Greetings Everyone

Finally a motorcycling travel journal with stories about motorcycle travel, for a while I was wondering if it was ever going to happen.

Today has been a day of changes, first we left Chile and crossed into Argentina and secondly I’ve parted company with Hans and Stefan as they’ve gone north and I’m heading south.

Tonight I’m in a small hotel on Ruta 40 in Patagonia, Argentina. This area of South America is notorious for the bad roads and constant winds. So far the roads have been good tarmac but the winds have lived up to the stories it’s been blowing a constant gale all day. They are mainly westerly winds and as I’m heading south, most of the time they hit Kitty as a cross wind so I’m wobbling across the road like a drunk driver. Tomorrow I expect the tarmac to become gravel road and it will be somewhat more challenging. The motorcycle overland websites are full of photos of bikes lying on their sides while attempting to ride down Ruta 40. I really don’t want to add to that photo tally. To give you an idea of what the wind is like this is a photo of a poster in the hotel. Earlier today while taking some photos it wasn’t as bad as that picture shows but walking around was hard work and trying to keep a camera steady was very difficult.

As I mentioned in my last post I joined Hans and Stefan on their trip through Central and Southern Chile and the first thing I have to do is to say thank you to both of them for allowing me to tag along on their trip. To be honest I have been a bit overwhelmed by the idea of heading off by myself. The experience we had last time showed how valuable it was to have a second person to travel with, whether it was for practical reasons such as helping to navigate or simply to talk things over at night I feel at a loss without the Beloved. Hans and Stefan have helped to start me on my journey and I am forever grateful.

Since it is their trip I let them decide the daily destination and I follow whatever they decide. That was the theory so I’m not quite sure how I’ve ended up as the bike leading the group most of the time. There are some advantages to leading our merry group, the main one being that when we go on the gravel roads (and there have been many gravel roads) I’m not eating someone else’s dust. The down side is that I find which corners are not what they seem to be first.

On our first day we were on the road at the crack of 11 o’clock and basically followed the road down the coast. At the end of the day when it was time to find a Hostel/Hotel/Pension/B and B or whatever they call themselves. It was comforting to see that things worked the same way as they did in Mexico and Central America.

We found a likely hotel had a look at the rooms and then asked the vital question

“Do you have safe parking for our motorcycles?” (You have to imagine this was in Spanish, or at least what we call Spanish)

“No problemo” was the reply and the owner of the hotel starting dragging tables and chairs to one side and we rode our bikes into the restaurant and parked inside.

As the man said, no problem.

For a couple of old blokes Hans and Stefan do like taking our well loaded bikes off the tarmac whenever they can. We travelled together for about 3600 km and I estimate around 1000 km of that distance was on unmade loose rock and gravel road with long sections of corrugations (or “ripple” as Stefan calls it) and of course pot holes, many, many bone jarring pot holes. I did manage to miss a few but I’m sure I hit most of them. The Beloved would not have been impressed (and rightly so).

We continued down the coast until we reached the major city of Concepcion where we started to head inland toward the Andes. This was first time we started to climb to a decent altitude, but will not be the last. This area is also the start of the Lake District in Chile, this collection of inland lakes continues as far down as Puerto Montt and in addition to the lakes the area is dotted with active volcanoes. The volcanoes provide the heat for a number of Termas or thermal springs in the area. Stefan was keen to visit one and to see some German people he knew that lived near the town of Pucon. After getting some local knowledge and some discussion between the guys we decided to go to Termas Los Pozones as we were told that this was a Termas that was built in a natural setting with multiple pools rather than as a health resort as many of them are.

Normally at about this point I would put in a couple of pictures of us relaxing in the hot waters (and some of them were VERY hot) but as the sight of three undressed, pale white, fat old blokes might cause some (all) of my readers to be violently ill the pictures will be at the very end of the post.

You have been warned.

After the Termas we went to find Stefan’s German friends who ran The Landhaus. This was a very posh hotel in countryside outside Pucon. I thought the girl at reception looked a bit worried about a bunch of old, dusty and sweaty blokes turning up on bikes but soon everything was sorted and we settled into a cottage away from the main house. That night much good German food was served along with a cerveza or two.

After Pucon we continued south and stayed for a couple of days at The Blockhouse on Lago Llanquihue for some R&R. After 6 days of solid riding much of it through the mountains on unmade roads we needed it. Uwe and Nicol have been building The Blockhouse for the last five years and have nearly completed it. Hans and Stefan met them in Argentina on their earlier trip to South America.

As you can see from the photos it’s a massive wooden construction project and done with German attention to detail. Uwe was planning to take us on the lake for some salmon fishing but the wind was too strong that day, however he had some recently caught salmon which he freshly smoked for our dinner that night and it was magnificent. Moist, full of flavour, the best smoked salmon I can remember having for a long time.

After our stay on the Lake we took a short detour up Volcan Orsono for a view over the lake and surrounding countryside. The Volcan is also a ski resort in the winter. After the obligatory photos we headed down stopping occasionally for photos including one where a bus load of school kids were stopped.

One of them wanted to sit on Hans bike which was no problem, then they all wanted to have a go on all the bikes. So after twenty minutes of lifting kids on and off the bikes with many photos taken by the parents we were able to escape (as someone famous once said “I love children but I couldn’t eat a whole one”)

After a short ferry trip later that day we were on the island of Chiloe. The main reason for visiting the island was to catch another ferry from Quellon in the southern part of the island back to Chaiten on the mainland. Chaiten is a starting point for the North Patagonian region and the place where we would travel along the Carretera  Austral highway.

The whole Chaiten ferry process was a challenge. The ferry website would not accept any bookings, then we had trouble finding the ticket office in Puerto Montt and finally when we did get a ticket we discovered that it arrived in Chaiten not at 7 o’clock in the morning as we expected but it was at 1 o’clock. I didn’t fancy riding a bike through the night and we couldn’t book any accommodation as we only found out a few hours before he had to travel so it looked like it was going to be an interesting trip.

More by good luck than by good management it all worked out. After we arrived and all the trucks disembarked and disappeared into the night we found out that we could sleep on board the ferry until the morning, problem solved.

When we did leave in the morning I was glad we did not have to find a place to sleep in Chaiten as it was almost a ghost town as we cruised round looking for somewhere to get breakfast we saw nothing open and many building had been destroyed several years earlier due to a nearby volcanic eruption.

As it turned out it was a very long day. This part of North Patagonia had no major road through it until the Carretera Austral was a built back in the seventies. When I say built I mean bulldozed, originally it was completed as a gravel road. When we left Chaiten we were lulled into a false sense of security by the pristine tarmac road for next 40 km then reality hit when we had another 90 km of loose gravel road interrupted by road works. It took us 3 hours to do that part until we finally stopped at the town of La Junta which was the first place we could find food and have a break.

Hans and Stefan had been here three years earlier and Hans gave me the good news that the road ahead was “better”. The next 120 km was more loose gravel road but without the road works and then we finally hit the tarmac again.

I later had words with Hans about the word “better” and what it means in English and more importantly what it meant in my world, where it would be associated with the words “smooth” and “tarmac”. I think he got the idea 🙂

Ignoring my whinging about road conditions I can see why Patagonia is a draw card for so many people, it’s a stunningly beautiful place. The countryside has been carved out by glaciers over the aeons forming lake filled valleys connected by rivers and streams everywhere fed by the melting snows from the surrounding mountains. In the southern part of Patagonia much of the valley is cleared for farming while in the north it’s a type of sub-tropical rain forest. The vegetation in this area has a prehistoric look to it (at least what I think of as prehistoric, courtesy of Jurassic Park and Walking with Dinosaurs) I almost expect to see a yellow warning road signs saying “T Rex Crossing”

Like virtually all scenery photos that are snapped on holiday trip the reality of the scene just can’t be captured and compressed into computer image. All I can say is that whatever you see in these photographs the reality is ten times more impressive.

We had intended to get to Coyhaique that night but the combination of lack of decent sleep overnight on the ferry and a distance of over 420km, half of that on gravel road killed that plan so we got to Coyhaique early’ish the next day.

After leaving Coyhaique we were heading around Lake General Carrera to the border town of Chile Chico but first we made a detour to visit another family that Hans and Stefan met last time they were in the area.

Tomas, his wife and 3 year old daughter live on a property near the Ventisquero Glacier about 40km off the Carretera Austral (not 10km as someone said, we also had words about judging distance 🙂 ). They came to Chile from Germany about 13 years ago and run a small B&B. Tomas said they wanted space and didn’t like the confines of Germany. They certainly have space now although that brings its own challenges, the nearest village is Puerto Rio Tranquilo on the Carretera Austral which has a small shop for some daily necessities and while the local valley does supply a lot of fresh local food every two or three months they drive to Coyhaique for a major shopping run. It’s a two day trip over 540km in length and half the distance is on that fun gravel road. I won’t complain so much the next time I forget something at Coles.

Our final day in Chile was another 200km stretch of gravel road around the lake into Chile Chico we decided to stay here rather than head into Argentina that evening, instead we would get an early start cross the border and head our separate ways.

How I laugh at the phrase “early start”. We ended up being on the road at the crack of 1030. Oh well the best laid plans, etc.

Leaving Chile was no problem immigration for me and customs for Kitty. A few photos at the border line marking the end of Chile and the start of Argentina and then the equally simple immigration and customs on the Argentinian side

Wrong.

Hans and Stefan had no issues but as an Oz citizen I needed a reciprocity visa which I can get issued at the border post.

Wrong.

The internet was not working at the border post so they told me I had to back to Chile Chico (i.e get back through Chilean immigration and customs), find an internet place, apply for the reciprocity visa, then print it out, leave Chile again and then come and do the paperwork.

Mierda.

So I said goodbye to Hans and Stefan and headed back to the Chilean border where I hoped I would be able to find a working internet connection and a friendly immigration person who would help me use it.

This time I was lucky and Julio at the Chilean immigration counter helped me sort it out without having to go back to Chile Chico. 90 minutes later I rode into Argentina and here I am in the middle of nowhere.

That’s all the motorcycling news for now, looking back at what I’ve written I see that it’s quite a few pages and it’s not the complete story of the last couple of weeks. Highlights for the next post will be

– The seriously insane people on the road

– Why road surfaces and paving stones are a bad combination

Finally in my last post I said that I would never buy 1 litre bottles of beer ever again, here’s why.

When we stayed in Pucon it turned out that they were having a barbecue that night as Marcelo was having his 41 birthday. Of course we needed to help him celebrate so I walked across the road to the new gigantic supermercardo (Normally in Chile the supermercado (supermarket) is a small corner shop but now much larger ones are being built) and bought 3 x 1 litre bottles of cerveza (beer) at the checkout they muttered something about “returno” and I said it was ok. I was wise to this question as we discovered in Valpo they have a bottle deposit scheme but only for large bottles where you have to take the empty bottles back to the same store with your receipt to get the deposit back (in this case about $4)

The next morning Stefan tried to do that but they wouldn’t take them, I went over later and they did take them but instead of any cash I got another receipt, I couldn’t work out what this was for and of course I had a communication problem with the checkout girl so I gave up and saw Marcelo and asked him what it was about.

Wow, did he get fired up.

Yes they are supposed to repay the deposit but the big supermarkets try and get out of it. I never did find out what the new receipt was for.

Anyway Marcelo says he will go across and make them pay it or he will call the police. I tried to tell him it’s not that big a deal but he was off so I followed.

First there was the conversation with the checkout girl, who was then joined by her supervisor and finally one of store security guys joins in. Meanwhile I’m standing around listening every so often I would hear the words “from Australia” and that was about as much of the conversation as I could understand. By this this time I’m wishing that I bought a six pack instead.

Finally Marcelo storms off and says I’m calling the police, and he does. I’m really starting to get a bit concerned as I don’t want to have anything to do with the local constabulary for any reason but by this time I’m a bit player in this show.

Ten minutes later the cops turn up and Marcelo goes ballistic with them, then we head back in for a round two with the store staff. More animated conversation happens for a few minutes when Marcelo decides that this cop is not being helpful enough and he is going to call the police captain and get him to come down as well. Meanwhile I’ve decided to give up booze for the rest of my life when all of a sudden I’m $4 richer and everyone calms down except for Marcelo who is talking about calling his friend’s father who is police colonel or police lieutenant general or something similar. By this time I just want get on a bike and leave town before someone decides that the foreigner is a troublemaker.

I don’t know what the Unimarc shopping chain ever did to Marcelo but he hasn’t forgotten it.

That is all the news that I can type for now below are a few extra photos including the dreaded Termas.

Have a Feliz Navidad from the the three unwise men..

And now for the random images

We met this German bike rider in southern Chile he said he was heading down to Ushuaia, I forget his name but we were wondering how the bike would handle with the cross winds and the enormous top box he had bolted onto his bike.

I met up with him a few days later on Ruta 40 and he said that he was getting blown around quite a bit. The rule is to keep weight low, I don’t think bolting a huge steel box on top of the bike is the best way to do that.