On the Road

Greetings from Puyuhuapi, Chile! We are 550 or so kilometers into our ride and have just arrived a lovely, lush green, seaside village on the Carretera Austral. The trip has been going fabulously, with fine, dry weather, amazing scenery, and (perhaps most importantly) good fishing. The blackberry bushes have been consistent, and just far enough apart that we actually make some forward progress each day. We have settled into a rhythm of eating, riding, thinking about eating, riding, eating, and then finally stopping to camp and fish and eat. Been catching mostly brown and rainbow trout so far (but we´ve seen a couple salmon, and fully intend to catch some before the trip is out), including one of the biggest brown trout of my life. This lunker lived right under a log by our camp on a trib to the Fu, and I raised to my lure (yes lure you flyfishing snobs) three times before I hooked and landed him - a true monster, lots of centimeters in length, and several kilograms in mass - I still haven´t figured out this damn metric system. But the kilometers fly past pretty quick, and the distances sound impressive, so we are sticking with it.

Rose has taken to cycling like a bear to blackberries. I can barely keep her in sight on the uphills and have to use my superior mass to catch back up on the descents. Our thighs are becoming ropey with dramatic tan lines, and our butts are now solidly leathery, with the brand names of our saddles indelibly tatooed on them. Lots of gravel and washboard down here, with occasional smooth sections on which we slow nearly to a crawl just to revel in their smoothness.

In other news, there are too many cows in Patagonia. There, I´ve said it. I love the taste of Argentine beef as much as anyone, but there are too many of the stinky beasts around. Why just the other day in Parque National Los Alerces back in Argentina, we saw two surly steers ruthlessly harassing a poor huemul, an endangered andean deer species. They were heckling him mercilessly, boxing his ears, and unleashing the occasional nasty kick, while two park rangers looked on impassively. Wyoming isn´t the only place with an overstrong ag lobby I guess... Just so you don´t get the idea that it is all spectacular vistas and daisies, there is plenty of devastation from mismanagement with fire (to improve the grazing, of course) down here, as well as plenty of ugly gravel mines and undersized culverts. That said, we have passed more miles (I mean kilometers) of absurdly gorgeous river in the last 10 days than I had previously seen in my entire life. Milky white glacial streams, gorgeous green torrents, deep blue rivers, gin clear streams, I am truly in heaven.

We´ve also met some intersting folks, including a kid attending (listen close all you parents) a ¨whitewater academy¨, which is apparently a high school where you travel the world and kayak instead of studying, excellent! Also a very driven French/Russian/Colombian Brit (who speaks Korean too) intending to ride up to Alaska, with a jog into the Amazon to do a first bicycle criss-cross of some muddy logging roads, plus a French couple chainsmoking and dragging a kid along in a trailer on the bumpiest road on earth (just kidding about the chainsmoking actually), and lots of friendly Chileans, all of whom have really cool wood cookstoves in their homes.

Anyhow, internet time is more precious than smoked salmon down here, so I´ve gotta sign off.

All our love,

Ty