As we settle into life here in La Paz, we have given up our travelling ways, our camera has become burried somewhere in one of our packs, and our days have been filled with job training and food finding. We almost have a room sorted, as we wait for one of the old guides to leave, as we endure the last round of musical beds, we long for desparately to unpack. We have managed to get out and ride and explore, on tracks so much more adventurous than the World´s most dangerous road, which has been amazing. We have almost become [View Full Entry]

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Bus travel is of an extremely different standard to that in Argentina, definately not helped by the state of the roads. Very few roads are sealed here and when the ripio - dirt road - gets too muddy or corregated it appears many drivers just go cross country and make new ones. Unfortuantely we didn't time it ride for the smoother train rides, so bus it was. Villazon to Uyuni, a mere 350km, took 11 hours. We climbed an enormous mountain pass that made us glad we weren't attempting it on bikes, endured another very close electrical storm and then had [View Full Entry]

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We left the heat of Cordoba on Friday night without a hitch along with our bikes after a weeks separation, and arrived in Salta in the cool early morning. Salta was lush and green and old buildings abound. We decided to bus to San Salvador de Jujuy that arvo to begin our ride to avoid the main busy road. After waiting over an hour at the bus depot getting more and more anxious, we realised once again we´d been caught out by the confusing time zone changes here in Argentina. Lucky it wasn´t the other way round! Tropical Jujuy was dark [View Full Entry]

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AAAaaarrgh!!!....just when we thought we had it sorted, we found ourselves up against The Way Things Work Here. 5 minutes before the bus left for Salta we discovered that we couldn´t take the bikes on the bus, despite the assurances from the ticket office. So we watched in despair as the bus pulled away from the terminal without us. We had to arrange for the bikes to travel separately to Cordoba, as far north as it was possible to send cargo from Rio Gallegos. A full refund was not possible, so we transfered our tickets to Argentina´s second largest city to [View Full Entry]

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El Chalten was a great reintroduction to vibrant Argentina after the sparsly populated southern section of the Carretera Austral. A magnet for climbers and other adventuous travellers, there are few cars on the streets, but tents and backpacks abound. We enjoyed chatting with climbers at the free campground and other cyclists, including the American couple who had a trailer like mine, carrying much more important cargo. They had been cycling for 3 months already, with their now 5 month old daughter fast asleep in the BOB. I (Phil) also ran into a motorcyclist called Doug, a character I met [View Full Entry]

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2009 began in fine style for us. After seeing in the new year with the family who run the hospedaje, some entertaining yanks and a couple of dutch cyclists in Tortel, we dragged ourselves out of bed after not enough sleep to take a boat through the fiords to join the Carretera Astral further south. We joined Carson, a cyclist from Germany, and together we rode three abreast on roads in much better condition than we were led to believe, safe in the knowledge that the road was ours alone until the next ferry 5 hours later. The temperature was perfect [View Full Entry]

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After 3 days of feasting in Coyhaique we departed feeling rejuvenated with bulging panniers filled with our xmas treats. We left with a howling tail wind and almost sunshine. Just before we left town we popped into the ´Aysen - Reserva de vida´ information centre, to learn more about the ´SIN REPRESA´battle, and were lucky enough to find a very passionate American woman to answer all our questions in english. It´s such a emotive topic with the locals of Patagonia we have had many lengthy conversations about the dams but alas in Spanish and we were struggling to peice it all [View Full Entry]

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Just a few photos, we might sort out a few words shortly. We are in the wee town of Cochrane, after some wonderful diverse days of riding and are keen to have our rest day at a interesting sounding isolated refugio down the road. So next town Totel - the town with no roads, well up until they went and built a road for us to cycle in on. On second thought only two photos, its painfully slow! We´ll do better next time promise. Christmas was great and all is good. Better hit the road. [View Full Entry]

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When we first arrived in Chile 10 days ago, we were perhaps a little dissapointed as our expectations didn´t reconcile with what we found in Futeleufu. With our pantry almost empty we hoped to restock with food and fuel, but found shops to be few, small and with limited supplies. We talked with some Americans who were faced with the prospect of a 150km drive to the nearest petrol station on a near empty tank. Days later and still not with much in the way of maps and food, we met a British cyclist heading in the opposite direction. When we [View Full Entry]

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Well we obviously jinxed our vegetarian luck, with proclaiming our vegetarian sucess. That very night we had "lenteje and tocino" soup according to the picture filled with lots of veges, we found out afterwards tocino is pork fat! And it´s continued on that way as we blindly select foods from stalls and restaurants. Oh well! Waking up in a saturated tent and putting on yesterday´s soggy clothes, in order to ride another 60km´s of muddy roads in relentless rain isn´t a particularly enthusiasm enhancing experience. Things aren´t too bad once moving, but this sort of weather isn´t condu [View Full Entry]

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