter of the carts. We had just finished hauling out all the lunch
fixings when a shiny pickup truck pulled up to the gates. A boy jumps
out, opens the gates, closes them again behind the truck, the driver
gives us a big friendly wave and they keep right on going.
We dropped down into the Coyhaique valley. and were suddenly presented
with a large city (pop 45,000 or so) and so many choices! Where to
stay? We looked at a couple hospedajes and were not impressed. We
tried to find another but went by it twice before we encountered a man
walking the other way who stopped us and said (in English!) "Are you
looking for Hospedaje Baquedano?" which indeed we were. He was the
owner, and also happened to be a high school English teacher and had
spent 2 years in Maine as an exchange teacher! (I grew up in
Maine). He had some very nice rooms complete with showers, kitchenette
and a gorgeous view out the back porch which basically looked over a
cliff. We could have stayed for a week, and should have stayed for
more than the one night but for the stupid American complex.
Refreshed we wandered around Coyhaique, a trade-town with a heavily
German influence. We had dinner at a very touristy and German looking
restaurant (Gut Bier!) complete with the plump little Frau waitresses
who, when questioned, said they spoke not a word of German. The food
was excellent, the chocolate shop very good and then we went back to
Lan Chile to battle it out for our tickets. It took the better part of
an hour, but fortunately the ticket agent had a more comprehensible
accent than we had been dealing with in the countryside. The first two
flights (which would take us from Balmaceda, near Coyhaique, back to
Puerto Montt and then down to Punt Arenas) were re-arranged to occur 4
days hence. That much was easy, but the agent kept informing us that
there were no available flights back from Punta Arenas. I eventually
realized that the hangup was not that the flights were full, but that
our tourist-class type deal was only allotted a few seats per flight
and those were all taken. I protested that I was holding in my hand a
ticket for such and so flight, regardless of what the computer
said. The agent couldn't over-ride the computer so she called the home
office, and after about 10 minutes said simply "ok".
We spent the rest of our short stay finishing up post-cards, getting cleaned up and re-provisioning. We now had 4 days left to bicycle and planned to go down to Puerto Ibanez, take the ferry over to Chile Chico, check out that area, and then head back to Balmaceda to catch our flight south. Such was the plan well laid and soon laid to waste as will be seen in the next chapter.
