A glacier, a lot more wind and a spectacular border crossing

We spent our rest day visiting the Perito Morino glacier, an immense 70 metre high, 6km wide river of ice that is like nothing we had ever seen before.


We left El Chalten in optimistic spirits, the wind catapulting us 20 miles in the first hour without a sweat broken. The road turned sharply North whilst the wind sadly did not. The roads wound their way through desert like terrain and we made our way to an abandoned hostel beside a river, our first stop. The next day was harder and the day after that was the hardest of the trip. We rose before dawn in a futile attempt to beat the wind which battered us all day as the road climbed into the mountains. We were both thrown from our bikes on several occasions and the final 10 miles was torturous. But out of nowhere a 1km sign arrived and we struggled into town as tired as we have been, but, in theory, having come to the end of the winds that afflict this part of the world.


The Argentinian / Chilean border has been fought over in recent years and now lies on a small patch of land straddled between two lakes, Lago del Desierto and Lago O'Higgins. So two days, two boats, a bit of cycling and a 6 hour trek dropped us gracefully back into Chile.

We left El Chalten on a dirt road that wound its way 40 kms down to Lago del Desierto. The sun was out, the wind barely tickled us and the views were stunning. We reached the harbour around 4 and got ourselves a passenger boat that crossed the lake to the North shore. We set up camp beside the lake overlooking Mount Fitz Roy and prepared ourselves for the following day.

We awoke to rain, and as is our cowardly habit, we stayed firmly enveloped in our sleeping bags until 12 when the clouds parted and we prepared for a good old fashioned hike with a bike. The path that led us towards Chile was the width of a bike and had us pushing, pulling and carrying our bikes as we slipped around in the mud like tadpoles. After around an hour we came to our first river crossing and as Anna wandered off for a nature wee Matt took the sensible option and elected to carry over the electronics bag before attempting to move our other posessions. After a tentative and successful first step, the blundering second broke through the branch and left him flapping around in the water like a wet chicken. It was at this well timed point that Anna returned to point out the nicely formed bridge 5 metres away.

The journey continued in a slightly soggier manner and we crossed a few more streams more successfully, a bog, not quite as successfully and arrived out of the forest at what could almost be described as a road after a couple more hours.The steep downhill overlooking the huge turquoise lago O'Higgins was treacherous but we survived a couple of gentle falls to arrive at the Chilean border post. Just 1km further and we caught the last boat for two days with just 1 minute to spare. 3 hours on the water, a weary 7 kms into town and we have arrived at the start of the Carraterra Austral, a gravel road that stretches 2000km through Southern Chile.