The Chase Is On....

Monday 5th

The wind changes in the night.... I awake to dark shadows on the tent... and an inch of ash below the fly sheet. The tent is buried, the bikes are covered, and the world has disappeared again. The volcano is following us....





A quick breakfast and we take up the challenge of staying one step ahead. Speed is of the escense so we limit ourselves to just a 3 course breakfast... There´s simply no time to make omelettes as well....

The lake has been claimed and the trees sink into the eerie grey gloom. Ghost trees...



We ride.... ripio be damned.... we make haste...

Clearing another small pass we descend back into technicolour - it´s like removing your eyeballs and giving them a good clean. I pity the poor people who grew up before colour telly when the world was in black and white and like this all the time.



We pass beautiful Lago Rivadavia to our left which would have been wasted had we not kept in front of the ever advancing grey. It´s a stunner!



We pass a small village (Lago Rivadavia) and a small town (Cholila), but we must not tarry. We put in 85kms of hard ripio, riding until sunset, and camp at an estancia. May the winds blow a different course on the morrow....

Lucky Horseshoes - and the world´s dumbest horse

Wednesday 23rd

Wow - beautiful day....





And this is the world´s dumbest horse...



We met early afternoon when, unlike the 3 other horses he was standing with (and all other horses) who calmly walked past us, he took a fright and set off running down the road. This is the road - and horse in the distance.



So as you can imagine this is a high speed chase... sometimes up to 12km/h...

The horse had to stop and wait for us before taking fright and running some more. No matter how slow we went, he just kept running down the road. We stopped to let him past, we tried walking slowly past him, we showed him the fields to both left and right, we waited when he met other horses to see if he would stay, but no - he was just dumb. And clearly not happy judging by the bombs he kept dropping for us to avoid in the road.

We did our slow motion chase for 10kms and we felt bad for the horse, but this was just getting too funny at the same time. Then we hit tarmac and our speed increased and the chase pace picked up. He sprang a shoe and Michael got there first.



He turned to give us a steely glare



And we completed the set 500m further on when he lost number 2.



We stopped for 10 minutes to let him calm dowm with some other horses before we were able to walk past... taking our trophies with us. I hope he was alright...
Because, wow, he was dumb.

An hour later and we question the power of our "lucky" horseshoes when Michael breaks a spoke on a particularly nasty stretch of ripio and we stop early at an estancia to camp. Dumb horse´s revenge?

Hows this for a campsite photo...

Carretera Austral

Friday 18th

Today we climb. From about 150m at the lake, up a windy pass to 1120m against some fierce winds (for a change). It´s tough going (for a change) - 4kms of switch backs in our bottom gears at one point, but the scenery is amazing and worlds away from the dull dull pampas of the last month. It´s quite sudden how it has changed. And the weather changes as well. It´s sunny, grey, raining, windy and calm all at the same time...



As we crest the pass, the road meanders over rolling hills beside a river and the scenery becomes reminiscent of Alpine Europe.




At 65kms we both crash off the bikes in sweet synchronicity. One second we are going forward, the next the wind grabs the front of the bike and we pirouette in perfect unison to face back the way we came, hard on the brakes to prevent losing precious ground. The winds here are not as strong as Tierra del Fuego, but the gusts are just unbelievable. We ride on and again crash off to the other side of the road, one bike a mimic of the other... It´s almost funny.
Almost!

As if by magic there´s a sign for a campsite and we decide maybe a stop is in order, until the forest ranger lets us know it´s closed, no services, but he´ll still let us camp.... for 12 US dollars. 12 dollars in his back pocket for nothing - rip off. So we cycle on another 5kms doing our bizarre stuttering comedy fall off routine. At one point I´m laughing hard at Michael as he drops the bike and runs down the slope at the side of the road to keep his footing. Next minute I hit the deck. I wasn´t even moving, but the wind was strong enough to just knock me over.

We see an Estancia (ranch) and again talk our way into some sweet indoor accommodation, complete with a wood stove and mattresses. The storm outside is ridiculous, I can feel the walls of the building bowing inward with the ferocity - seriously. The power goes out, and the rain falls from all direction and physically stings in a swirling wind. It rains all night.... 12 dollars for a camp site - Ha ha ha ha. I love my mattress and wood stove - and walls not made of canvas!!