Well as you can see from the last three photos on the previous page, I've fitted a new chain. The old chain having done about four thousand kilometres. This is the third chain to run with the cassette cluster (of sprockets) fitted on the rear wheel back in Seville, which has done eight thousand kilometres since. The teeth on the most often used sprockets not surprisingly are now well worn. So the next chain change will also see me buy a new cassette.

The bike shop mechanic whom I think is also the shop's proprietor, is a man that does his job through love of cycling. I can see it in his body language around bikes. He owns and comes to work on a Surly Long Haul Trucker, and he was impressed by my Dawes Galaxy, which is used to such attention, it being such a nice bike. He took apart it's rear hub and replaced worn bearing bits and meticulously put it back together. The front split rim wheel I just replaced with a factory wheel: a generic 36 spoke hub laced to a vee section rim with machined braking surface, by Weinmann. Fingers crossed it should see me through to the final day of the tour. If it had have been the rear wheel the rim split on, it would've been a bigger problem: the rear wheel being the drive wheel and bears most of the weight, it is crucial to have a quality rear wheel, therefore.

The bike shop stock large touring water bottle cages. The ones which comfortable carry a 1.5 litre water bottle with a strap to stop it falling off onto the road when riding upon a bumpy surface. This increases my water carrying capacity in the bike bottle cages, without carrying bottles inside a rear pannier which I've done to now, to 3.75 litres with the third bottle underneath the down tube. That's my actual day's water needs until I'm somewhere warmer.

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I have been planning my route ahead too. This is mainly a job of finding when the ferries run, as Coyhaique and route 7 (Carretera Austral) for that matter, is an island unless I re-cross the border into Argentina, which would mean me returning north on the same road I came south on. For that reason I plan on continuing north in Chile, to Puerto Montt (where route 7 starts) and beyond. That'll mean a ferry from a place called Caleta Gonzalo to Hornopiren.

I'm not looking forward to unpaved sections of 7, though. Nothing is worse than these loose gravelly roads where every passing vehicle leaves a cloud of dust in it's wake, covering foliage flanking the side and covering bike riders alike. Sections are paved, more than there was when I rode it in 2010. I believe they're working on paving the whole road, which will be a good job when its finished if you ask me.

I meant to be back on the road today, but yesterday's last minute chores took more time than I'd envisaged. In any case it has only taken me a calendar month from Ushuaia to here. That counts eighteen days riding and fifteen days off for, laundry, rest, bike maintenance and journaling. I have gotten back into the good habit of writing up nightly. And found it best not to change the original pen and paper effort too much. Keeping it organic you could say. Certainly having a couple of notebook pages written on the evening when events and thoughts on the day are warm, is better than written cold a day later.

The people running Hostel Salamandras, Tim, an expat from England and his Chilean wife Maria, have made me feel at home here, along with the ambiance of a woodland garden which surrounds the hostel and I'll look back fondly on my stay here.

I should be back riding tomorrow and the next update won't be for a couple of weeks while I make up ground cycling north.