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Twenty kilometres before Balmaceda, the Caratera Austral splits off to the right, up a valley through the steep wooded hills on the right side of the valley hitherto. This is what I didn't need at the end of the day. Namely, a kilometres or more long one in eight ascent. A steep ramp taking half an hour to climb. I usually like to be off the road at this time with two to three hours daylight remaining. But there was nowhere to camp to the side. I had to ride up the the short steep valley pass the last farmhouse before looking for a campsite. Then, there was stock fence all along either side. In Chile it seems they're obsessed with fencing in every inch of ground, whether productive land or no, it'll be fenced in. There's only one thing to do here, and that is to lift panniers and bike over the fence. That I do as I was fed up looking out to the side for a gap, or open gateway into the woodland. I camped a few hundred metres in. Well away from any vehicle access and therefore, well away from where any person will be walking, given that car drivers don't venture very far from their car.

Today after yesterday's late finish, it's half ten when I lift the bike back over the fence and fix the panniers back on, before pushing the bike out on the road. The morning sunny but the air like a knife, icy cold with a westerly breeze. I've to don my jacket to stay warm.

It's hard getting the heavy bike going as the road continues uphill from where I'd left off yesterday evening. I'm going at walking pace with the bike wobbling due to all the provisions I've packed. Eventually, at last, there's a stretch of downhill so I can spin the pedals freely.

The tight valley has tree layered slopes rising sharply either side with streams cascading down to the road. And above the treetops, bare rock, sometimes layers of strata, in colours similar to more arid regions, purple, yellow and blue. Above this, jagged mountaintops have a windswept covering of fresh snow, keeping the wind's constant chill in the air.

About one o'clock, there's a great opening up ahead, as the road emerges upon the brink of a deep valley with the beginning of a steep spiral down.

I stop for lunch at a viewpoint a few hundred metres on, looking across and over at Cerro Castillo's thin pinnacles of rock rising skyward. I also see two touring cyclists far below, riding zigzag and slow, on the way up. So I wait hoping to pass the day. Sure that they'll pull in at this viewpoint. But no. When they eventually reach here, they ride on up pass, not even returning my wave. That's the kind of modern generation cyclists or whatever they call themselves, they are. Feeling what a waste of space, I wait no longer. The road is a more reassuring friemd as it sweeps down pass a left turn, the road for Puerta Ibanez. The way I went in 2010. Continuing downhill to the village of Cerro Castillo.

I pull up outside a village shop where there's another touring bike leant against the wall. Not your average commoner gardener bike, it looks like a steel frameset, but looking closer, is alloy. And going by the name "Swallow". What? The most unusual thing is the identical front and rear racks; ie, spindly thin silver steel rods attached to the brake screw-bosses, both front and rear.

I enter the shop and there is the bike's owner, the aging Japanese man I saw yesterday in Coyhaique. I'd say perhaps mid seventies, he's not one of those modern touring cyclists. He doesn't go without passing the time of day with fellow cyclists. Anyway, he tells me he's ridden from Coyhaique today, and is staying here in a hospidaje. Then he turns to the counter with the shopkeeper lady behind it to make his purchase in halted single word phases and sign language before leaving. I was hoping he'd be still outside when I come out once I'd purchased the few items I wanted, but he'd gone. Ah well. Perhaps I'll bump into him on the road tomorrow.

Leaving Cerro Castillo, I cross a bridge after which the tarmac road abruptly ends, and the way ahead is loose stony ripio. The sky now a mat grey, looking like rain. I hope that it won't while tackling the steep uphill away from the village. The small stones turn under my wheels, causing the bike to loose traction, and I've a headwind. It's four o'clock and I'd like, having reach Cerro Castillo, to stop. But there's the same fences all along either side. Then I stop at a wide layby with places level enough in among trees to camp, but then remember I've no water. There aren't any streams nearby, none intersecting the road. Nevertheless, continuing further, I come to a trickle of water where I fill my bottles.

The road goes on up, before, at last levelling out upon a ledge with those rocky pinnacles directly opposite to the left, across the valley with a shear drop to the valley in-between; with an almost vertical wooded slope on the right. Then gradually downhill. Continuing with steep rising woodland on the right and dropping away on the left which is now providing shelter from the icy wind. And further where the road levels out somewhat, I come to an unlocked gate to my right, access to a track into the forest.

I open the gate and push the bike through. Close the gate and ride along what is a gravel forestry road through native forest with various small pasture cleairings to the side. I continue until turning off on a grassy passage between stands of mature trees, where I've to get off and push as it goes gradually uphill. Through the trees to be as far away as possible from possible discovery, to where I am now, a serene grassy clearing shattered with fallen deadwood, where I pitch the tent.

It being six, means I've over three hours of daylight to eat, write my diary and generally relax. It's good to know I won't be lifting my clobber over the fence in the morning.