Battered and bruised but nothing a pizza won´t fix

It has been a seriously eventful three days since we left Punta Arenas on Thursday morning.  I´m sure you must all be sick to death of hearing about the wind but it is literally becoming the focus of our lives.  We thought the Fuegian winds were bad but we have now felt the wrath of the Patagonian wind and it ain´t pretty.

We set off from Punta Arenas after a lovely day visiting Isla Magdalena in the Magellan Straits where there is a huge colony of Magellanic Penguins.  The first stretch out of town was bliss we had the wind in our favour and were feeling like the weather might finally be on our side.  We were making great progress until we met a cyclist coming in the other direction.  He´d covered about 150km that day and was sailing with the wind behind him which meant that our luck was about to change - from now on we´ve decided to stop talking to cyclists on the other side of the road; they are smug, bring bad news and always seem to turn our luck.  Sure enough as we watched this guy sail off into the distance the wind picked up and we were soon battling against not only a head wind but a strong side wind too.  Still, we were determined to make it at least 50km that day.  We were forced to walk for long stretches as the side wind kept blowing us off the road and every lorry or bus that passed us sucked us into the middle of the road.


At about 8pm we started to think about finding somewhere to camp for the night.  It´s quite hard down here to find a spot that is sheltered from the wind and hidden from the road as you just get mile upon mile of flat grazing land.  After finding a few dud spots, including a creepy abandoned house by a lake the light was fading fast and we were beginning to think that the petrol station 5km ahead was likely to be our best option.

Luckily for us there was a small Estancia opposite the petrol station.  We pedalled up to the main farmhouse and asked one of the farm workers if we could camp somewhere. They were so kind to us and offered us a caravan to sleep in.  Actually this turned out to be more of a chicken shed on wheels with a huge hole in the roof and a bunk bed with two heavily soiled mattresses but after the day we´d had it felt like the height of luxury.  Best of all it had an ancient wood burning stove in it which Ben soon got going and in no time we had supper on the go.  Next morning it was hard to part from the chicken shed and the wood burner, it was so cosy.

The "Caravan"

I´m not going to go into too much detail about Friday, but to sum up it was absolute hell.  I had a breakdown every 3kms which poor Ben patiently dealt with, then I got picked up by the wind and slam dunked onto the road smashing my head and my hip. Luckily I had my gimp helmet on and there were no cars coming otherwise there might not be much left of my head.  It was at this point that it became clear that pushing our bikes was the only option, which we did for HOURS.  Frankly it was exhausting, slow and  f***ing boring particularly when you repeateldy jab yourself in the back of the leg with your pedal.  Anyway it wasn´t all bad, the scenery is getting more and more impressive and we made it to a roadside cafe that night and managed to wangle a hot dinner and a bed in a drafty shed for the princely sum of 5 quid. 

Let´s just say yesterday brought us more of the same but I´m trying to forget about it now.  We arrived in Puerto Natales feeling rather bullied and fragile.  We treated ourselves to a double room with a clean mattress and a huge pizza and after a long sleep we are both feeling repaired, refuelled and ready to take on the Torres del Paine National Park which will be spectacular.