The hardest part

After the events of the previous day I wasn't sure I would be leaving La Junta at all :) But at least the bike was fixed. Leaving was made harder because Connie and Alan, the couple that ran the hotel, had been so kind to me and the hotel was lovely too. In English the name meant "Space and time", and it was a small oasis away from the dusty Carretera Austral. But I needed to get a move on, and wanted to try to complete the remaining gravel highway between me and Argentina.

Connie had mentioned a little about the road north and south of La Junta, and I was disappointed to hear that actually I could have ridden through Chaiten, instead of diverting through Argentina. Although there was nothing there since the eruption, ferries and the road were in operation. South towards Coyhaique I was told there were many beautiful wildflowers.

What I didn't know was that the roadworks I had encountered the previous day were just the very start of a long, long section of works between La Junta and Puyuguapi, the next town. The Carretera Austral was a pretty demanding gravel road, and I'd been averaging maybe 30mph over most of it to La Junta. The Carretera Austral with roadworks, however, was another beast. Most of the roadworks sections were either dirt, or more commonly very deep gravel/rocks. I found myself at a complete crawl over those parts of the road, and I frequently had to stop altogether as trucks came barrelling past in the opposite direction, amid huge clouds of choking dust. Hmmm, I thought. This is definitely the hardest part of the ride so far. It makes the Dalton Highway look like Disneyland.

It got worse. My map showed that there was a long section of paved road down to Coyhaique from Villa Amengual, but a little before I got there the road climbed away from the river valley I'd been following, and hairpinned it's way up to a pass across the mountains. The bends were deep dust and rock, and at every one the bike would slide alarmingly, at one point almost firing me off when I got on the throttle too enthusiastically. I kept thanking Matias back in Vina Del Mar for recommending the trail tyres I'd put on, the road tyres I'd been using would have been impossible on the Carretera Austral. Having made it to the top of the pass, just for fun the descent was all hairpin bends and as bad as the ascent in every way.

Having assumed that the hardest part was over with, the road started to follow the river again and there were more roadworks. By this time I was stiflingly hot, my legs hurt from all the standing on the pegs and there was a big knot between my shoulder blades from fighting with the bars. Added to that I was suffering severe sense of humour failure, so you can imagine how I thanked the roadworks team when I rode into a long stretch of deep sand mixed with pebbles, kind of like the ballast you put in concrete. The bike would slew sideways if I went more than a walking pace, and I thought I was off more times than I could count. I found that I could go for maybe a hundred metres, then I would have to stop, rest, look for a line ahead, and then do the next hundred metres. I passed a cycling couple pushing their bikes. It looked like very hard work. As I slewed past, too worried about colliding with them to risk a wave, the
girl looked over and raising her finger to her temple, shot herself in the head. I nodded agreement. This was definitely the hardest part ;)

But oh boy was it ever worth it. When the paved section started I was throwing the bike into bends at 60mph, really enjoying the ride. There were lupinos as they call them in Chile lining both sides of the road with purple for more than a hundred kilometers, the smell alone made it worth all the aggravation. Plus the scenery was outstanding - sometimes Alpine, sometimes more rural, always in bloom. Approaching Coyhaique there were entire islands covered in wildflowers out in the river. I have never seen so many flowers.

As the road from Coyhaique was paved, there were a few tourists about and it was no longer a rare event to pass a car, but it was still very quiet. Coyhaique itself was a surprise when I got there, it looked big on my map but I rode in one side and out the other in a few minutes and had to turn around, as I was planning to stay the night.

The following morning I was planning to catch the ferry from Puerto Ibanez on the north shore of Lake Buenos Aires, to Chile Chico on the south shore, before crossing into Argentina again. I thought about asking the hotel manager what times the ferry ran but didn't, so it should have come as no surprise that after the hundred or so kilometer ride to get there, there were no ferries as it was some sort of public holiday Monday. See you tomorrow Indiana Jones ;)

Frase.