Cycling and Backpacking in Chile & Argentina
(a tale of vicious dogs, great ice cream and broken racks)by Amy Blumenberg
March 2000
NOTE: Amy and her boyfriend Chris set out on a bicycling and backpacking adventure in South America in March. This is Amy's first dispatch on the adventure.
Well, I planned to send much more frequent trip reports but everytime I go to check e-mail we don´t have much time. We arrived in Santiago on March 12 and flew directly to the very far south of Chile where we hiked for five days in Torres del Paine with an extraordinary mountaineer from England. We met him at the airport in Punta Arenas when I walked up to him and asked ¨Habla Ingles?¨ and he replied ¨Yes, I´m from England.¨ I thought that was very funny. We ran into him again in Puerto Natales in the grocery store while we were shopping for food for our trek. We decided to hike together and it was a great decision. After our trek in Torres del Paine we flew north to Punta Arenas and visited a colony of Magellanic penguins. They are so cute.
From there we flew north to Puerto Montt where we expected to start cycling. The following is an e-mail I sent to Tania, the woman from Oregon with whom I am going to cycle in Ecuador. It sums up why we´ve been traveling WITH bikes but not necessarily ON the bikes! Bye for now.
Oh Tania, I feel so pathetic. We have been having an amazing time but not much time cycling. Here´s the scoop--we arrived in Puerto Montt and expected to begin cycling down Chiloe and then take a ferry. As it turns out, the weather was rainy, windy and cold and we were told (incorrectly!) by several official tourist offices that the ferry had stopped for the season from southern tip of Chiloe to Chaiten. Turns out the ferry does run on Saturdays only but as it turns out it´s just as well we didn´t start cycling there.
We took the bus to Bariloche and had great weather. We set out to cycle down to El Bolson, Esquel and Futuluefu but the day we set out we had two problems. First, our Brule panpack rear panniers did not fit with our extra wide Jandd expedition racks. We never actually put the panniers on the racks at home in all the last minute rush to get ready but these are very popular racks so any pannier should be made to fit them. We could have forced them but it would eventually ruin the panniers which were a lot more expensive than the rack. Plus, 10 minutes on the road-- LITERALLY 10 minutes!!!--and my Jandd rack collapsed onto my rear brake, blocking the braking action. We were able to bend the rack back into place but it would never hold up for five months of cycling. What a drag--this is supposed to be a really heavy duty rack.
Well, it turns out that two blocks from the youth hostel there is a world class German-Argentine frame and rack builder!!! He ships his frames and racks to Buenos Aires and Germany and everything was lugged. This guy is incredible. We were so lucky that he was so close. He agreed to fabricate two heavy duty custom racks for our bikes-bag combination.
But, as a result we had to stay relatively close to Bariloche. We took the bus with our bikes to El Bolson and spent four days, doing some day trips on bike. We also visited the La Trochita (Old Patagonian Express) in El Maiten near El Bolson which was an amazing experience for Chris who is a railroad fanatic. Most importantly, we discovered Jauja, a majorly delicious ice cream place that makes all natural homemade ice cream in El Bolson and also has a shop in Bariloche. Seriously, this is the best ice cream anywhere!
We heard from others that it was still cold and rainy at Futuleufu (seven days in a row!) so we stayed in the El Bolson area and enjoyed a lot of day trips and great weather.
Yesterday, March 29, we set out on bikes from El Bolson expecting to cycle to Bariloche in two days to pick up our racks and head out again. Well, within the first 10 minutes from the youth hostel we were chased by two dogs that we knew from the other days were ferocious. We were prepared with sticks but since we were loaded and waving sticks we both fell. I got a
little bruised but mostly just annoyed. Then, about 30 km later we were passing through a little town and another dog chased me without barking so I was caught off guard and lost my balance as I grabbed for my stick. This time I took a really bad fall and hurt my arm, twisted my handlebars and bent my new Vaude handlebar bag (which probably saved my arm from worse
damage). This was too much for me--I was a total baby and started crying more from the emotional fright and anger (the dog´s owners saw the dog chasing me and didn´t bother to call it off) than from the pain which wasn´t too bad.The wind was picking up, it was threatening to rain and I was feeling sorry for myself so I flagged a pickup truck and we got a ride into Bariloche. Turns out my arm was pretty bruised so it was better to get it washed up and staying back at the youth hostel than wild camping and trying to ride again today. So, not such good luck so far with the cycling due to the dogs. Have they been a problem for you?
We checked in with the guy who is building our racks today and they should be done tomorrow. If nothing else, this has been a really neat experience meeting this bike guy and we´ll have racks that will last a lifetime. We´ll do a 50 km cycle tomorrow up to Colonia Suiza (an old Swiss colony) and a salmon research center and hatchery that Chris wants to visit. On Sunday we head across the lakes back into Chile (across Lago Todos Los Santos) and eventually to Chiloe or up to Pucon. Poor Chris has to be in Santiago by April 6 or 7. I´ll probably go to Isla Negra and possibly the wine country near Santiago before heading north.
I may skip the trek with you and Suzy and just meet you in time for the cycling to give me more time to make my way up north.
Please share any tips about dogs and also how you managed on your own when it came to putting your bike on buses--did you take off all the panniers and get them on the bus and then deal with the bike? I guess I´ll figure the logistics out but if you have any great tips let me know. Bye for now.
PART TWO
Any tips for AMY? Send them here and we'll pass them on.