Coyhaique

Refugio Macales – Coyhaique – Rio Ibanez, Chile

The last two days have been an almost dizzying kaleidoscope of different people, landscapes, weather patterns, towns, cities, and shopping. 

Let’s start with Tim from Great Britain. I think we actually first encountered Tim two days ago when we were having lunch at the base of the condor granite wall. As we were eating we saw a guy whiz by with a light-weight set-up – no panniers, just a few things on his handlebars and a big seat bag sticking out the back. 

Didn’t think much of it at the time. 

But, then, yesterday we’re biking along and a guy comes up from behind. Same guy. Or at least the same set up. And he seems to be moving fast – so it would seem to make sense.

Tim has been biking almost a year now. He started from Britain, and biked through Europe to Georgia – the country. Like so many of us, he wasn’t too thrilled with Russia, so he didn’t want to bike there. Instead, he flew to Vietnam and started up his cycling again there. He didn’t love biking through Asia. I guess a white guy with ginger hair in Indonesia is like a Chinese woman biking through Mexico – just too much of a novelty. Everyone wanted to take selfies with him – and Tim eventually grew tired of it . . .

He’s been in South America for a few months now. A bit rocky, really. Remember that rear pack that we saw flying by a few days ago? Well, when Tim was cycling through Paraguay on his way to a Warm Showers host he had his wallet and passport and stuff in there. I guess the roads were rough and his stuff eventually fell out. 

A Paraguayan driver apparently saw it fall out and started honking at him, but Tim had just finished riding through Brazil – where, he said, the drivers are pretty aggressive – so Tim thought the Paraguay driver was just giving him a hard time . . . 

Later, after he arrived at the Warm Showers place and realized that his stuff had fallen out he also realized what the honking had been about. But by then it was too late . . .

Long story . . . But Tim ended up losing two weeks of his trip – the time it took to get a new emergency passport. The Warm Showers hosts actually let him stay the whole time – including when they had to leave for a few days on business. 

Lesson: Never store your wallet and passport in a place where they can fall out . . .

We ended up getting to know Tim pretty well. He joined us for road-side coffee and lunch yesterday, and then dinner last night. 

Tim does indeed have a much different set up than most people that we see bike touring. He’s on a fully carbon-fiber bike. No bike rack. No panniers. No cook kit. Just a tent, a sleeping bag, and a few clothing items. He averages about 85 miles per day. 

Good for us to talk with Tim. Because so many of the cyclists we meet down here average more like 30-40 miles per day. Which is totally fine. Except that they often say things like:

”Yeah, our goal is to really enjoy the country.”

As if, in going faster, you somehow lose the joy of it. 

They usually have huge mounds of stuff on their bikes. 

“I might need that laundry machine, you know . . .”

Doesn’t really matter. We obviously don’t care what other folks bring along. But it is nice to meet someone like Tim, who really enjoys the biking itself and is trying to cover some ground. 

Maybe it has something to do with how much time you have. Tim has a one year leave from his job; he’s supposed to be back at it in mid-May or so. We don’t have a definite end date like that, but we do feel like we can only do negative balance sheet life for so long before we – or, really, Diana, goes back to work at least a little bit . . . And we do have a bit of a list of things we want to do and places we want to see before we’re done . . . So meeting Tim – and Gabriel yesterday – who I’ll get to in a minute – was refreshing. 

Just so we don’t feel like if we’re not all Zen and the Art of Bicycle Maintenance then we’re somehow doing it wrong . . .

Okay, Gabriel. Another great guy. Gabriel has been biking – or, rather, camping – a bit with Tim over the last week or so. They met each other on the road and found that they were on a little bit of the same route for a few days. 

They weren’t actually riding together because Tim rides fast – like really fast. Where Gabriel is more in our zipcode. Still moving along – but riding at more of the bigger load pace that we go at. 

Anyway, we connected with Gabriel when we were stopped at a mini-market for lunch yesterday and ended up riding the rest of the day with him. 

Gabriel’s originally from Venezuela, but, like so many people, Gabriel and his family left about ten years ago. He’s been living in Santiago most of that time, but about a year ago he landed a job in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He’s a truck mechanic but he grew tired of trying to support his family – wife and two kids – on Chilean wages. 

Sounds like he makes a lot more in Winnipeg. So now he’s planning to move the whole family to Canada.

Gabriel hasn’t biked long, but he’s obviously loving it now. He’s on a two week tour of Patagonia – kind of racing to reach the end before he has to return to real life . . .

We had a great time together. Incredible biking. A very fall-like day, with crisp winds (mostly at our backs), big hills, bigger views, and seemingly peak colors. 

Hoping we’ll see more of Gabriel on our return . . .

Oh, where was Tim yesterday? Well, he had his laundry done in Coyhaique and the service didn’t return his clothes until noon. So Tim had a late start and was behind us – but he rode fast enough that, we think, he almost caught us by the end of the day. 

But we’re heading a different direction than those guys now – so probably won’t be seeing either of them again for a while.

Sandwiched in between our Tim and Gabriel rides was Coyhaique and I wanted to touch on that for a minute. 

Somehow, in the middle of all the remoteness of Patagonia there’s a real town. Population of around 50,000 people. Real shopping – it even has North Face and Patagonia stores. Lots of bike shops. Restaurants and grocery stores that look like grocery stores. 

We managed to pack a bunch into our one quick overnight. I gota haircut. We bought more duct tape (for making Diana’s sandal-like bike shoes a little warmer), more zip ties, and we got more cash (not that easy to come by in Patagonia). New helmet. New extra derailleur cable. 

And we found a bike shop – Patagonia Cycles – that was willing to fix Old Dan’s rear wheel in a jiffy. The mechanic there, Miguel, was awesome. He took one look at the wheel, which had developed a wobble on the hub in the last few weeks, and said: “Very bad.”

I guess it’s the bearings. And if things get really bad the whole wheel can basically explode – leaving you in the middle of nowhere riding a unicycle . . .

It was 4 p.m. and the shop is packed with cyclists – all waiting for their own bikes to be repaired. I’m not feeling very good about my chances of getting this thing fixed at this point. We are on a tight schedule to make the once-per-week ferry out of Caleta Tortel next week. We really can’t afford to wait around for this repair . . . Guessing in Minneapolis we would be looking at two weeks. 

Miguel – he tells us to come back in an hour or two. Love that guy. Old Dan is running like a top and is happy as a clam. 

Okay, lots more to talk about but no more time . . . So you get one more story.

Diana found us a strange little place in the middle of nowhere to stay at yesterday. Kind of a little motel-like place behind this lady’s house – Mary (pronounced Marr-Eee). Mary is providing us breakfast but not dinner – and there is no restaurant or anything else for miles around. 

So we’re planning a VERY basic camp stove dinner. I bring the stove outside of the motel type facility and start setting up. But Mary is out in the yard as well – cooking something on her stove, which is inexplicably (at least in US logic) sitting in the middle of the back yard. 

She sees me setting up and gets very upset. She starts lecturing me in Spanish – very soon she’s far beyond my limited vocabulary. But I glean – with my keen emotion detecting senses – that Mary does not want me cooking and she really does not want us eating in the room. 

We go back and forth for a while and I’m trying to convey that I’ll cook outside and we’ll eat elsewhere. She’s having none of it. Finally, I plug this into Google Translate:

“Can I cook outside and then we eat in your dining room (there’s a guest dining run in the main house for breakfast).”

It takes a minute to get her to read the screen, but when she finally does she nods and is happy.

“Si, si.”

Okay, now we’re literally cooking with gas…

Except I decide to push my luck because I don’t want to run out of gas… “Do you want me to use your stove?”

“No!”

And she stomps off into the house…

And dinner? Pretty good actually. Some type of dried instant soup stuff but with a giant sausage – like 15” – cut up and added in. With some bread and butter. (Bread is getting better all the time…)

Today? Full on rain and 50 degrees. But we just have a short ride to our next ferry and then we stay overnight there.

Tomorrow we start on the real gravel…

Wish us luck…