I write with the noise of rain drumming on the tent outside. It's been raining since first I woke up. So I remain here. There is no hurry today, as it's only 42km to Villa O'Higgins. I'd been up during the night, it would've been four, to put on the rainfly when I was first wakened and aware it was coming on rain.

Well, the rain has eased, now it's about eleven, and shortly, the sun makes an appearance and makes it almost too warm inside the tent as I pack panniers ready for the road. Then I notice the bicycle chain is rusty, so I'll be giving it a wipe and oil. It'll be time then to take down the tent and get on the road for midday.

By mid-afternoon the cloud has broken up and it's turned out a glorious day after all. I've reached a large lake: Lago Cisne, that spands across the valley below on the left side of the road, the mountains around it's rim reflecting like a mirror in it's blue water. And shortly the first houses of Villa O'Higgins come into view, even though the main village is still a good fifteen K of road to go. Further the road drops down to the lakeshore and turns sharp left to cross a long causeway along the head of the lake. Here I spot Jacob's Toyota pickup parked. And a little later he passes.

Further on, leaving Lago Cisne behind, I pass over a bridge across Rio Mayor, and then the left turn for Paso Mayor: the sign here has Villa O'Higgins 7.

I read on an interpretation board on the way into the village about the area's pioneers; it says: The Rio Mayor area was first settled by foreigners about 1910, immigrants to South America from Germany and France, who came through the mountains from Argentina. Then in the 1920s, the first Chileans came and settled. In 1950 a census recorded that sixty-thousand hectares where farmed by 114 families. And about this time, the area got it's first police enforcement officers and postal service. Still it was a long arduous route with produces carried on pack horses through the mountains to market in Cochrane.

This is my second visit here. The place looks very different from what I remember in January 2005. I was trying to see could I see the backyard where we camped back then, but couldn't. Then there was only a few of us and the place had sparse services; such as a couple of poorly stocked shops in the front room of a house. Today there are more of us tourists than locals. There are hotels and quite a few backpacker hostels. And I'm spoil for choice with small supermercados. And, a regular ferry is running, leaving at 8.00 in the morning. Which'll mean an early start. In 2005 I was coming the other way, coming north. I and others waited in El Chalten a week until we heard a small government supply boat was coming south, that would take us north.

...Yes, it's a much more developed place. When I think that back then, some of the cyclists and hikers I was with, found meat, a freshly killed carcass on a meat hook in the front room of a house. This passed as a butchers. They bought a cut off it and cooked it on an open fire in the backyard campsite. I remember the following morning after we'd arrived off the boat, the father of the family who owned the backyard had just milked a cow and stood leaning over the fence with the can of milk in hand annoucing: venta leche, milk for sale. And the evening before, the daughter cooked rice pudding and sold it to us. They were for ever making business. All very primitive in comparison to today.