El Calafate

Pics from glacier Perito Moreno and more flamingoes

Torres Del Paine

Pics from Torres del Paine



Coyhaique

Am still alive and kicking, which is unfortunately more than can be said for the bike, too much dirt road has shredded my tires, which is pretty terminal at this point, not really many options for replacements here, a valiant but ultimately very brief search yielded one bike shop and no tyres, so that basically means it's game over.  Now gotta try and find another way of getting over to Argentina, will write a proper blog entry when I get myself sorted, plus lots of photos, the scenery has been nothing short of spectacular the last few days.

Puerto Varas

I'm now in Puerto Varas, which is just north of the starting point of the Carreterra Austral, an am feeling quite nervous.  I reckon I've got 10 days cycling left, and it's about 1200 km of incredibly remote (and incredibly beautiful hopefully) road through essentially uninhabited countryside.  There are two towns worth the name on the route and they're about 500 km apart, so will be carrying lots of food, it also rains about 4 metres a year, so probably going to get quite wet, and quite a lot of the road is unpaved.  So it should be a good challenge.  On the plus side I do go through about 10 national parks, and some of the most amazing scenery in the world: glaciers, lakes, rainforests and fjords.  Will be setting off in the morning, and the forecast is actually for sunshine, which would be nice...  Should be getting to Coyhaique in 5 days so there'll probably be an update there.

From Valparaiso down, the countryside changed fairly gradually from a fairly mediterranean feel with rolling hills and plenty of vineyards to something more reminiscent of northern Germany, especially given as plenty of the towns here were originally settled by Germans (lots of kuchen) and lately there's been plenty of spectacularly blue lakes and rivers and incredibly verdant forests, with a backdrop of textbook, symmetric volcanoes.  That is when they're not shrouded in cloud, have had a few rainy days recently, but this afternoon the sun came out and I finally got to see Volcan Osorno, the base of which has been on the horizon for the last few days.  Lots of good photos, which will probably go up in Coyhaique.

Valparaiso

Sorry, long time no post, mostly because I've not been doing much.  Basically after some consultation with the camera fixing man in Iquique it transpired that there was no way of fixing my camera without going to Santiago.  So I took a bus there, stopping off at San Pedro de Atacama for a bit of mountain biking and some sandboarding on the way.  For the curious amongst you, sandboarding is just like snowboarding, only slower and you get sand everywhere, worth it for the novelty values and the views back over the desert though.  Had an awesome sunset from the Valle de la Luna, which does look impressively lunar.  Didn't do the salt flats at Uyuni because the tour from San Pedro had pretty much doubled in price, I reckon because petrol prices had doubled in Bolivia.

Anyway got to Santiago after a lengthy bus journey (with a bed), spent a couple of days there getting the camera fixed (the most expensive fuse-change ever) and picking up some spare inner tubes and bike grease, bike is all shiny again now, and then headed across to Valparaiso where I am now.  Am just waiting for my stove to arrive from home then I'll be off again, the next couple of weeks promise to be excellent route-wise.

Valparaiso has definitely won me over, with a combination of Cuban sandwich joints, ice cream shops with middle aged ladies with steaming banter, and incredibly colourful houses, not to mention a hostel with homemade bread and jam for breakfast.  Some photos below, there would have been more had I remembered to put the memory card back in my camera before starting to take photos...

Will also put up some photos for La Paz and the trip into Chile, in other news I booked a flight home.  Will be back in the UK on the 19 Feb, hopefully just in time to get some skiing in...