Punta Arenas - El Calafate
2.-16.2.2024
I watched the foggy sea from the ship's window. Sometimes I turned my gaze towards the TV on the travel deck, which advertised the rugged and mountainous nature of Chile.
When the ship finally arrived at the port, I drove from the deck to the rainy Punta Arenas. On Friday afternoon, I headed towards the soon-to-be-closing bike shops, because my power source, the Son-branded hub dynamo, had unexpectedly broken a few days ago. This dynamo, built into the hub of the front wheel, produces electricity when driving, and now the power connector was torn off the hub. If the hub is not tightened to a really tight to front fork, the hub can slowly rotate in its own time. This should not happen, as the connected power wires do not allow rotation. I noticed it too late — the connectors supplied by the manufacturer were unnecessarily tightly attached, so when the accident occurred, the dynamo hub itself was the weakest link and it broke.
I found a nice bike shop in the city, where I arrived soaking wet and they told me they could fix a broken flat connector. With the shop's wifi connection, I was also able to send a message to the manufacturer in Germany about the problem, but no answer was expected until the next week.
One friendly employee, Aaron offered me affordable accommodation in his home near a bike shop, which I was happy to agree to. 15 000 Chilean Pesos per night equivalents 15 euros. The price level here in Patagonia is surprisingly high anyway. Food costs the same as in Finland and many products even more!
He also drove me to the city center with his car, so that I could buy a Chilean prepaid card. We returned to the bike shop to wait for the end of working hours. I didn't know how long I had to wait here, so I joined the celebration of the work week at the moment when a bottle of beer was handed to my me and the boss had brought a small take-away to snack on.
The store's door was locked at exactly 18:00 and I was finally able to calm down, because I got my own room in the family home for as long as I wanted. The warm shower, kitchen and loan bicyclr were also freely available.
There were no English speakers in the family, so getting to know each other was quite distant. However, in the evening I smelled good food and noticed that the hostess was hanging out in the kitchen. The food was tortillas like Enchilada, baked in an oven dish, which had been baked from scratch. I praised the food, and said that I had never seen anything like this before. I communicated with Google's speech translator and the hostess told me what the food contains.
After some time, I got my own plate of delicious dinner. The couple, on the other hand, lived their own life in their bedroom, where they also ate all their meals while watching TV. There was also one person living in the house, who finally didn't find out if it was the host's son or little brother. I didn't even dare to ask that after the first meeting.
I was in a bit of a hurry to continue the journey, as my wife was arriving by plane to meet me in El Calafate. So I couldn't wait for the hub dynamo manufacturer's answer the following week, when the bike shop offered to do the repair already during the weekend. The repair finally failed and the Dynamo's electrical connectors were now completely destroyed. It didn't affect the driving itself in any way, but when it came to electricity, the hub was unrepairable. I finally continued my journey only after three days. Rest was needed, because the merciless headwinds of Tierra del Fuego had exhausted this long-distance traveler.
On the outskirts of the city, the big dogs were very aggressive and almost bite me with their teeth grinning. The evening was crowned by a unique tent site, which was found in between the high and steep beach slopes. From there there were great views of the Atlantic.
In the morning, I decided that getting the bike here down the slope along a steep path through the spiky bushes had been so difficult that it was better to continue downhill now, all the way to the beach. The dense beach sand exposed under low tide was an excellent driving surface for wide 2.6-inch tires. A few kilometers along the deserted seashore was a great start to the day.
In the afternoon, I noticed an ostrich-looking animal of a herd and had to look twice to see if I could see it correctly. It was an emu from here, which is the largest but flightless bird in Panamerica at 30 kg. The next day, I saw a skunk familiar from cartoons. The road was like animal safari.
Then I arrived in Puerto Natales. The last kilometers downhill were tricky. When driving with constant power, my speed alternately yo-yoed between 7 km/h and 30 km/h. For a fee, I was able to leave my bike at the hostel for the day and at the same time I took a shower to wash.
I continued the journey after a few hours, after I had all the business done. The day was hot and now I wanted ice cream. I stepped on the city's best reviews for the ice cream cafeteria and bought a good portion of ice cream from a large selection.
A passer-by on the street noticed my bike and told me that she herself was on a bike ride. We started talking and this Evelina told me that she was from Sweden and I told her that I was from Finland. I was confused when he soon changed the language of the conversation to Finnish. His other parent was Finnish. It was funny to be able to speak Finnish for a long time.
Next, I pedaled out of the city back to the uninhabited roads and found a wonderful tent spot with a wonderful view of the snow-capped mountains over a small sea bay. The next day, I eagerly continued to approach Torres del Paine National Park, because the snow-capped mountains had only been seen at the beginning of my journey.
The roads to the national park and in the park itself were absolutely miserable and roughly bumpy dirt roads. The flow of passing cars and tourist buses raised insane clouds of dust and I had to ride a buff scarf with my face, which slightly filtered the thick air.
In the large center of the park entrance, things immediately started on the wrong foot. The first thing I thought was to dispose of a little trash, as I usually do when I arrive at a big tourist place, where you can find trash cans.
I couldn't find the trash cans anywhere, so I went to throw a liter-sized garbage bag in the trash of the toilet. The customer service representatives soon came to complain that you can't bring your own trash here, but you have to take them to the nearest city. I told you that it would be a few days cycling there by bike. I had originally come to the center to buy an expensive 25 euro entrance to the area.
I noticed a note on the wall saying that the sale on the spot has stopped and asked to plan the trip in advance online. The staff didn't mention anything about the tickets to me, so I finally continued my journey without paying and the trash was also left in the trash when I had already put it there once and the staff forgot about it. The oncoming cyclists had also warned about the high tent fees of the campsites, which ranged between €19 and €50 per night.
According to the rules, you were not allowed to stay here even in your own car in the parking lot, so it was possible to charge tourist anything for official overnight stays. I stopped by one restaurant hotel to buy an automatic coffee priced at almost €4, so that I could charge the phone and use WiFi. There were no telephone network connections in the park at all. I found a hidden tent site with wonderful mountain views, where I spent the night secretly. I mumbled that I must be one of the park's coldest guests, just as Taneli Roininen also wrote about himself in his blog. (Link [Improvising in Torres del Paine] (https://www.gonebikefishing.com/2017/06/torres-del-paine/\))
So that my camping does not cause damage to nature, when I left, I raised the grasses that were pressed under the tent footprint.
The next day I drove through the park. The high mountains were really close the whole way and were very impressive. Condor eagles also floated in an iconic look in the upper air of the mountains. The wingspan is more than 2 meters with these gigantic birds. After leaving the national park, the type of terrain changed again to a boring desert-like and vast wilderness called pampas.
A local car driving by stopped at me and gave this long-distance traveler an apple and straw juice as a snack. I was happy to get something fresh in my mouth after a long time.
I started looking for a place to spend the night. Pampa is prone to strong winds, and in addition to yellow tufts of grass, there is usually no other growth within a radius of hundreds of square kilometers. In the end, I found bushes, where I was able to have wind protect by lifting the bike over the chest-height wire fence.
Here, it is customary to fence all the roadsides with steel or barbed wire, and sometimes there are dead guanacos stuck upside down in them. This time, the only option for masking was to go far enough from the road. From a distance, the dark green tent would no longer stand out in the eyes of passing motorists and it mixes well with tall bushes of the same color. This is how it's nice to sleep at night when you know you can be at peace. I tried to take a great landscape photo of the tent, but the landscape was not very wonderful with its yellow meadows and mounds.
After a while, there was a rustling from the bush and a strange and big animal came out from the hole, which I didn't recognize. The armored and slightly hairy animal the size of a small dog later identified itself as an armadillo. It was quite a sympathetic and curious creature. It did a thorough inspection of the bike and used to lick the tire and spokes. I don't think it cared much, but it was doing its own thing. I had unknowingly set up a tent in its front yard.
The sunset happened to be at its best when I later came out of the tent to brush my teeth. I gasped for a little breath from the view, when the wide meadows glowed golden and the sky had fallen into the colors of the flame. The massive color episode lasted 5 minutes and was perhaps the most impressive sunset I've ever seen.
I was able to fall asleep contentedly, because the day had offered a lot of what I've expected to experience on the trip: mountains and sunsets.
The next day I made it to Cerro Castillo in the Chilean border, where I could buy more food, but there was no fresh vegetables or fruit anywhere. On the other hand, you are not allowed to bring any fresh food across the border between Argentina and Chile.
I went to the Chilean border station to stamp my paper ticket so I could leave the country. The officer was surprised that my passport does not have any kind of stamp or evidence that I have arrived in the country.
After wondering for a while, it turned out that I had only visited the Argentina border station when I came to Chile earlier. I thought I was already in Chile then, but no. After a while, the officer let me go, but he said there would be problems if I came to the country again. I was pretty confused about what happened.
On the Argentina side, I was happily welcomed and I continued on my way. I drove almost 60 kilometers, looking at the sand and asphalt roads. A small tailwind hastened the journey comfortably.
I then arrived at the AGVP station "in the middle of nowhere". It's some kind of police-like entity of the regional administrative agency. I got a sheltered place for my tent in the backyard, a warm shower and a wifi connection for free. In addition, electricity from the outdoor socket, when the massive aggregate was running. This really loud device next to me made noise until midnight, when I finally fell asleep.
The next slice was a dirt road with a length of more than 60 km. It was a shortcut on my route. The road was really bumpy, so I lowered the tire pressure so low that the tires were half empty. It softened the ride nicely and was also faster to drive. The day was really scorching and hot. I rode for a couple of hours in just short bike bibs and the sweat flowed.
There was very little traffic. Only a few tourist cars on the road passed me. All the car encounters were the same: a man drove from the couple and a woman was sitting next to him. The drivers looked bored on this bad road, which was only possible to drive slowly and constantly looking for the least bumpy point on the road.
All the women, on the other hand, smiled widely and someone also took a video of me. I guess I was a rare entertainment for motorists on this long-winded road.
The bumps stopped when the tires touched the paved road in the evening. At this point there was again an AGVP station. There, many cyclists had set up their tent on the concrete floor of the vestibule to protect them from the wind. The station was one of the few wind-protected "maintenance places" at huge pampa.
Another cyclist from the opposite direction arrived at the station exactly at the same time. He also had a mountain bike and light equipment. There was also fly fishing equipment. He was only the second bikepacking cyclist I met during my entire trip.
I talked to him for a long time and ate food. He said that the headwind was strong and he had left El Calafate almost 12 hours ago.
The wind would change during the night, so I thought it was my moment right now. The wind would only be favorable to me for the next few hours. I checked that there would be a mountain pass and a few hundred meters of ascent. I could find place for a night to stay on top of it. I immediately set off so that I could get there before dark. I reached the top along the gently rising road for half-free, winged by the tailwind.
I was excited again, because I was hunting for an exciting tent site. I couldn't get the tent to the very top, because the wind was so strong. I found a very nice tent spot on the lower slope. I set up the tent at dusk just before dark. The guanacos whizzed to me because I had come too close to their place to stay.
The wife was coming in two days by plane to nearby El Calafate, so there was no rush anymore. I stayed in the tent until late in the afternoon until I ran out of drinking water. I then skied down the mountain to the river. From afar, it looked like a green snake with its lush growths, meandering across the yellow pampa.
I set up the tent in the shade of tall bushes next to the river. After a while, another cyclist arrived to set up his own tent next to me. We had met the day before at the police station. He was a middle-aged man from Argentina and was driving around South America along the coast. He showed a big bag of food, which the oil drilling workers passing by had handed him through the window. There were three large ready-made portions of food and three breads in the bag. They all had to be eaten today, because they wouldn't keep fresh until tomorrow.
He had a 3-liter pot, in which the food could just barely fit. My alcoholic cooker didn't fit under his pot, so we used the alcohol kettle he made himself. It was quite an uneconomical kettle and the flames were raging in every direction. We both had very little fuel, so we didn't manage to heat the food to more than 30 degrees.
Decent food tasted really good even when it was cooler in the scorching weather and was really delicious and energetic workman's food. The soup-like food had chopped vegetables, potatoes and a lot of meat. After eating, I remembered afterwards that the guy had poured water from a bottle into the pot with the food. He had fetched it from the nearby river. I had read online that under no circumstances should you drink the water of this lush river without filtering or boiling it. The local people had also warned about it.
I asked the guy if he had filtered the water. He said he doesn't even own a filter. So I had consumed untreated river water. The atmosphere was a bit spoiled after that. Stomach disease is one of the worst and it makes you feel really runny. I've had too many stomach issues in the last few years anyway, so this was a really stupid risk. I felt stupid. Fortunately, there were no symptoms the next day, but it can take closer to a month for the parasites to spread in the body. Fortunately, now that I'm writing this, I can state that there have been no consequences.
I slept really long in the morning, recovering from the stress of the trip, and the guy had already continued his bike trip. I stayed in the lush river oasis all day. I made a travel shower out of a plastic bag, which I hung on a branch. Its already perforated bottom offered a nice shower from the river water of about 30 degrees.
I drove to the airport in the evening, where I found a completely hidden tent spot behind a tall and dense forest.
Jenny arrived at the airport in the morning and we jumped into the minibus. The bike fit in the trailer and we soon got to the hotel. Now it was nice to be able to go on vacation for 10 days and take a break from cycling.
