January 20, 2016
Fatigue: Morro Chico to free campsite by Punta Arenas Airport.
The place I camped on the sheltered side of the bridge at Morro Chico, would've been a great place to camp, if only the road service people had built the rest-place with picnic table and interpretation board on the sheltered side of the bridge, recessed down for shelter, instead of up on the right side of the road in the open. It doesn't make sense, as it is impossible to relax, rest or do anything with the wind beating against your neck.
The rest-place if properly placed would've naturally extended in alongside the bridge-approach to the riverbank, which is where I could've pitched the tent, but couldn't as it has been left rough and uneven. The only good place to pitch was underneath the bridge itself, which would've been fine if there was no traffic during the night; however, there was, all night long I was kept awake by the thundering rumble of trucks at regular intervals passing overhead. The tremor each time making me paranoid the reinforced concrete will collapse down on top of me. It was the worse campsite ever. Yet there didn't seem to be much alternative. The land is all well fenced in. The fence running close by the roadside and also streams tend to be fenced in, making wild camping in Chile extremely hard.
It is a frosty start to the day in which I want to return into the warm sleeping-bag when I've eaten breakfast, such is my tiredness, but I need to reach Punta Arenas, a hundred and forty kilometres further. Thus I'm rolling shortly before seven, wearing my down-jacket for warmth and thick winter gloves against finger numbing chill.
Not far on, passing a bus-shelter, my eyes are drawn to a cyclist therein fixing a puncture. He seems somewhat in distress and when I've leant the bike and see for myself, the reason is clear. He doesn't have a pump. Well he does but, the innards inside where it connects to the value is missing. How this happened is a mystery as the cyclist neither speaks English nor Spanish.
I take my own pump and inflate his inner-tube. Meanwhile he pours water from a mineral water bottle into a crockery cereal-bowl, like pouring water to quench a dog's thirst. In this I dip the fat inflated inner-tube, momentarily rotating the tube until I've rotated it almost the full way round, when at last there's a fluttering race of air-bubbles from a pin-hole to the water surface. I take the tube up from the water bowl and wipe it off with the back of my hand while keeping my eye on a small indent in the rubber from which the air can now be heard rushing out. He leans forward and with a colouring pencil marks a square around it. Then with a tube of glue, he is about to apply glue to wet rubber, when I stop him and motion for a ragged tee-shirt he is kneeing on to dry off the wet inner-tube and leave it a few minutes to further dry before using sandpaper from my own patch-kit to roughen the area; then, I apply the glue, bubbling it over the small hole so it is clearly marked with a white dry spot of glue, then laver glue over an area around bigger than a patch and then wait minutes for it to dry before applying the patch. He puts the inner-tube back in the wheel and I inflate it hard. He is extremely thankful through the few words of Spanish he knows. I wish him luck as I leave him to gather his things, hoping he'll get to Punta Arenas and a bike shop before he has another puncture.
Before long I'm struggling to keep my eyes open, which would be normal during the afternoon after a bad night's sleep, but this is still only morning. I don't quite know what it is as I've been feeling very tired and lethargic recently. Could it be I'm not drinking enough fluids; perhaps the most likely cause.
Mid morning I reach Ville Tehuelches, the only sizeable village along the entire 247km from Puerto Natales to Punta Arenas. Here I meet two young German cyclists, wouldn't be more than nineteen, taking a pause on their ride north. I have a well earned break sat on the step outside a shop where I've bought a coke. The coke wakes me up. The wind has awoken too, fluttering hard flags on their flag-poles along the front.
Onward I've a powerful crosswind to further aggravate my tiredness and lack of energy. The landscape resembling a dry seabed. An undulating brown plain with barrancas far ahead and the line of a massive lagoon off to the left narrowing toward the barrancas to a dry salt bed, which is blowing up a white dust storm making the place appear even more dismal than it is.
I reach the barrancas end of this open plain shortly after midday, where the road goes sharp right into the wind. However, the wind while strong, doesn't make riding impossible, just a hard struggle for the next few uphill kilometres until it curve round to the left from where the wind is a bit more to my rear.
I reach a crossroads with a road going east parallel to the Magellan Straits, before which is a petrol station and restaurant, where I take shelter in a bus shelter opposite to lunch and then sit a long time in which I sleep. When I've woken, the cyclist without the pump has caught me up, so at least the repaired inner-tube has remained hard and it is looking like he'll reach the city and a bike shop.
The way on is a tiresome struggle with crosswind and this feeling of fatigue which has come over me lately.
The Dutch cyclist mentioned, or stressed rather, there's no need to go into Punta Arenas, as there's a free campsite just before the airport; then the next day I can board the ferry on the northern side of town for Terra del Fuego. I reach said campsite, a forest reserve with picnic table campsites about seven. I somehow thought there may've been a water source here, but there isn't and I'm completely out. Anyway, I have a look around and find a good spot with a picnic table. Then approach a German couple parked up for the night in a Land Rover campervan conversion. They have plenty of water and kindly give me two litres.
I return and pitch the tent and for the first evening in a while there's enough shelter to cook and enjoy supper outside the tent, before retiring to the tent for an early night as tomorrow I'll need to get going early to make the ferry, which I think departs for Porvenir on Terra del Fuego at nine in the morning.
Today's ride: 124 km (77 miles)
Total: 4,216 km (2,618 miles)
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