The Ride Out
Our first day on the saddle we got off to a latish start heading out of town at around 9:30am. The wind was not so bad and route 9 was a very smooth paved road. Two hours into the journey we met up with a mountain biker called Daniel who started riding with us. We also met up with the Pebble Pedalers, two brothers who had cycled all the way from Alaska.
After about 3pm however, we started facing stronger and stonger winds and were quickly running out of water. We kept thinking that we would find some lakes or streams which were on the map but never materialised. We were moving at about 6km per hour.
With our bikes weighed down and 50-60km/hr head wind we were exhausted by 9pm. We needed a place to camp and found this small shelter, however there was no water nearby. Luckily a bit further on, Daniel scoped out a sheltered area behind some trees. There was a small pond which we could draw water from with our water filter.We lucked out that Daniel had used a similar water filter and camp stove as we had brand new gear and hadn´t tested it out yet. The pond was surrounded by sheep carcases and as we pumped the water through the filter we hoped that none of us would get sick.
After eating and going to sleep around 11pm, we woke up to get an early start the next day. We weren´t lucky however and the wind got up as early as we did. Many times the wind slowed us to a hault and blew us off our bikes.
We ended up going around the sky ring which was absolutely beautiful but experienced some bad gravel roads. When we got to the Rio Verde Municipal we were down to half a bottle of water and were lucky enough to fill up and continue the journey.
We stopped to rest in one of the few wind shelters which were a blessing on the road. The wind shelters not only gave us an opportunity to rest but also to communicate as the wind was so strong we couldn't hear each other on the road. We met a gaucho and his son who saw us resting and offered us a place to stay. We thought about it but realised that it was best to keep moving so that we could make it to Puerto Natales the next day.
After what seemed like hours of crawling up hills we finally made it to Rio Rubens Hotel. We were running low on food and the wind made it diffult to camp so we decided to pay the upmarket fee to stay and eat at the restaurant. We had their famous steak sandwich which was awesome with melted cheese. The hotel beds were pretty uncomfortable and the shower was a trickle of water but they made up for it in the hearty breakfast and endless slices of toast.
In terms of riding, it was the best day we had experienced so far but both of us were shot from the day before. Commuting by bike in London was not exactly the best training for the trip and our knees were screaming!
The blocade let us through with no problems and were very friendly. People had set up small places to eat and were chatting amiably and letting those who were walking and cycling pass through.
We were so happy to get to Puerto Natales. We turned up a couple of streets and stopped at a cafe to look through our book for places to stay.