At daybreak I lay half awake, when, the ground vibrates underneath the tent for a few seconds. Not unusual when camped next the roadside, the ground shakes every time a truck passes, but I'm a fair distance camped from the road to feel the rumble of a passing truck, so the only explanation, to my thinking, would be a minimal earth-tremor. The Andes are upon a tectonic plate and I suppose subtle short in duration vibrates aren't unusual.

Then there's a voice outside, like someone talking on a mobile followed by a vehicle driving off, which quick gets me to unzip the tent and look out. But they whoever they are, are gone. I think I could've been partly asleep and so dreaming, until about ten minutes later they return, two of them in a pickup truck that draws to a halt level with my tent, shortly followed by a flatbed truck. They are obviously here, in the plantation to fetch a load a firewood. The passenger in the second truck kindly asks me to move my tent, as I'm in the way on the corner where two tracks meet, so they can get by. I quickly finish off my tea and set to packing, but the driver is a little more forceful, wanting to drive pass at once, he come over and gives me a hand lifting the tent to the side.

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An hour after setting off, still bowling along on the smooth shoulder of route 5, I pass a sign, Los Angeles 50km. I wonder did Helmut make it there late yesterday from where he left me more than twenty kilometres back, making over seventy kilometres he planned on riding in under three hours before nightfall.

I don't have long to find out, as he catches me up from behind and explains the elevations where too steep and so decided to stop in a village I'd just passed.

"How was the camping?" todays conversation kicks off, which would last for the remainder of the morning while we ride level on the ample wide shoulder.

"Yeah, I found a good place not long after you rode on yesterday. Then had to leave early when some woodworkers come at eight this morning. I mean eight o'clock on a Sunday morning. You'd never get anyone awake that time in Argentina, never mind working."

"Chileans!" Helmut retorts "have to prove there little country is better than Argentina. They are hard workers with a work ethic."

"I think Helmut, its because in Chile they have to pay for everything, or so a Chilean I talked to said."

At least he's a bit mellower today and the converse would prove to be less one-sided, as he changes the subject to the cyclists he met down in Southern Patagonia. He got a lift in a pickup truck when riding north because it was just too windy. Then driving along, passed a brave, or foolhardy French couple on a tandem blown sideways all over the road, then spots the couple's two children a little ahead on single bikes, also blown all over the road. The driver that gave him the lift thought this very funny, as did we. What size children were they? I ask. eight, nine, he replies unsure. Then on the single-track border crossing where everybody has to push, he went down to his knee in places in mud. The same couple were on that track with the two kids in the mud keeping up with him.

Then there's the German girl he met north of Ville O'Higgens, "...on skinny tyres like yours" he points at my front wheel which indeed is skinny. "The road is very rough to that point and like half-pipes on bends. I asked her how she got on with those tyres. Oh they were no problem, she told me." Later, an English cyclish told him she had three punctures on that section. "She was just a bullshitter. I met so many bullshitters on that route, all with something to prove. They'd read that the Carretera Austral was a cool place to cycle and were full of hype.

Then he says something true. "Cycle touring is just getting out and riding somewhere."

I agree. That's why route 40 is a better route that escapes the crowd.

It was well gone lunchtime and we'd already passed the sign for Los Angeles Sur (south) and I wish he'd give over for just a few minutes, as I begin thinking we might've missed the exit for the city-centre. I needed to go into town to buy some supplies. Then we do come to the exit, also there's Santa Barbara on the sign, leading us to joke, we're cycling into L.A.

Later, having found a supermercado on the way in, I come back out to find he's found someone else to talk to in his loud unmusical Spanish. Then says he needs to continue into town to charge his GPS in a café, so we go our separate ways in the afternoon.

I stop relatively early again, when I come to a pine plantation, though with rough tussock grass between rows of young trees, the only great place to pitch the tent is inside a gap in the roadside fence and hidden from the road by a bramble hedge.