Category Archives: 14. Chile

Report : Chile and Argentina

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Fin Parque Nacional Tierra del FuegoWith my hair growing endlessly as kilometres go by, I get out of Bolivia and enter Chile at the end of October 2013. If some of my friends were telling me “Already in Chile! You’re almost done! Only two countries left!”, I was receiving the encouragement while clarifying. We forget that Chile, with an atypical geographical form of a thin land layer stuck between the Pacific and the Andes of 180 kilometres in average (going between 90 y 400 kilometres), stretches for almost 4.300 kilometres from North to South. With it’s neighbour, the country shares the third longest border of the world (after Canada/USA and Russia/Kazakhstan). Argentina, quite wider, is the eighth biggest country of the world. Through both countries, I cycled 7,625 kilometres, which represents almost a quarter of all what I did through the Americas!

If on one side, I was looking at weirdly through well shaved men, on the other side, I was integrated more easily with my long hair and my beard, where everything is more relax (on which point Chilean don’t hesitate to point out the laziness of their neighbours). Unfortunately, Continue reading →

The last stretch

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Magallanes y Antártica Chilena region, Chile; Tierra del Fuego, Antártida e Islas del Atlántico Sur province, Argentina

A Ushuaia

It won’t be a surprise to know that we’ll arrive to Ushuaia at the end of this article. But the ten days to get there from Puerto Natales still worth a few good mentions.

If before, on the Argentinian side, the afternoons were still not too cold, here on the Chilean side by the sea, it’s cold and humid all day long. Sleeping without a shelter isn’t an option. The 250 kilometers between Puerto Natales and Punta Arenas were made in three days, sleeping under a barn beside the police station in Morro Chico and inside an abandoned house on the second night. It was a horror movie setting, but anyway, the two of us got over the fear that the owner’s ghost (or the bird’s one, dead on the kitchen table) come to haunt us in our sleep. Once, for a few minutes, snow flakes fall in the glacial wind. In Punta Arenas, I saw an email from travel friends that just arrived in Ushuaia, going through a snow storm as an arrival gift. This bodes well.  Continue reading →

The Carretera Austral (parts)

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Los Lagos and Aysén del General Carlos Ibáñez del Campo regions, Chile

Puyuhuapi

We can’t hide it, our last experience in Chile didn’t make us overwhelmed to go back to Chile. Already we knew that we’ll miss pastries and good bread, cheaper food and more courteous drivers. But anyhow, we can’t miss the famous Carretera Austral that I heard about since I started this trip in Canada. At least, the summer holiday period is over, so we can hope for less people on the road. More and more people, including cyclists due north, tell us when they learn that we are going to Ushuaia that we are a little bit late: “it freezes at night sometimes” or “oh! it snowed up there a few days ago (in the mountains)”; in short some stuff to cheer us up.

The three first days will be done without Guillermo. Some people that I traveled with further north and passed by here a few weeks ago told me that a good segment was in horrible construction, very rocky and totally demoralizing. Continue reading →