Helen
It’s starts with a mini adventure within an adventure! On the Tuesday night before our ferry crossing on Wednesday, we go to the booking office to fill out our immigration forms and we’re told our 8am ferry crossing will now depart at 4.40am due to the predicted strong winds coming in! It’s a 7km cycle to the lakeside to get the ferry but we’d prefer not to take any chances, so we pack up last minute and head off to find a wildcamp near the lake. We end up two miles from the ferry in a quiet place next to the river.
I don’t get much sleep and when the alarm goes off at 3.45am, we silently pack up in the dark. It’s a beautiful clear sky as we cycle along the lane, passing the ‘Fin de La Carratera Austral’ sign, stopping to take a picture. We meet other cyclists who are also taking the crossing. Robbie and Izzy are from Ullswater, not far away from our home in Cumbria, and have cycled a similar route to us from Colombia. There are four guys from America, an Italian called Sebastian we met previously and an American also called Sebastian, along with Emile from Quebec. The small boat has only 16 seats and enough room for our bicycles and bags.
We set off heading for the Argentinian border, watching night slowly turning to day. I love these moments, the mornings always feel so calm. The sun eventually rises as we get closer to Candelaria, our destination, and we start to see glaciated mountains. The crossing takes almost two hours. Our bikes and bags safely on dry land, we head off 1km up a steep dusty track to Chilean immigration, get stamped out and carry on. It’s steep dirt road but we’re used to this by now. We have to stop and push in places but it eventually levels out. It’s a stunning route, weaving in and out of forests, over wooden bridges crossing ice blue rivers, until eventually we get our first sighting of the great Monte Fitzroy. Even from a distance it looks magnificent! Jagged peaks sitting on top of one another, red, silver and grey in colour.
We carry on and soon reach a blue ‘Bienvenidos i Argentina’ sign. After this the dirt road changes to a single track path, so for the last three miles we undulate up and down steep root lined mud paths, having to lift our bikes over many fallen trees, and crossing rivers and bogs. It’s hard work but also good fun in a strange way (probably because I know it’s only for three miles!). We stop at the high point to take pictures of Monte Fitzroy with Lago Desierto in the foreground, before dropping down to the lakeside and to Argentinian immigration. We’re quickly stamped into the country. Here, we camp on a grassy field on the lakeshore overnight until our ferry arrives tomorrow to take us across. It’s really windy but sunny. We sit and chat to the other cyclists and hikers. Bandurrias and geese wander around the lakeshore, singing. Robbie, the Cumbrian cyclist, plays his Penny whistle.
Later on the weather comes in and it starts to rain, so we retreat to the tent for an early night. It rains pretty much all night and the next morning. It makes me realise how lucky we’ve been with the weather on this journey, only a handful of times have we been stuck in our tent waiting for the rain to pass. although it looks like this weather may be in for the day. By 10am it’s still raining but our ferry leaves at 11am so waterproofs on, we pack away as quickly as we can, and just in time to jump on the ferry. It’s a 45 minute journey, passing some glaciers really low down next to the lake, which is incredible considering we’re only at 350m high.
Off the ferry, fully waterproofed, even the walking boots getting their first cycling outing of the trip! We cycle along side the river, which in many places has burst its banks, so our feet are soon wet, along with everything else! It’s 26 miles to El Chalten, we get the odd sighting of the lower part of the mountains but certainly no magnificent views today! We eventually arrive late afternoon and dive into the first cafe and bakery we come to, drinking coffee and eating our way through the veggie empanadas to warm up. It’s a bustling town full of new looking wooden lodges. The cafe has a hostel attached but it’s full, as are the rest of them, but they let us camp in the garden and use the warm kitchen and toilets.
El Chalten is the Chamonix of Argentinian Patagonia in that it’s a base for outdoor activities, climbing, mountaineering, hiking, rafting and more, and so is a lively hub of cafes, bars and restaurants. It has a good vibe and we meet lots of interesting people going in different directions, and doing different things. We meet up with Scott and Joe, friends we met way back in Huaraz, Peru. They’ve been travelling by car through South America, they recently took a ship to Antarctica, which sounded like an unbelievable experience. It was great to see them again, and interesting to think we met back in August and since then we’ve been our separate ways doing very different things.
In the end we don’t end up doing any hiking, for me it feels like a separate trip at another time, where we can carry lighter kit with more energy and do some multi day hikes. So we head off for El Calafate. But we don’t get very far. Chris gets bitten by a dog! It’s the usual story, a dog starts barking and running towards us, I do a bit of shouting and Chris cycles towards it which normally is enough to make the dog run away. But as he’s cycling off the dog comes from behind and nips him on the side of the leg. I quickly get the first aid kit put (it’s first outing since we left!), whilst trying to get directions from two women as to where the hospital is. Chris is surprisingly calm, even though there’s a fair bit of skin missing from his leg!
A man in a car turns up and drives us to the hospital, which is at the other end of town. Within thirty minutes he’s been treated, the wound cleaned and stitched and sent off with anti-biotics. There’s some complicated conversations where I try to explain and insist that he needs a rabies booster, but they’re adamant there’s no rabies in this area! Instead they give him tetanus vaccination. At one point there’s an Argentinian man outside that speaks good English, and so he’s swept into the room to do some translating, along with the man that drove us here! It’s impressive how quickly he’s treated, there’s not much in the way of policy, privacy or administration, but it’s effective and we’re both grateful.
We head back to the hostel and fortunately they have a private room, so we rest. The following day we decide to take another rest day, we have three days without any villages to go to, before we reach El Calafate. We rest on the morning and then head out for a walk in the afternoon. We follow a track to a mirador and are lucky as the cloud clears enough for us to glimpse the Fitzroy range, along with a glacier than runs into a lake below us. It’s unbelievable to think it’s only 900m high.
We set off towards El Calafate the following day, being mindful of any wandering dogs! It’s a flat cycle out of town and with a tailwind we’re soon on our way past Lago Viedma, a huge glacial lake. In the distance I can see blue icebergs, it’s surreal! We get further around and below the snowy mountain range is a huge glacier floating into the lake. It warms up as the day goes on, the landscape changes as the mountains disappear in the distance behind us, and if feels like we’re in the desert in northern Argentina once again. It’s arid, with little water, and the road it so straight and flat I struggle to motivate myself. There are no beautiful coloured flowers, and not much bird life. But we do see guanaco and some ostriches which keep me motivated. The afternoon is difficult, the wind changing direction slightly into our faces. But we have to keep going, there’s nowhere to take refuge. We eventually hit a t-junction where we join the Ruta 40. There’s a fairly new shelter here, designed for cyclists and people taking shelter from the very strong winds. It’s surrounded in glass and so is toasty warm. We stay here for the night. We’re joined by a Dutch couple and a man from Switzerland, all cycling south. Later on a couple of Irish lads trying to hitch hike north, join us for a bit, before getting a lift in a huge old campervan. It’s a beautiful evening, apart from the wind, which howls around the shelter.
The wind calms down during the evening, and the sky is absolutely stunning during the night. The glass windows allow me to see the stars and moon without even having to move. We awake at 6am, and all of us pack up and get going early to try to avoid the strong afternoon winds. It’s a beautiful morning, a clear red sky lighting up the mountains in the distance as the sun rises. The road is flat again and we make good mileage, all of us leap frogging each other as we stop in various places for water and rest. We rise over a hill and can see another lake, Lago Argentino and on its shore in the distance is El Calafate. Beyond the town are snowy mountains and I imagine a lot of glaciers forming the southern Patagonian ice field.
We stop and camp next to a big river about 23 miles outside of El Calafate. It’s early afternoon and we could continue but we’ll soon turn west and straight into the headwind so we’d rather rest and get up early in the morning to hopefully avoid the worst of it. There’s no one around, the sun comes out and the wind isn’t too bad so I go for a swim. It’s fairly icy cold but refreshing and good to feel clean again! An hour later the wind picks up considerably, it seems to do this most afternoons and I wonder why. The cycling couple from the Netherlands arrive and set up camp close by. We lie in the tent and rest in the warmth. Chris sleeps whilst I listen to the wind in the trees.
Another 7am start as we’re heading directly into the wind, and we’re glad we do. By 9am the headwind is already strong but by 10am we have arrived at El Calafate, where we’ll stay for a few days to visit the Perito Moreno glacier. It’s a big modern looking town with a real touristy feel. I wonder if it existed at all before it became a tourist destination. We stay at a municipal campsite and meet two Italian travellers and two British who gage just started in Ushuaia. We also meet up with Marco, our German cycling friend that we last saw just before Christmas. Everyones going on the same direction at this point. We still have about 600 miles to go to Ushuaia, right now it seems like a never ending journey, it seems to be taking ages to get to the next destination, and the mixed weather can make it difficult. But I try to be in the moment and appreciate these last few weeks.
