This is going to be a little out of order because we haven't done a blog about our trek round Mt Fitzroy yet, but it shall come soon and I want to get this down now
I'll delve back here a little to when we went to Punta Arenas to try to get Sara new brake pads. I was a little concerned about the condition of Sara's back tyre, so I talked to the mechanic about it and he seemed confident it's be fine until we got further North to Bariloche or even Santiago....The trip North from El Chalten (where we trekked round Monte Fitzroy) along Argentina's ruta 40 was a long, dusty and incredibly windy one. Our road was paved until a little nothing town called Tres Lagos where we filled up on petrol and from there we headed onto the worst gravel road we'd been on the whole trip and to make matters worse there was a howling, gusty crosswind. We had about a truck tyre's width to ride on and a pile of loose gravel on either side of that just waiting to steal any traction we had if we should be blown slightly off course.
We stayed a night in a little centre called Gobernador Gregores where we stayed in an apartment style room and enjoyed some local mate. Then the next day was on Northward in similar conditions. After about 1 hr's riding we had possibly one of the funniest incidents of our trip when Sara accidently ran into the back of me (at slow speed) when I had stopped to talk to her. Her brake lever had come loose and rotated around the handle to a point where she couldn't reach it. lol! So, we rectified the issue with the brake handle and went back to riding.
A little while late I decided that I wanted to stop and get some picutres of Sara riding on this dead straight dirt road in the middle of nowhere, so I went ahead and got some pics as she approached me. I was however struggling to keep my bike from falling over due to the wind whilst taking them and so, as Sara passed, I was muttering to myself, "please don't stop, don't stop, just keep on going"... then she stopped, and inevitably the bike fell over. The only damage was that the brake level had broken off and we had a spare, so after setting the bikes up so they wouldn't fall we set about changing her lever.
We then continued on to a servo which marked a fork in the road named Bajo Caracoles. It was early in the afternoon so we decided to head further on and make the town of Perito Moreno. We were about 4kms from Perito Moreno travelling about 80km/hr down the now paved road into town when I looked in my rear view mirror and saw a sight that litteraly made my heart stop. Sara fell at speed, the bike flipping from 1 side to the other. Thankfully she got back up almost immediately and was trying to move the bike by the time I had gotten back to her. She was ok, her biking gear did an excellent job of protecting her, except that she was seriously shaken! The bike had a flat back tyre. It appears that she had got a punture and the innertube had turned, ripping the valve out of the tube and causing it to deflate quickly which meant that Sara lost control of the bike. Other than that, the brake handle was broken (again) and the handlebars slightly bent.
We managed to hoble into the town, Sara riding Dot and be on Doug riding in 1st gear the whole way. It was while we were in town looking for a place to stay and assess the bike when we ran into Miriam, a biker that we had previously met in Ushuaia. She was having bike problems and was staying at the Municipal campgrounds, so we joined her there.
The following day we changed Sara's rear inner tube with our spare and Sara, with Miriams help, managed to get the 2 pieces of her brake handle welded back together. It wasn't perfect, but it'd do for now.
I could not have been more proud of Sara, when the next day, she got back on Doug again to continue our journey. I think so many people might have packed it in after a scare like that. We headed over the border back into Chile. Heading towards the Carreterra Austral. We had heard that the scenery along there is amazing and also that the road is in better condition than the ruta 40 and with much less wind.
We reached the town of Chile Chico where we tried to extract some cash, but the only atm in town had none... no worries, we thought. We still had about 60 000 Chilean Pesos (about $120 Aus) and it was only a day or 2's ride to Coyhaique or Cochrane where we could get more. So we set off along possibly the most amazing road of our ride, a dirt road winding round the cliffs on the side of a magnificently blue lake. The scenery was spectacular! and I was greatly enjoying the ride... until Sara stopped. I returned to her to see what the problem was... the rear tyre which we had changed was flat again. I figured we must have pinched the tube when we put it in. Not long after stopping (about 2pm) some travellers stopped to help us. They tried to pump up the tyre with their compresor, but to no avail. We said that we needed a truck to put the bike on and just then a police truck (ute) passed by. We flagged them down and the travellers told them what we needed. Apparently they had some urgent stuff to do in Chile Chico, so they said they'd come back and help us in about 2 - 3 hrs.
...so we sat... and we waited... in the cold wind.... we watched the horses... and the cows... and waited... until about 8pm when a truck passed us by. They stopped and we asked if we could put Sara's bike in the back. Unfortunately they were going in the opposite direction to Chile Chico, but the said they would take us to the next town on their route. It turned out "Pablo" and "Edwardo" were delivering fruit, so after some interesting manouvering we got Doug into the back of their truck, Sara jumped in the front and we headed on.
Soon we came to a tiny little town (the name escapes me), just as it was getting dark (must have been about 10 or 11pm). Our rescuers said they could drop us here or take us on to Puerta Guadal, a larger town another hour or 2 on. It was evident we weren't going to get any help in this town so we decided to continue on. It was while Edwardo and Pablo were delivering there fruit that I noticed that my headlight was dimming and going out, then back on again and after stopping my bike, I couldn't get the power to come back on again... SHIT!!
So, I quickly ripped off my panniers and seat to get to the electrics and found a wire that was loose. I reconnected it and taped it and the bike seemed to come on ok now... seat and panniers back on and I was ready to follow them to Puerto Guadal... I thought. As soon as I started riding my headlight started flashing on and off. I was riding in the dark behind a truck kicking up mountains of dust on an unfamiliar dirt road. I didn't want to stop. What if I lost the truck? I don't know these guys and they've got Sara with them... What if there's a fork in the road up ahead, I'd have no idea where to go without the truck to follow. So I pushed on. I spent a long time just following one of the truck's tail lights to try to keep in it's wheel line, but after a while I was struggling to keep up.... I took a corner too fast and went off the side of the road. Luckily it was into a soft landing in some bushes.
The trick then was to get the bike started again. The electrics obviously had a loose wire and were coming on and off. I found I was able to get enough power if I jumped up and down on the bike for a while with my finger on the starter. Eventually the wire would connect long enough for the bike to start. After after 3 attempts to ride it out of the bushes (after finally realising it was still in 2nd gear) I got it back on the road and took a look at the damage.
Unfortunately the frame for one of my panniers had completely snapped off. They had been cracking around the welds previously. The truck now gone, I had no choice but to limp on, holding one of the panniers to the side of the bike. I had only gone a couple of hundred meters when I saw a figure running back down the road towards me. It was Sara of course. After not being able to see my headlight for a while, Sara had asked the guys to stop and was coming back to look for me. We headed to the truck and I put my panniers in the back and we set off again. This time I gave the truck much more distance in order to not be directly in the dust and this helped a lot.
Eventually we reached Puerto Guadal and the guys pointed us to a patch of grass where we could set up our tent and they were going to sleep in the truck. We'd get the bike out in the morning. We were too tired to argue or think, so we crashed there from about 2am to 6:30am.
We got up the next day, unloaded Sara's bike and thankes Pablo and Edwardo for all their help. Next we moved to the local campsite, an incredibly exposed rocky beach on the side of the lake and set up camp there and set the bikes up to work on them. Next I rode back to my crash site of the previous night to try to find the missing section of my pannier frame, but to no avail.
We then found the location of the only mechanic in town and took the broken parts of my pannier frame to him. He did possibly the worst welding job I have ever seen to put them back together (I had to bite my tongue when he started welding without even a mask on) and bent them roughly back to the shape they should be. Despite the missing part, I had enough to at least secure each box at 2 or 3 points to the bike.
We didn't have another inner tube, but we pulled Sara old one out. The hole wasn't too big, so we put a patch on it, but by that time it was getting late and we stopped for the night.
The next daythen set about putting the patch innertube back in... this time I KNEW I pinched it... insert absolute frustration and tyre irons being thrown!! I don't actually remember the previous time I've lost it like that... it usually takes a lot to get me riled. After calming down I took the innertube to the mechanic (it was a Sunday, so I wasn't sure if I could get any help). I was of the opinion that the tube was beyond repair, but he just wacked a couple more patches on and it seemed to be holding air. This time I got him to put it back in the tyre for me. He didn't even charge us anything. We were so excited that we were going to get out of this town! We packed up in record time and hit the road again.
We had decided that we'd stop in Puerto Tranquilo, about 150kms down the road. It was only when we just got there that I looked at Sara's back tyre to see that it had gone flat AGAIN! It was to be expected that maybe one of the patches wouldn't hold though. We decided that we couldn't handle this one today. We got ourselves set up at a nice campsite and decided we'd head into a town for a beer and there'd be no talk of plans or anything until we had done so.
That was when we saw the 2 bikes loaded with gear at the little cafe at the petrol station!! A closer look revealed that they had the same size back tyre as us. We headed straight in and met 2 lovely Brazillian guys. They happily gave us their spare inner tube and refused to take any sort of payment, despite our best efforts!! Once again our luck was see-sawing, bad 1 minute, good the next.
The next day I wasn't taking any chances. I found a tyre guy in the town and took Sara's tyre their for him to change. All done... Hurray! At this point we decided that we were tired of playing mechanic and being stresed all the time, so we took the afternoon off anf took a boat ride to the Marble Chaple, a very interesting rock formation on the edge of the amazingly turquoise lake. The boat even went into one of the larger caves in the rock.
The next day we were up and excited to get moving. That's when we saw the dark rain clouds across the lake. We had previously be warned by Miriam not to ride here when the road was wet as it gets very slippery and in some parts the water just runs over the top of the road. The rain seemed to clear a little though and we were too excited about moving on, so we headed off.
We hit a few patches of drissle and the road was a little damp in a few areas, but not too bad. That was when we hit a newly graded section of road. We were forced to ride right on the edge of the road. I hit the wet mud patch first and my back tyre skidded sideways. I managed to recover, but I new immediately that Sara wouldn't. As I predicted, down she came.
This time, unfortunately, the bike landed on some hard rocks. Sara was fine, but the coolant overflow tank was split and pouring out coolant. There was also a punture in one of the coolant hoses. We had some epoxy on us, so we patch up the coolant tank and we put a tyre patch and some tape around the hose. Luckily we had crashed right next to a beutifully clear stream, so we had drinking water and water to refill the radiator. The only thing was that the epoxy takes 3 hours to dry, so we sat on the side of the road again waiting for it to dry.
Eventually we got back on the road. We knew we didn't have too far to go and we'd be back on the pavement for about a 100km stretch to Coyhaique, where we could hopefully get some mechanical help. It was about 10km before the pavement that one of my pannier frames broke and my pannier near fell off.... AAAARRRRGGGHHHH!! I tied it on with some cable ties and we decided to limp on.... if we could just make the pavement, it should be a smooth ride.
We made the pavement... for about 15km, until Sara was no longer in my rear view mirror... I rode back to find her beside her bike... the back tyre was flat AGAIN!!!!! We were absolutely at our wits end here, but we decided not to waste any time and just see if we could flag down a truck. About 15mins later a truck stopped not far from us and Sara ran up to meet Juan (I think that's how you spell it). Juan had an empty kayak truck, spoke English, was going to Coyhaique and was more than happy to help... there's that luck again! So we loaded Sara's bike in the back as well as my panniers and we set off. Me following the truck for the 90km or so to Coyhaique, the largest town in this region.
It has to be said at this point that the scenery around the lakes etc on this trip were some of the most amazing we've seen anywhere. It was just a shame that we spent much of the time too stressed / tired to really appreciate it.
SO... Coyhaique, and we found a mechanic reccommended on the horizons unlimited website. He spoke very little English, but was more than happy to help. We had decided that there MUST be something wrong with Sara's actual tyre or the rim, so we bought a 2nd hand tyre that was in better condition than hers and the Mechanic helped patch my pannier frames back together again and even made new parts to replace the missing sections. The welding wasn't superb, but a lot better than the last job. We also managed to piece together a new coolant hose for Sara's bike by joining 2 old ones. And after 2 days work the bikes were ready once again... new tyre... repaired frames... we were confident and ready to try them out.
Coyhaique also presented us with the opportunity to access more cash, so our diet could once again consist of foods other than tomato, avocado and bread and we were able to stay in a hostel.
>insert here, us meeting up with Sunny and Cecilia, who were other bikers we'd met in Ushuaia, and hitting the piss in a big way... it's possible that my hangover may have delayed us leaving by a day.... possible.
So off we went, slowly but surely, along the dirt road through the drissly rainforest beside an amazing green river, past waterfalls cascading over rocks and down the mountains everywhere. The scenery was beautiful, but we were soaked to the bone and cold by the time we reach the town of Puyuhuapi. Thankfully we found a lovely little Hospedaje with a lovely owner who immediately lit the wood fire stove for us so we could hang our wet clothes over it and pointed us to the steamy hot showers... oh yeah!! We were most excited to celebrate our first incident free day of riding in a LONG time... perhaps our problems were over?!?
The next day saw another beautiful, but slow ride North. We had heard that the town of Chaiten had recently been reopened to the public. It had been all but destroyed in a volcano erruption in March last year, so we decided to ride that way and have a look. It was getting a little late by the time we got close though and we had seem that there were some thermal baths where you could came about 5km off the road, so we headed up to the Termas Amarillo and enjoyed a dip in the hot baths to celebrate our 2nd incident free day of riding.
In the morning we had another quick dip, then headed for Chaiten. I think neither of us were prepared for the state of the town. As we rode in there was a white "sand" on the side of the road which was the volcanic ash. It just seemed like we must be riding on some tropical island until we reached the town. The major damage had been done when several waterways were blocked by the ash and the river through Chaiten flooded and took with it hundreds of homes. SOme can be seen half way out into the bay now. Other places that we still standing were burried under meters and meters of ash. The military were there with dozers and diggers trying to clean up some of the mess. The volcano was still sending out lots of ash and was quite a site in itself. We felt a little like we were intuding there, but we took a few photos then headed back towards Futaleufu near the Argentine border.
Lunch time that day we stopped at a tiny town on the side of the road to have some lunch. It was after the lunch that I looked over at Sara's bike, and... you guessed it... FLAT BACK TYRE!!!NNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! We had been so hopeful that that issue was resolved. I decided immediately that there must be a problem with the rim, but where were we going to get a replacement out here?!? We'd have to patch it until we could get to Bariloche or somewhere.
So, we went into town and found ourselves a place to stay and dump our gear for the night. Then it was back to the bike and taking off the wheel. It was then that we discovered the 2 inch long nail sticking out of the tyre!! We couldn't believe it. It had just been pure bad luck! Sara began to haul the tyre into town, while I went to find out if there was a mechanic around that could help... no such luck. So we set about taking the tyre off, patched the hole, then tried to get the tyre back on. It turned out that this tyre was even harder to get on than the previous one and, exhausted, I was ready to give up, when we heard the sound of motorbikes. Sara ran round and asked them to help. So with the power of 4 guys, we managed to finally get the tyre back on. We weren't keen on staying there the night, so we grabbed our gear and headed on once again and made it all the way to Futaleufu.
Now, the Futaleufu river is one of the top 3 rivers in the world for white water rafting and the best in South America, so we thought we'd better give it a try. First, though, we had a go at kayaking down the Rio Espolon. It was a beautiful blue/green river and the day was so warm that we were actually happy to get wet. Despite it only being class 2 and 3 rapids, both Sara and I managed to tip our kayaks, but we had a wonderful day!
That night the whole town gathered at the football stadium to see the Chilean Folklore back Las Jaivas (The Crabs). After a seriously wierd intro with images of Spanish conquistadors suppressing the local South Americans and some bizzare music, the power dropped out. After 15 mins or so of no power, tiredness overcame me and we walked home... it occured to us on the way home that they had killed the power to all of the streetlights to power the concert as well... amusing.
The next day we white water rafted down the Rio Futaleufu, down class 4 and 5 rapids and WOW!! What a day! It was fantastic! We didn't even fall out of the raft, despite the 2 rafts behind us flipping on the most dangerous rapid of the run. We had had the most fantastic 2 days in Futaleufu.
The next day we set off again, crossed the border back in Argentina and made our way up to the tourist mecca (and surprising large city) of Bariloche. In Bariloche we were able to get Sara's inner tube changed, get new tyres for her front and my rear wheel and replace her brake pads finally!!
So, anyway, that was our trip up the Ruta 40 and Carreterra Austral. It certainly had it's highs and it's lows. I guess as Belleruche say, you've gotta take the rough with the smooth.
ciao for now.
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