January 19, 2016
Fancy People And Us: Puerto Natales to Morro Chico.
Trying to get on the wifi here for any length of time just isn't happening. I manage to upload two photos, then I am put off the network and when I get back on, the service is very intermittent. I have been up before six so you'd think I'd have a full morning's work to show; instead, it is pitiful.
After a final second breakfast of baguette toasted, buttered and spread with honey which someone kindly left in the free food box, tea and have my polaroid photo for the wall with the other cyclists here taken, I finally get on the road for eleven. A windless sunny day and the lengthy climb away from Puerto Natales, unwelcome first thing.
Within ten kilometres I meet and stop to talk with a Quebecoise cycling couple. Then within a kilometre another cyclist. I can see I'm not going to get far today at this rate.
A sixty year old Dutchman and a good source of information on the road ahead.
When he asks am I headed for Ushuaia, I say no, for Puerto Willaims. The village on the Chilean Isla Navarino, southern side of the Beagle Channel, opposite Ushuaia.
"You can go there easy" he says and goes on "there are two options. Either you fly from Punta Arenas, or, travel all the way to Ushuaia and take the super expensive boat across, costing almost as much as the flight for such a short boat ride."
I mention the once a week boat from Punta Arenas to Puerto Williams, to which he replies "That is booked up through to March by all these fancy people." his euphemism for high-spending tourists.
Then, I tell him I was going to look into the new road being built south to the Beagle Channel, which with a ferry connection will be a link to Puerto Williams. There likely is an existing rough track. But, the ferry from Punta Arenas that calls at an estancia on the north side of the Beagle Channel, where a likely track finishes, which I was hoping if I got that far, would be my final link and now you say all places on board have been taken by fancy people.
When talking about the road ahead for himself, he says he'll be taking the Careterra Austral. Though he doesn't like Chalten. Say it looks like Disneyland. I tell him the trail from Chalten (Argentina) to the Careterra Austral (Chile) was described in the 2004 edition of Lonely Planet Argentina, "as Chile the hard way" to which he laughingly retorts "ha, lonely planet toilet paper!"
The rest of the day is mundane after parting with the colourfully spoken Dutchman.
I pass large plots of cultivated stepp with a green cereal crop growing. On going over to the fence to have a closer look, it is what I expected, oats, as it is too cold here for either wheat or barley.
The landscape for most of the day is undulating. A mix of old dead wood forest and sheep and cattle pasture watered by regular streams.
My destination for the day is Morro Chico, a low rocky hill which is supposed to be an extinct volcano, by which there's another stream and a small roadside village of a few houses and a police station. On the sheltered side of the bridge over the stream is a rare place to camp.
Today's ride: 99 km (61 miles)
Total: 4,092 km (2,541 miles)
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