There is one other tent here this morning; its inmates still asleep inside. I suppose its the young Chilean backpacker, he said he was from Valparaiso, who came shortly after I'd finished cleaning the bike yesterday and asked me is it okay if he could camp, not that it is my place to say yes or no, but I think he meant since I was already camped would I mind him camping here too. Though the picnic park is a fair size place, he could have camped beyond a clump of shrubs and trees to the right of the tent and I would be none the wiser. Anyway, he went away and didn't return until I saw the tent at the next picnic table this morning.

That makes three tents here. When the Chilean left, a passing motorbike slowed and looked in, then stopped and its rider from Spain asked could he camp.

I break camp just before nine, just as the Spanish motorcyclist unzips his tent and looks out bleary eyed as I wave and it takes a minute or two to ride to the waiting ferry, where the other cyclists are waiting at the front of a long line of vehicles, awaiting a signal to embark. I told them about the good free campsite just a few hundred metres back. Janna says "We ask about that place, but were told the carabineros (police) will come and make trouble for us if we camp there. We ask to camp at the gas station, but are told the carabineros will come too. Then this morning when we pass gas station, there were two tents there."

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We board and up on deck, Ricardo being near enough a local, from Trevelin just over the border, points out where the river used to flow through town into the sea before the volcano erupted and much of the town by the river was consumed by ashy sludge. That still doesn't explain how the coast receded a couple hundred metres since I was here in 2005, though.

During the sailing I find a seat by a power point and charge my camera up to a hundred per cent, while reading my book, At Home With The Patagonians. The chapter on Tehuelche customs. Yes, I'm still on the same book since January. I really don't find that much time to read. While a good read, the text is very dense, packed together without paragraph spaces to pause. If I'm interrupted and have to leave it down, its difficult to work out where I was up to when I pick it up again, so I often read the same passages twice before I realise.

I also fully charge the computer while editing photos.

The sailing usually takes five hours, but we arrive an hour early, because of the continued find weather conditions. It is completely still without the usual wind to sail against. I just need three days more of this weather to get somewhere to take a few days off the day.

We disembark in Quellon and the others ask a taxi driver where the tourist information centre is. The taxi driver tells them there is none, but directs them to the municipal building (townhall). They, Ricard, Janna and Mikael want to visit some national park in the far south of the island and want to find out a bit about it first. We separated while they go to the municipal building while I find the Umart supermercado, where we shortly meet up again, they like me needing to stock up on food. They didn't get the information they wanted, so have decided to ride about ten kilometres south of town to the start of the Pan Americana. After eating lunch on a street doorstep, while Mikael fixes a fractured rear-rack stay with hose-clips, we say goodbye and I head north. The way out of town a long incredibly step hill. Then over the initial hill, the countryside ahead green and rolling with wooded hills.

I must have a tailwind as I cover almost thirty kilometres in an hour and a half riding, at which point I'm approaching the top of another steep climb, when I come to a gap through the cutting bank on the right, opening into an unused plot of wild glass, suppose you'd call it waste ground, perhaps made and left after road improvements. Anyway, it is a welcome place in a countryside which is either woodland with dense inpenetrable undergrowth, or farms. Locating a spot where the grass is short, I come upon an item of clothing lying on the grass. I pick it up and discover its a sleeveless fleece, idea for keeping a cyclist warm on cool mornings before it heats up. It is clean and couldn't have been there very long. So as you can see I scored not only a place to pitch the tent, but a free gift.

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