Touring notes - Carretera Austral Part II

Today's post is brought to you from picturesque Puerto Ingeniero Ibanez, while waiting for the ferry to Chile Chico. We are having so much fun on the Carretera Austral and I wanted to write about some of my misconceptions of this route.

I knew it would be beautiful but hadn't realised how accessible it is. This may be heavily influenced by the fact we have just completed a long asphalt section - possibly our last stretch of paving until we get home... There are several other cyclists heading our way and a few brave ones heading north against prevailing winds which has made for some great chat whilst on the road and off. The road is steadily becoming more and more paved which may mean future cyclists have to struggle with more zooming traffic and also takes away from the natural beauty of the place. However, flat road allows you to concentrate more on the view and less on how to tackle the sandier, pebblier bits of ripio.

Simple things like the availability of fresh tomatoes and perfectly ripe avocados have improved our lunch repertoire - along with our fellow cyclists proving that it is possible to carry such things for a couple of days without making a mess of the inside of a pannier.

We have been incredibly lucky with the weather - we still haven't had to cycle in any appreciable amount of rain (Superstitious readers may be interested to know my wrists are leaning on a wooden table). Quelet National Park that Pob mentioned in his last post gets 4000mm rain/year but we have lovely warm sunshine.

I was quite worried about horseflies here, and they are EVERYWHERE, but they're much easier to deal with than mozzies. They don't torture you at night when you're trying to sleep, they're big so easy to see and quite slow so satisfyingly easy to squash. Oddly they like to bite you through your clothes not straight through your skin so covering up doesn't help. Another cyclist described it like a dance which I think is exactly right - just imagine the Macarena playing then: Hit left shoulder, hit right shoulder, hit left hip, hit right hip, clap, jump about a bit and yelp when you squash one. Repeat to fade.