Coyhaique to Puerto Montt

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After leaving Coyhaique we had 6 days to cover 420km to get to Chaiten so that we could get the ferry on Wednesday evening to Puerto Montt. We left Coyhaique late after cooking a full english breakfast for our swiss companions and getting our bikes back from the shop so only managed 40km the first afternoon. We had two good days next with 100km one day (and found a cafe en route to get a burger) and 80km the other to make it to Puyuhuapi late afternoon on the Sunday.

The next 3 days the weather closed in and rained for pretty much the entire time so we were not happy chaps. To make matters worse when we arrived in Chaiten, expecting it to be some sort of haven to dry out and eat nice food, we were greated by the biggest dump of a town we've seen so far. Also the ferry was fully booked so we had to wait until Friday to get the next one, in a town with more abandoned buildings that occupied ones. Still we found a nice hostel so just chilled out there watching TV until we got the ferry. We arrived in Puerto Montt late Friday evening and it was quite a shock to the system to be in a city again! The plan now is to get on the pan american and see what sort of distances we can cover on it. Santiago is about 1000km away so shouldn't be too long, depending on how bad the headwinds are. We've been told by a number of cyclists that from Santiago down we've been going the "wrong way" in terms of getting headwind, but from Santiago up we're going the right way. We even met one guy who flew to Santiago to cycle from there to Ushuaia, then flew back to Santiago to go up to Colombia just to avoid the headwinds!

We've covered about 2340km so far, with about 1000km of that being on unpaved roads so we think this is about a quarter the total distance.

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Photos

Villa Amengual
Village where we stopped for burgers