March 12, 2016
Return Of Pavement: near Puyuhuapi to bridge over Rio Palena.
Its the now usual 07.48, when I look at the watch and decide to get moving, having been fully daylight not much more than half an hour. On packing up I manage to get the pump on the short bit of valve protruding from the new deep section rim wheel on the front, and pump the wheel up solidly hard, 50psi it showed on the pump pressure gage. So that's a load of my mind. The Hutchinson tyre I've on the front hasn't punctured once since being fitted in Cadiz, back in Spain. The one on the rear punctured, but that was a pinch puncture, when I hit a stone abruptly with the tyre not inflated up to the optimum solid hard.
I am on the road at ten, continuing on what is reasonably ripio. Although there's the usually scattered stones, the vehicle tracks are clear as such; indeed some parts are near enough as good as paved road.
I reach Puyuhuapi shortly before eleven, with a sign on the way in announcing the village name and founded in 1935. Perhaps once a fishing village at the head of a fjord, but nowadays makes most of its income from passing trade on the road through, the Carretera Austral, from people like me, though I won't be spending much apart from a few supplies. There are lots of hostels and a few cafeterias and no end of food shops. And I see lots of northern travellers such as two motorcyclists with Washington state number plates on their bikes parked at the curb; and a tall blond girl on a folding touring bike cycles by; and a big group of Israeli backpackers wait for a bus; and I talk to two English cyclists waiting for the third in their group to catch up.
At the first reasonable looking shop I come to, I stock up on a couple packets of biscuits and fruit and veg, but there is no bread. The woman behind the counter sends me to a panaderia (bakery) down by the beachfront, usually a woman baking bread and selling it from home. The woman at the house I'm sent to tells me she hasn't any bread baked, but return in the afternoon, she'll have baked bread then. When I let her know I won't be waiting that long and ask for another panaderia, she sends me to a house the other side of the village.
To cut a long story short, I get to see a lot of streets in the village, as a woman at the other house I'm sent to, tells me the same, come back in the afternoon when I've done the baking. I protest that I'm not waiting and ask about another panaderia. She sends me to another house. There the woman of the house sends me to yet another woman baking bread. I visit six houses in all supposed to be panaderias, but find no bread until, having given up hope and having decided to ride on, I'm passing a "panaderia" sign pointing in one of the last streets on heading out of town north. At this house I know there is bread from the smell of fresh baking in the street.
The road on disappointingly returns to ripio on the edge of town, with a climb lasting a few kilometres up a valley with a long lake opening up on the right. The mountains ahead silhouetted differed shades of blue in strong sunshine. I have been told the road at some point ahead is paved; but, its a pleasant surprise after 18km, to descend to a bridge and see a band of tarmac up the rise the other side. On crossing onto the smooth paved road, I celebrate by stopping to lunch at a bus shelter at the top of the rise.
The paved road continues to the next place, La Junta, where I stop at a café, just because the three English cyclists I'd seen earlier in Puyuhuapi where stopped there too. I ordered a cappuccino which turns out surprisingly good. Then say goodbye and ride on, as it is now five and I want to cover as much distance in the remaining few hours of the day as possible.
Beyond town the road turns from recently paved to just paved, freshly laid very black tarmac without line markings and lots of cones where workmen are still laying concrete storm channels along the side. This continues for fourteen kilometres, then ends abruptly after a Fin Pavimento sign.
Straightaway `after riding off the smooth road onto the bumpy stone strewn unpaved road which follows, I've lost interest in riding much further today, so decide to look out for a place to camp.
There isn't many obvious camping possibilities as everywhere is fenced in. I enter through a gate and wheel the bike down a sloping field along a vehicle rut to a place enclosed in bushes, which would have done, but it isn't great so decide to look for something better. I wheel the bike back up the rut and out the gate at the road.
Further on inside the fences on either side of the road there's forest with dense undergrowth and areas to camp are looking scarcer. Then coming round a bend ahead is an orange clad touring cyclist. We stop to talk when we meet. He is Canadian, from Newfoundland. I tell him he has only five kilometres more of ripio until he reaches the paves road. And he replies "I wish I had good news for you" and adds, this unpaved road goes on an awful long way. He is looking for a place to camp too. I tell him about the place I checked out and he tells me about in his words "fancy bridge, where there's cabins, but it may be possible to camp on the riverbank.
I cross the long suspension bridge over Rio Palena, shortly after riding on. There is as he said houses on the right on the far riverbank, but there's none on the left side and no one about the houses, so I wheel the bike off the road on the left side, open a gate in a fence, wheel the bike through and close the gate again, then wheel the bike along a rutted vehicle track into the wooded riverbank until I come to a suitable spot where I pitch the tent with a view out across the river.
Today's ride: 68 km (42 miles)
Total: 6,737 km (4,184 miles)
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