December 9, 2016
Fri 9th Dec: aprox 20km north of Tres Lagos to Lago Cardiel
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I've an early start, again. Anxious to beat the wind; although it's already blowing this morning, with an icy chill. The sky looks much like it did yesterday evening as I enjoyed the wine looking out at the lingering embers of the day. The same scattered broken cloud lit by a yet unseen sun.
I return to the warmth of the sleeping bag while boiling water for coffee and putting together a museli mix of nuts, raises, cornflakes and porridge, wetted with a dried milk powder mix. This should keep me going until well after midday, when I should be somewhere with shelter. Something there isn't much of out here.
I pack the panniers and take down the tent. Load all on the bike and wheel the bike up to the road for quarter to seven. The wind has moved round to the southwest, meaning I've tailwind for the first ten kilometres or so, in which I follow a dry tan coloured valley with steep hills on either side. The sky quickly closing in with a mantle of dark blue cloud making it even colder. Then there's a sign: Lago Cardiel 82. That can't be right. Beyond it the road swings round right following a right turn in the valley and climbs a steep rise and down the other side. At the bottom of which, I see a temporary orange sign: Ruta en construcion el proxima 72km. Meaning roadworks for over seventy K.
In fact it looks like money ran out when building the new tarmacked Route 40, here with the next 72km left unfinished, to remain a gravel road. The tarmac abruptly ends and the first few hundred metres are nearly unrideable, being a surface of loose stones and gradually uphill. I'm foreboding it'll be seventy kilometres of this. Today is going to be hell if it is. But once over the crest of the hill it turns to baked clay that is near as good as tarmac, albeit bumpy.
Not far on I come to the stream I mentioned, where I fill my water bottles. As said there's an abundant grass riverbank and an abandoned outhouse that would've provides wind shelter, should I have gotten as far yesterday. The stream flows out of the hills down and greens a broad plain with sand coloured cliffs along its southern margin and duney hills to the east, while 40 continues with hills hard by on the left, climbing away from the plain with a farmhouse in a clump of willows and tall elm tree windbreak down a bank below on the right.
The farmhouse the only house between Tres Lagos and Gobernado Gregores, disappears behind a hill as the road twists it's way up with hills on both sides now, before dropping through a gap with a long tan and black plain stretching out ahead: the hills on the far side I know are those to the east of Lago Cardiel. It takes a couple of hours crossing here with moderate crosswind, until I'm gladly greeted by the turquoise strip of the lake, emerge and grow in size to the left. The road further on goes downhill to a blackened surreal volcanic landscape of puesdocrater conical hills, dark brown and black with the lake peaking through in-between.
I see ahead what I first think are other touring cyclists. But getting closer, see they're motorcyclists. They stand out in the road as I approach. They look to have been on the road a long time, unwashed and sunburned. I think then they are bandits. Though getting nearer I relax. They tell me they are four from England, who flew to Santiago and there bought the motorbikes, and now are on their way to Ushuaia, then north to Alaska. The one doing the talking says he's carrying a lot: all he owns is on the bike as he sold everything else to fund the trip.
It's lunchtime as I cycle on. And as the road draws the neatest it'll get to the lake, where it's a few kilometres off to the left across sandy scrub. I cycle off the road down a track toward the shore to a sheltered embankment to lunch.
After lunch the thought of cycling the remaining seventy kilometres to Gobernado Gregores crosses my mind, as its very exposed to pitch a tent anywhere here. But then find a track further toward the lake which ends at a roadbuilding material gravel pit. Here I make do with the little shelter provided by a bulldozed mound to set up the tent, as the sun comes out for the afternoon.
About five I set off walking to the lake shore. Distance here can be deceptive, though; as what I think isn't too far, is a lot further away. I follow an old vehicle wheel tracks imprinted in the sandy grit as it twists and turns through the thorny scrub, looking as though it hasn't been driven upon in decades. Could've been the original Route 40. But as it veers off to the right it doesn't take me any nearer, so I set off left through the scrubland picking up a natural track made by guanacos. I trudge on and on but the shore seems ellusive. I'm getting no closer.
Eventually, I see I'm making some progress when I reach a ridge, an ancient lakeshore. Just beyond the ridge was the lapping waves, until I climb up, I see on the other side the shore still a long way off. At lease half a kilometre off across barren dry lake bed, scattered with stones and denuded of vegetation. I cross it to yet another long ridge with the lake shore lapping seemingly just the other side, climbing up it, recover my composure and see yet another wide stretch ahead of what would've been under water once. I press on feeling somewhat exhauted with this long walk; until eventually, arriving on an embankment with the crashing waves on a barren shore just beyond. It's bleakness and emmence scale somewhat intimidating. A feeling of aquaphobia, fear of open water in the landscape.
I turn back as now the sun is receding and although it won't be dark for another hour, I need to find my way back through the scrubland. I set my sight on a hill up the other side of the road, down from which is where the gravel pit I've camped at is. Following upon much the same guanaco trail, arriving back well after sunset when the mound, tent and hill up beyond the road are a black syhouette against deep blue and orange cloud embers.
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