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Published: January 31st 2015
On the Carretera Austral there are rod jobs galore and some stretches are closed for 6 hours and if you're caught in between you're caught and then you have to wait, whether you want to or not, We did not so we got up early and drove as fast as possible, Werner , the Swiss, knows no fear and speed on and Alejandro and me got to the same place a littte later.
Speed kills, the first strech was tarmac so we made good time but the the ripio started yet again and the going got slower.
Soon we hit the road work and the the going got really slow, mud and big rocks, so slippin'an'slidin' was in order.
The old part of the road is very nice gravel by all means ,some parts are so narrow that you drive in a tunnel of trees, big ferns and all kinds of different veggies.
One valley going was so narrow that the GPS lost the satellites, not that it mattered much, there was no options to go anywere else.
No time for pics so you just have to believe me, the Carretera Austral is very nice, a
totally different thing from the famous Ruta 40 in Argie.
We passed the road works section with half an hour to spare.
After a discussion with the landlord of a nice restaurant we decided to go back to Argie via the town with the nice name of Futalefu, still in Chile.
By the time we got there I was wasted, 10 hrs on the bike takes it's toll.
We found a really nice hotel owned by an italian family.
They had up rooted their lives bought some rambling building via internet in the far away lands of Chile.
And made a very nice hotel out of it.
And they had cold beer as well.
Vey nice very friendly, very good beds, not the 70 cm wide shit you get in some places.
The owner told us us about his pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela and when he heard that Alejandro had done the same, the few doors that had been locked opened wide open.
So far on this trip there are two high light places, as far as lodgings go, the hostel in El Calafate and the hotel in Futalefu.
It's a delight to meet people like that.
Leaving Chile got us back in to bone dry ripio, back to the billowing clouds of Torres the Paine.
I ate a lot of peoples dust today, krikes, also the cold Chile is a memory is a memory, back in Argie it's hot, a good 30C.
So out comes the water bottle, no more beer for lunch, wail!
Alejandro has had it with the ripio and takes off to Bariloche on the nice paved roads, Werner and I go through a lovely national park, with, in some places, very bad ripio.
Almost out of the park there is some kind of pest control looking for some amoeba or some thing.
we stop there and chat with the people there and they've got a high pressure washer and the guy thinks my bike is dirty so he starts to wash it!
At last tarmac, again we speed on and end up in El Bolson.
A hostel, a quick sprint to the supermarket and we have a nice afternoon beer with crackers and cheese and olives, well deserved indeed!
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