It was mildly cool when we set off along Lago Puyehue, and we took the opportunity about 15 minutes in to stop for a picture. I was going to quckly do a snapshot of the lake, but Tori offered to take one of me in it. This quickly resulted in my camera finding it's way to the ground, after a quick bobble it was sort of flung downward. Took a little prying to get the lens to move again, but hey, it's only a $400 camera that's one month old. We moved onward and I tried to fight the "cry over spilt milk" mentality for a while. Riding along the lake was great, would be very nice sport riding with lots of rolling hills and beautiful scenery. Pavement was perfect. I should mention here what our experience has been with traffic so far - there really hasn't been any. We might get passed by one vehicle every 10 minutes, and I stress maybe. Certainly isn't much. They give you a decent amount of space, but don't really slow down (we haven't been in high speed areas anyway). Nine out of ten vehicles try to make a little toot-toot jingle with their horn, and again nearly everyone waves. Road construction crews wave and say Hola, as do housebuilders near the road. You certainly don't get the feeling that the populace thinks you're a nuisance.
My overall distance estimate of 110k turned out to be spot on, but we had a hard time guaging distance to intermediate points. Approaching the national park, it seemed that Anticura would have some services as it was marked on the map as a hotel, but turns out it was only a sparse national park campground. We stopped just inside the park to see a waterfall, and had a few Cliff bars for lunch instead of a hot lunch we were craving. We lugged our way up the hill, we started the day at 70m and eventually made it over the pass at 1,300m, which was quite a bit of work with the weight and my gearing. I was standing about half the time. Stopped at one point to take a few pictures of these plants with giant leaves. The ones we took pictures were fairly big, maybe three feet across, and right by the side of the road. There were also ones we spotted that were more like 6 feet across when they grew in just the right spots.
We came upon Chilean border control way earlier than the map indicated, and grabbed lunch from a little store. Empanadas, refrescos (I tried a can of Pap and Tori went for a can of Kem), and a box of chocolate covered almonds. Borders are a 4 step process. There's a guy in a little hut the writes down your vehicle on a slip of paper. You proceed 30m up the road to the buildings (where we ate) and stand in two lines, one for the international police (Chilean babe) and one for customs, both of which stamp a box on your slip of paper after a little due process. You then take the completed slip of paper 30m up the road and deposit it with the booth guy on the other end of the border process. We could see the snowy peaks of the Andes looming, and plugged away uphill for a couple of hours. As we neared the top, we entered clouds and rain. It was still warm while climbing, we were doing a lot of work for only 7-8kph, but I knew we'd be cold going down. After endless turns that looked like they'd deliver us to the top, we finally made it. For comparison to home, if anyone's doing trainer workouts now, I'd call the west ascent of the Andes with paniers a "leg strength workout". Pretty heavy duty one at that. I think in total it was about 4 hours at 40-60rpm with what you'd call "high torque". Guess I could have used a few more gears, but oh well. Took a few pictures and headed onward.
The descent was fun. Most people know I like going downhill fast on bikes, and today was one of those days. Lugging 2 weeks worth of gear over the Andes meant I was going to enjoy the trip down. I was still carrying the tent from yesterday, I had it jammed into the drops of my handle bars. It held firmly there, and I was riding on the hoods all the time anyway, so it didn't bother me. The tent did of course interfere with my front brake, so I disconnected it when I started carrying the tent (just one of the reasons I was faster than Tori down the backside of all the gravel hills yesterday). But now we're coming down some pretty serious stuff, and it's only like 5-10C, and downpouring. My rims are wet and my hands are frozen. Yes, it's summer here, but nobody said you can't get a bonechilling rain on the Icefield Parkway in July either. My sole rear brake doesn't have the capacity to scrub off much speed, it'd probably take me over 200 yards to come to a full stop, as I was hitting 80kph at points, plus the added inertia of all my gear. I also forgot my replacement brake pads at home in my toolbox, so might as well try to be economical with these so they last the trip.
While there are drawbacks to a loaded bike, there are some benefits. I couldn't slow down to any reasonable speed for several of the turns, but where an unweighted wheel would have the tendency to skip out or actually lose traction and slide, these weighted ones were glued to the pavement. Undoubtedly they also have their sliding point, but as anyone who's put softener salt or gravel bags in the back of a rear wheel drive car in the winter knows, weight helps traction.
I know this because I think I set a new record for myself today in terms of angular lean on a bike. Coming into a tight corner with my hand squeezing my brake for all it was worth, I realized I wasn't slowing down much. I pulled the Tinker Juarez move and pulled my left leg out for an outrigger. Let's just say that SIDI didn't seem to take breaking friction on wet pavement into account when formulating the silver plastic on their mountain bike shoes. I've got a sweet picture of the fresh plastic revealed on the sole of my shoe once the first dingy later was ground off. At this point it was a) let Tori inherit all my bikes, or b) lean into this turn in a big way and hope these tires earn their sticker price one more time. I opted for the latter, and as you can tell, all worked out in the end. I think I had 8" of pavement to spare, which is at least 8 tire widths. No problem! I'll point out too that none of the injection mold hairs have worn off my tires yet on this trip. Durability and grip is the Holy Grail of tire chemistry.
We stop on a flat stretch and throw on another jacket each under our raincoats. It's really cold, and Tori isn't looking like she's digging the challenge of avoiding hypothermia. For the record, she sleeps under down blankets in the summer... and a month ago I was doing 3h rides in -25C.
We come up to another border crossing, this time the Argentine side. I find this a little confusing, but as best I can tell they just share the national park and put border stations on either side. It's the same 4 step process, but instead of doing lunch in between step one and two, we put on another layer. All I have is knicker bibs to throw on over my shorts (on of the best cycling garments I own), while Tori has full tights. We complete steps 2 and 3, and discuss what lies ahead. It's a hilly 21k to the town, it's like 7pm already, we're 6 hours into our ride, and the rain is coming down in sheets. My little cyclo-conqueror companion looks distressed, and asks what we should do. People are looking out at us and our bikes leaned against the wall from the busses and while waiting in line for customs. One man and woman are dressed to the 9's in Patagonia Gore-tex jackets and fleece vests for their bus trip. It's like we're at the zoo, and we're the show.
This is easy. It's like a rain day in TransRockies or La Ruta, and we're at the last checkstop before the finish line. I grab a couple fruit bars, unwrap one, and stick it in Tori's mouth while she's working on her bags. The plan is as follows: you eat this, throw on whatever clothes you need, then we hammer for all we're worth to Villa Angostura. It'll take between one and two hours. We have no choice really, and now's our chance to differentiate ourselves from the herd of sheep being carted around on the bus tour wearing Patagonia brand clothes that don't do anything more than fend off the bus' air conditioning system.
We hammer, and every time I look back Tori is there, either right on my wheel or 20m behind on some of the hills. It's pouring, and I love it. We go hard enough that my hands warm up, but my feet are still bricks. The people on the bus look at us like we're crazy. I'm smiling from ear to ear, not because I'm crazy, but because I'm revelling the fact that I'm not a run of the mill softie. Wipers are going so fast on the vehicles that I can hear them almost as soon as I can hear the cars. I open my mouth and drink the rain. I love this shit. I'm near tears of joy.
We get to the town sign, but there's still several km to go to town. The rain subsides a bit, and the yellow, purple and blue flowers on the hillside are beautiful. The lake is huge, beatuful, and full of islands. It's over 100km long. Beatuful Okanagan style cabins dot the hillside. Once again, we're not in slum country here. We see a nice looking lodge up on the hillside and ride up the driveway. Works out to $50US/night. At home a room like this would be $200 easily. I play with a cat that's sitting in a cardboard box on a window sill, he's my new buddy. Tori checks in, and we drop off our bags. Only drawback is the adjacent restaurant closes in 10 mins, so we ride about one km up the road and hit a snack joint, assuming our soaked cycling gear wouldn't endear us well to the adjacent steakhouse. The t commute is fantastic. My bike is a rocket without weight on it. I tried at one point to find a meaningful reference point to illustrate the slow speeds for riders at home. On flat roads, fully loaded, I estimate riding at threshold wattage would get me only about 28kph. Hills are obviously worse, I often see my speed only at 7-8kph. The hammer rides at home clock in for an average around 35-40kph usually, and here 17kph seems to be a good pace. For the record, I actually don't care about speed now, but it makes map guesstimating different. I've always used about 30kph in figuring distance-time questions, but now even 20kph is optimistic. Maybe I cans still use 30kph, the multiply my time estimates by two!
We sit down, hang up some we clothes over a heater, and order two super Milanese sandwiches and a bucket of fries. The sandwiches had breaded veal (milanesa), proscuitto, fried egg, queso blanco, tomato, lettuce, peppers and sauce, on a toasted bun. I think they had a little bit of heaven in there as well. Tori went with hot tea, and I opted for the Knorr instant soup mix the 20 something waiter offered. Ended up drinking it rather than spooning it. He made it with too little water, so it tasted extra salty. Delicious. This time I made sure ketchup was the only condiment to get involved with the fries. I hit up the ice cream fridge for a bar and a cone after dinner (Tori had a bite of each) for my calorie top up move. The coffee left something to be desired, we're a long way from Colombia.
After an hour of bathing, hanging clothes up to dry and writing, the rain is still pounding on the windows. Could be a 100k wet one to San Carlos de Bariloche tomorrow.
That's all for now!
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