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Because the mountains to the east are a good few kilometres away, across the lake, the the sun hit my tent at 6.45. There isn't a cloud in the sky and it should be another warm day.

The road this morning is the most incredible serious of steep hills, with gradients up and above one in nine uphill, followed by a similar gradient downhill back to zero on the lake shore. I thought this road was built by military road building engineers. Seems the day they planned this stretch, the engineers weren't at work and some silly person said: Put the road up over that hill there. The one jutting into the lake. No need for blasting, it'll do.

As I see it, it would've been easy to cut a way around the slopes alongside the the shore. But what do I know about road building?

Then I come to a section where they are grading. The grader having left in it's wake a loose soil surface two to three inches deep, all but unrideable. Thankfully, it only lasts no more than a kilometre.

Soon I reach the first village since Thursday afternoon, Puerta Tranquilla. Which seems to be the end-point for all the excursion mini-buses that have been rushing pass me the last few days. Here there is some boat trip or other to an island. The village has a couple of small supermercados, that interest me more; cycling being hungar inducing, where I top up on more bread, a tomatoe and avocado for lunch, and potatoes for evening. Also two litres of wine, that should last three days. Then for some reason I think I've to takes a boat in order to continue south. But couldn't see any small car ferry.

I ride on on a road following the lakeshore; where at the edge of town, I stop to ask a pretty girl hitch-hiker. She doesn't know of a ferry either, but suggests I ask at one of the small cabins selling boat excursions. Which I do. The young man there is only interested in selling me an excursion ticket to visit the island, the island all the excursion people are here to see.

Then I reckon I'd just continue on the road on where the hitch-hiker was waiting; maybe there I'll see the ferry. And when I get as far, she is now standing with her boyfriend. He offers me a booklet on the Caretera Austral to keep, to lighten his load somewhat. But I'm glad of it as the map in it is fairly detailed, certainly better than the one I've got. Showing, the road continues for another 30km, to where there's a ferry over Rio Baker, which drains the lake.

The road continues to snake vertically, with steep wooded slope to the right and the lake on my left, with dark slopes rearing up to snow streaked jagged mountains on the far side and ahead.

It's ridiculously steep in places. And it's often when contemplating such a wall ahead of me, that along comes a truck tearing up a trailing cloud of white dust, leaving me in a blinding haze. Yes, commercial vehicles out on a Sunday too. While most of the visitors from Santiago, slow and pass gently, as not to stir up the road too much.

And to the side, there's fence, fence, fence. The roadside is like a concentration camp with barbwire fences all along either side. Features that would usually lend themselves to unofficial picnic spots, a bit away from the road, such as riverbanks, are overly secured by a stock fence keeping you out. Find enough for car drivers who can make it to the next village to rest and eat but, cyclists need to stop a long time before and more often. As often the case here, there's no way off the road to lunch, or even rest, because of these damn fences on both sides enclosing the road.

But I'm in luck. After only an hour riding, looking for a way off the road to lunch, away from the rumble and dust of passing vehicles: the road dips down to a lakeshore cove between two lofty hills, with on the left a wire gate access that I find easy to open. I push the bike through, close the gate, and wheel across a short grass sward with a blackened ring of stones, an old camp fire in the middle. Then pass between clumps of Rosehip bushes and down to a beach where I spread out my picnic sheet. It's warm enough to strip off and bathe in the lake. The sand is both sharp and hot in the sun. It feels so good to splash cold water around me, and dry off afterwards in the sun. Then have a slow filling lunch: avocado and tomatoes on bread, cake and tea. I even consider camping here, but decide to return to the road for another few hours.

I'd been seeing the double tracks of two cyclists riding abreast all morning. Mid-afternoon though, the French couple catch up on me, so it isn't them. They tell me of an English couple on the campsite where they stayed last night in Puerta Tranquilla, who left very early this morning. Would it be them? Funnily, I saw a difference in the style of cycling in the tracks: the two tracks almost on top of each other in places, suggesting one to be slower and trailing behind the other.

The two French powered Surly bikes are leaving me and my Dawes for dead. And this later part of the day is thankfully dead flat lakeside, gravel road and pasture on both sides. The surface though is washboard for lengthy sections. The fatter tyres on the Surlys float better over this. And the French couple seem less concerned about breaking something, as they pedal way on up the road leaving me behind. I catch them later when they've stopped to photograph a turquoise river with a dazzling blaze of purple, white and pink lupins along the riverbank. The aquamarine, the lupins, a dazzling colour contrast to the green Lenga trees, or beechwood.

At this spot there is no roadside fence, so I decide to stop here the night.