Pedro, David and I had our morning Cappachino then headed out for the final 9 km to get to the end of the highway. Our Spaniard friends left earlier and would meet us there.
Peanut butter, easy peasy lunch or breakfast. This tlme with leftover homemade jam.
The lady in the coffee shop was an American and gave us great insight into the life and how things are in Villa O’Higgins. The little town is basically a hub for cyclist, backpackers coming back-and-forth from Argentina and we wondered what the heck people do for a living in the town. The houses are very tiny, even smaller than a double garage. As I had stated earlier, regardless of the size of the house, and what you have, people generally seemed very very happy. The winters are harsh, windy, cold, and the tourist season is quite short. This is one place again you feel very fortunate for what you have, when you see a little of people have here. The distance to get anything is over two days to a major city, and she explained everybody has the same colour curtains, towels, because the selection for anything is quite small.
We got there in plenty of time before the ferry. They give us ample opportunity to get her pictures have an early lunch. Everybody was taking turns to get their bikes in front of the sign to get pictures. This truly is the end of the highway and if you look at the other side of the sign, you see kilometre zero.
Nice view of the lake as we made the short ride to the ferry
Getting the ferry loaded was interesting. The one person signalled to David and I for our bikes and they went down below. The rest of the bikes were packed along the front or along the back tight tied down. we were making jokes saying that is where age has its advantages. We also were joking with the others that “hey isn’t that your bike that just fell off the boat“.
So much time we had David caught a pre-boat snooze
The the boat ride was fantastic. As we pulled away from the harbor, you look back, you see the snowcap mountains behind you beside you very very pretty. The ride was just to get us to the other side of the lake so we could go up the mountain clear the Chilean border climb down the mountain and get into Argentina.
When we arrived to the other side of the lake, the harbour was not very large. We saw a pick up truck come down the hill and we were hoping he could take our bikes and some of us up the 17 km to the top of the mountain. He could only fit in five bikes with all our bags and unfortunately because Pedro was the youngest and the fittest he was the one that decided to actual cycle the 17 km to the top and then have of course we all walk down the 4 km through the forest. Four years ago David and Janis did not have the luxury of getting a ride up to the top. They actually cycled up/walked up depending on how bad the ripio was. David commented days earlier that if a truck was available, we will take it.
At the Chilean border , about 15 min per person to process the paperwork
It took the truck a few shots to get up to steep hill. After around 7 km you had to pass in border control. This is where they check your passport make sure that you have the proper credentials that you came into the country and let you go along your merry way. These 7 km were probably the worst roads I’ve seen in the last four weeks. The next 10 km they were not much better and I marvelled at how anybody could ride those roads on a bicycle.
I kept thinking it’s doable, David and Janice did it four years ago. It would just be a slow process getting there that’s all.
We passed Pedro and others that cycling as we got to the top of the mountain and I kept shaking my head and saying yes, I could’ve done it, but it would’ve been slow. At the top, we got our token tourist pictures of the sign saying Argentina.
We now had to load up our bikes with our bags and start our slow 4 km descend to our campground. At the bottom of the mountain is the true border control for Argentina where you have to check in, get your passport stamped.
Now the fun starts, there are no words to describe the walk with your bicycle down the mountain. A true mountain bike could ride down. They would love the logs, streams, rocks as you bounce up and down riding.
To give you an idea of youth and riding capability, Pedro caught up to David and I halfway down. Remember he had to ride the 17km while we took the truck. We did let him go through Chilean border control first and one of our Spanish friends took 30min to go through the bags getting his passport after the truck was loaded.
It will be easier when I have better access to Internet to post some great pictures videos of the trek down the mountain.
I did fall once, we were crossing a stream, when lifting our bikes over a log, and I just got off balance face first into the dirt. Pedro, David and I were just killing ourselves laughing. You cannot get frustrated. It was actually quite fun trying to go through the many streams and over logs up hills to get to the bottom of the mountain. There were many streams, I counted at least 10.
Random dog and border patrol shot. Not sure he was out for exercise or checking nobody was camping
We did end up finally at the campsite, it was not really a campsite just an open area of semi flat grass. It was literally outside the Argentinian border control, very limited facilities.
This was like another mini tent city. You have to cross the lake with another ferry. So you have backpackers and cyclist, coming northbound and southbound from Argentina or Chile.
It was unremarkable since our whole trip we never had to cycle in the rain. It was kind of ironic that as we were setting up our tents a light rain was falling. But the time is set up our tents got settled, it was kind of late to even cook a dinner so my dinner consisted of a can of tuna and a small bun.
It was getting chilly, so basically get inside the tent get warm and get a good sleep.
I would say that this was my favourite day, a challenge and a blast. You just had to laugh.
Tip and recommendation, if you do this trip, include this part. This is the 80% mental of the trip David promised.
Today's ride: 25 km (16 miles) Total: 65 km (40 miles)
