My first night without Christie :(

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I tried my best to get my $US90 worth at breakfast, and I think I almost made it. Breakfast almost made up for what dinner lacked.

It absolutely poured with rain all morning, so we just sat lounged around in the hotel reading, had a late lunch and kileld time until the scheduled 2pm ferry departure.

I cycled the 1km down to the ferry and got absolutely drenched in the process ... It has rained for 7 days straight now. Ferry trip was nice, and would have been spectacular on a clear day, then at the other end, everyone else jumped onto the nice warm bus while I squirmed back into my smelly, wet cycling gear and took off down the muddy road.

A kilometre of so down the road, there was a bit of a wash out. Buses were stopped at both sides and a 4WD thingy was ferrying people across. The guy in charge wouldn´t let me cross by myself, nor would he let me get on the 4WD thingy ... In the end we negotiated a peace treaty ... I was allowed to push my bike across wearing sandals and shorts ... the water came up to about my ankles. scary stuff.

After that the riding was fairly flat and easy. Stopped off at a huge cascade about 6km from the lake (which was also the end of the gravelled road). It cost 1300 pesos ($US3) but was pretty specky. The highlight was returning to my bike and finding this gaggle of older, fairly plump, spanish speaking ladies taking turns sitting on my bike taking photos. I´ve never met a group of people having so much fun on a bike before. We chatted for a while, they either thought I was great or crazy and they sent me off down the road to a chorus of ´Hellos´and ¨bye bye´s´. I assumed these are the only english words they know and they weren´t quite sure which was the right one to use. I loved their enthusiasm.

Pulled into Ensenada about 10kms later, very wet. For the princely price of 10000 pesos ($US20) I booked my own room at Hospedja Ensenada. A great place to stay, and the owner speaks some English and German. The weather was too horrid for me to venture out again to have dinner so spent the night in my room feasting on leftover muesli bars and dried fruit whilst reading a 1998 copy of National Geographic on the Siberian Railway as the rain and wind beat down against my window.


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Peulla to Ensenada
Distance: 17.7km by bike, 547km in total
Weather: rain, rain, rain, more rain and some wind. headwind of course.
Mood: Relaxed.
Route: First ferry leaves Peulla at 2pm. Took about 2hrs to cross lake. Easy, flat / undulating ride to Ensenada. First 6km is gravel roads, with some washouts and thousands of pot holes. I was travelling faster than the buses. After that it is a cruisy bitumen road. Ensenada has several supermarkets, hospedja´s, campgrounds etc. most were closed.

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Photos

A room with a view
If you're wondering, this is the view you get from a very expensive room. Same as I'd get from my tent. It's wet and cold.

The Final Lake
Beautiful water colour and lovely falls. This is actually at the ferry terminal in Peulla.

The lake
Beautiful water colour.

The road wash out
ankle deep ... not real scary.

Waterfall
The tour group had to miss this as the washout put them behind schedule. This is why they don't raft this river. It was big water!