EPISODE 25
Cranking up the Challenges
Meet Laura and Shaun, a Canadian couple whose cycling adventures began when the 2020 lockdown forced them to cancel their plans to spend a year traveling the world. Hear their hilarious first tour stories, complete with grocery-getter bikes, backpacks, bungee cords, and borrowed panniers from the ‘80s! After a successful first outing, the couple undertook a honeymoon-on-wheels exploration of British Columbia and a bikepacking tour of Baja California, Mexico. We kick off Season 2 of the podcast by following Laura and Shaun’s evolution from accidental bicycle tourists to seasoned adventurers. The culmination of their journeys is an ambitious 2022 Patagonian tour, full of dramatic weather, logistical nightmares, and heartwarming kindness from both strangers and fellow travelers.
Episode Transcript
Laura: I always wanted to do the Carretera. When I was thinking of cycle touring, it’s always high up on that list and I always wanted to go to Patagonia, and what a better way to tour it than bike. And I thought, if I don’t do it now, I don’t know when in life the opportunity will come back up.
Gabriel: You just heard Laura, a Canadian, share her dream of bicycling the Carretera Austral. She was going to Patagonia with or without her husband, Shaun, who after much hesitation decided it was too much adventure to miss out on. The couple had already toured twice in their home province of British Columbia and in Baja California, Mexico. Their trip to Patagonia in 2022 was their most ambitious tour yet, as they kept, slowly but surely, cranking up the challenges.
Sandra: You’re listening to The Accidental Bicycle Tourist. In this podcast, you’ll meet people from all walks of life and learn about their most memorable bike touring experiences. This is your host, Gabriel Aldaz.
Gabriel: Hello cycle touring enthusiasts! Welcome to Season 2 of The Accidental Bicycle Tourist podcast. Some of you might recall that Season 1, Episode 1, titled “Chile Top to Bottom, Upside Down,” began at an unassuming campground on the Carretera Austral called Turismo al Galope, where Sandra and I met that episode’s guest, Michelle Savacool. To kick off Season 2, we return to this campground, where we also met Shaun and Laura for the first time. We would encounter the Canadians several times along the Carretera. Our final meeting turned out to be both unexpected and rather dramatic. Shaun and Laura, thank you for being guests on The Accidental Bicycle Tourist podcast.
Laura: Yeah, I’m excited to chat about it. It’s always fun to relive memories and trips and share our joy for being able to travel by bicycle.
Shaun: Yeah, especially past adventures.
Gabriel: The very first question is the most obvious one. How did you get to this campground, at a high level? So obviously you got there by bicycle, but what is it that put you on a course to get to Turismo al Galope in Villa Cerro Castillo?
Laura: Oh, wow.
Shaun: It’s not exactly a simple question, is it?
Laura: Yeah, it takes us from many adventures before, because when we were cycling through Patagonia, that was a bucket trip of mine, and there were many things culminating to going on that trip. I love how you say “accidental bicycle tourist,” because that’s exactly how we got into cycle touring. If we go way back, we didn’t probably start cycle touring until 2020. We had done an odd overnight trip or taken our bikes to get here or there traveling. We had grand plans. Shaun was on a sabbatical, and I had quit my job, and we were going to go travel the world for a year. So we had all the gears in motion, and our first flights were booked for March 2020. And the world had other plans for that sabbatical, for timing. So we ended up having to pivot. I went back to my job, and Shaun still had the time off. It meant that we’d take long weekends, and we could do a lot of fun adventures closer to home. So one of the things I convinced Shaun to do – because Shaun really loves mountain biking, and I just love adventuring – we kind of decided to put the two together. And there’s a famous little three-, four-day bike tour close to us, only a few hours from us, called the Kettle Valley Railway. It’s quite scenic through wine country, and it’s usually pretty good weather in the summer. And so I kind of said, “Shaun, why don’t we do this trip?” And Shaun goes, “Well, I have the time off work. Why not?” It’s only four days. We can drive there, ride our bikes, and try this cycle touring thing. What else are we going to do? Everything else is shut down. So we didn’t have any gear.
Shaun: We didn’t have any panniers or anything. We did it with, like, backpacks or something, maybe like a front-bar pannier.
Laura: Shaun’s parents had some Tupperwares of cycling panniers from the ’80s that we kind of tried to strap onto our bikes with bungee cords. I had a bike that I had bought off Craigslist, which is kind of a way-old online marketplace. And I bought it for 40 dollars because it was my commuter to and from work, and I worked downtown Vancouver, and you don’t want a nice bike because people steal nice bikes. So it’s the ugliest steel, purple, rusty bike. The brakes don’t really work. Very much we call it the grocery-getter. And that’s the bike I owned because it was just an easy commuter that no one would steal.
Shaun: You’d never lock it up, and we always hoped someone would steal it so we didn’t get rid of it.
Laura: Yeah. That’s the bike I took, and I forget what bike you had. We kind of just threw caution to the wind and went adventuring, and that was our first trip. We looked absolutely ridiculous.
Shaun: I had the Sutra.
Laura: Oh, yes. So I had dreams of Shaun wanting to actually get into cycle touring because he was kind of reluctant at it.
Shaun: I thought it would be boring.
Laura: For his birthday, I bought him a touring bike. I think it was probably like a 2008 or 2010 Kona Sutra because I had read that’s, like, a really good touring bike. So it was old, didn’t have … Oh, no, it did have disc brakes, so it’s jealous of your disc brakes.
Shaun: But it had super thin tires, and we had to go through sand.
Laura: Yeah.
Shaun: Yeah.
Laura: It definitely did not look the part, but we had a lot of fun on that trip. I think Shaun was a little surprised on what a way to travel. All the vineyards were closed because of restrictions in the area, but otherwise we had great fun.
Shaun: Yeah.
Gabriel: So I can see that how you got to the campground was a big question because there’s a lot behind it. But first of all, can you tell a little bit about where you’re from, because you’ve mentioned downtown Vancouver as a workplace?
Shaun: We’re from British Columbia, Canada. We used to live just outside of downtown Vancouver.
Gabriel: Shaun, what job did you have that made you think that bicycle touring would be boring?
Shaun: I work for North America’s largest ski resort, where we focus on downhill mountain biking and downhill skiing. So I’m more of the adrenaline side of things.
Gabriel: Okay. So you were into mountain biking, and that was cool, but you thought, “Touring, that’s lame”?
Shaun: Yeah. More or less.
Gabriel: Okay. Seems like a fair attitude that adrenaline junkies have.
Shaun: I do appreciate road riding. I’ve done a little bit of it, and I have to say, road riding is far more scary than mountain biking. With motorists. So I can appreciate the dangers of riding on the road.
Gabriel: Yeah, definitely. You said that the first tour you did, that was basically because nothing else was going on. Laura, you had that idea out of desperation: “How do we get outdoors when everything is shut down?” And that’s why you consider it sort of accidental?
Laura: Yeah, exactly. At that time, we had permits to go climb Mount Logan, which is Canada’s highest mountain. But that got shut down with the restrictions, and then after that, we were planning on traveling through Africa. We were going to do all this world traveling, and then all of a sudden, our location of being able to enjoy adventure and travel got a lot tighter of what that could look like. We had to really explore what was in our back pocket, and we did lots of wonderful things. We did some sea kayaking, we did this cycling trip, and we did a few other items, and it really allowed us to appreciate all the amazing things we do have in our backyard.
Shaun: Yeah, we did some mountaineering, we did some climbing. We did everything that B.C. more or less has to offer, which is a lot of stuff.
Gabriel: Yeah, you say “B.C.” because it’s the most obvious thing, but that, of course, is British Columbia…
Laura: Yeah.
Gabriel: For non-Canadian people.
Laura: Yeah, the most western province in Canada.
Gabriel: And one final background question, I’m trying to picture your setup on that first tour. You said you ended up with backpacks, as well as a few things bungeed down?
Laura: Oh yeah. We looked a right old mess.
Gabriel: Alright, because that’s the big no-no that we learn from beginners, like, no backpacks.
Laura: Oh yeah.
Shaun: Backpacks are terrible.
Laura: And we knew that, but we didn’t want to invest in the gear yet. We’re like, “We’ll go give this a go, see if we like it enough, and then we’ll see if we want to actually spend some money on this.”
Shaun: Yeah.
Gabriel: How did it go, this first tour?
Laura: It was good. Yeah, there were some sections, like we, as woefully ill-prepared… It had some deep sand sections, and we had skinny tires, and I had no pannier racks or brakes really, because they don’t work very well. We’re hilarious, but the one thing Shaun and I can do is just kind of, like, have fun doing things and don’t take ourselves too seriously. I had a lot of fun.
Shaun: Our background’s in winter camping, so camping in summertime is a breeze. It’s quite nice, you know, you’re not carrying as much stuff, and it just is a lot easier. And riding bikes is very easy on your body, especially this type of riding. So no, it allowed us to really enjoy ourselves. It wasn’t so much what they call Type 2 fun. Yeah.
Gabriel: And that gave you an appetite for more, obviously.
Laura: Yeah. It allowed us to see a lot of spots in our backyard, get some exercise. Eventually, we’ll end up at this coffee shop or this lunch spot, and so those are my little motivations for Shaun, is where we can bike to the next level of food. So there are a few of those scattered in each town we’d go to, and those were kind of Shaun’s motivational stops.
Shaun: Yeah. I definitely have to stop for a coffee, and I have to stop for a good food every once in a while.
Laura: I always thought it was something I was going to enjoy, so it was validating that indeed it was. And I was happy to see Shaun reluctantly say, “Okay, that’s kind of a neat way to travel.”
Shaun: Yeah.
Gabriel: Alright. So then what did you plan as your next adventure?
Laura: So 2020 was a big year of cycling. So that was actually, I think probably June or so. And then Shaun and I got married in September of that year. So a small little wedding. And then I thought, “Well, what do you want to do for our honeymoon?” And we ended up saying, well, there’s a whole bunch of trails, so the Kettle Valley Trail is part of the B.C. Trail.
Gabriel: The B.C. Trail traverses the south of British Columbia with endpoints to the east of Vancouver and the town of Ferney on the Alberta border. Its 1,200 kilometers, or 745 miles, are mostly unpaved and sometimes remote, offering plenty of spectacular backcountry forest scenery. The Kettle Valley Rail Trail, with its tunnels and remarkable wooden trestle bridge, is the most popular segment. Moreover, the B.C. Trail is part of the trans-Canadian Great Northern Bikepacking Route, mentioned in last year’s holiday Special episode.
Laura: There’s a section that we could piece together that we’d go through Banff and then connect into the last of the Kettle Valley Trail that we had already done. So I kind of said, “Shaun, you want to do this?” And he goes, “Why not?” I think it was about two weeks. We cycled from…
Shaun: Banff, Alberta.
Laura: To Rock Creek, which is kind of the end of the Kettle Valley Trail. At this time, we now started investing in panniers and proper gear and kind of knew what we were…
Shaun: Did we have bikes?
Laura: We had bikes. Yeah, I had bought a touring bike. It didn’t fit me well, so it did do so damage to my body.
Shaun: Oh right. These are what I called our temporary bikes. We owned them for a short period of time.
Laura: Yeah, so we did the next step of, you know, like, okay, let’s invest some actual money into this and do it a little bit more. So we did that in end of September and early October. But we had a funny story about the route I chose for us, in terms of stage planning the days.
Shaun: Oh, yes. Oh, my. We started off, we’re in Banff, Alberta. Beautiful spot and riding our bikes. It’s relatively easy. It’s good. It is cold, though, because it’s starting to become mid to late fall for that area. So we’re riding our bikes and we’re like, “Well, we got to go this far. I’m mapping off of this person.” I’m like, “Okay, like, I think we can do that. We’ll see how it goes.” Well, it turns out that we can’t and the distances are quite long and we’re not anywhere near as fit as we need to be to make these distances.
Laura: We’re doing them, but we’re expecting like, oh, this might take us four hours or five hours and we’re kind of like waking up early and getting to the camp as the sun’s going down.
Shaun: We’re just bagged.
Laura: Yeah. We’re just… Oh, man.
Shaun: How far we get into it? We’re like…
Laura: At least halfway.
Shaun: Yeah, halfway or so. And then finally, I’m like, this is ridiculous. Who’s putting these distances in? You know, like, who is this person? Well, this person is a highly decorated Olympian.
Laura: Both summer and winter. I think one of the most decorated Canadian Olympians.
Gabriel: Oh, wow.
Laura: So what had happened is, I kind of wanted some inspiration of the trip: who’s doing it, what kind of their staging’s doing. So there’s somebody who had left about three weeks before us and they were kind of hashtagging the route. So I was using them. Okay, that’s good. It looked like they went from here on this day and this day. So I was using them as kind of a reference of what we could expect, because they had this great photo of them with a bag of chips kind of chilling out or, you know, like a morning beer or somebody had handed to them and I’m like, “That is our vibe. We’re in it to have fun.” This lady looks like she’s having fun, eating all these chips and beers and ends up, she was a very, very accomplished Canadian Olympian in cycling and in speed skating. Once we learned that, we just kind of changed the plan and did half her distances.
Gabriel: Ha! That’s a great tip. You can never tell by somebody’s photos what is happening behind the scenes. That’s hilarious.
Shaun: Yeah. And it would be funny because we passed one or two people who were doing the same trip but the opposite direction, and they’d be like, “Yeah, I saw her like a week ago,” and we’d be like, “Yeah, we know she’s ahead of us.”
Laura: To be very clear, we were not doing massive days. We’re not fast cyclists. We just kind of putz along and enjoy ourselves.
Shaun: We don’t take too many rest days, but we do just take our time during the days.
Laura: So that was our honeymoon. So it was that kind of…
Gabriel: Oh!
Laura: Yeah. And it was fun, but it was probably not the right timing of it. It was quite cold and the days are shorter, but we still had a lot of fun. So then Shaun’s still on sabbatical and now I’m getting kind of a little jealous that he’s having this time off and I’m getting a week here, a week there. I was lucky enough with my job to be able to get a few months off to do a little bit more travel. And I said to Shaun, I was like, “Well, how about another bike trip?” And he goes, “Oh, I don’t know. It was kind of chilly.” And I said, “Well, what about a bike trip in Baja, Mexico? We could eat tacos and go to the beach.” Again, these are how I win Shaun into bike trips is, you know, talk about things you can eat and drink and sunshine. And he goes, “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.” And I said, “Well, let’s just do it.” So I bought the tickets and in December of that year, now this will be our third trip in six months. We ended up doing three weeks cycling through Baja, Mexico, and that was a totally different style trip in terms of shorter days, spending a lot of time kind of at the beach and kind of moving along via bike.
Shaun: And that wasn’t bike touring. That was a bikepacking trip.
Laura: Bikepacking. Yes. We had different set up of bikes.
Gabriel: Nice.
Laura: We used a route-planning program and we found a family who did it with a nine-year-old. And we did very well based off their schedule.
Gabriel: Okay. You learned your lesson.
Laura: We’re definitely more suited to the nine-year-old’s schedule.
Shaun: Yeah, but we had mechanical issues with that one, and it was…
Laura: It was fun.
Shaun: It was fun. Yeah.
Laura: Super fun. So that’s how I’d say we became accidental bike tourists and just went full in. So we did everything from riding our grocery-getters on this kind of tourist route to biking across B.C. with now proper touring bikes to then doing a bikepacking set-up in Mexico.
Shaun: Yeah.
Laura: All within six months.
Shaun: Yeah. And I would say this is the Mexico one that really, at least for me, made me feel comfortable doing it international, you know, doing it close to home is one thing. But then traveling with your bikes, flying with them, the logistics of it all, and then trying to navigate the language barriers… doing a small easy trip like that really made me feel comfortable to do it pretty much anywhere in the world.
Laura: Yeah. And knowing camping, right? We know our backyard. We know the rules for camping. We know kind of where you can camp or you can’t camp and going to a new country kind of trying to plan your trips and know how to make all the legs work out nicely. It definitely added different complications and Mexico was a great way for us to learn that and really enjoy it.
Shaun: Yeah. And the people there were just lovely.
Gabriel: You probably met some other Canadians at some point because it is very popular with Canadians.
Shaun: Oh, yeah.
Laura: In Baja, well, so we have a funny story on that one. So on the plane ride down, it was a pretty packed flight and we were sitting beside this gentleman and Shaun gets to chatting with him and he sees our bike helmet. And whenever we’re traveling, we always bring our bike helmets on as carry-on on the planes. We don’t check them in. And so it always starts conversations of why you’re boarding a plane with a bike helmet.
Gabriel: Hey, great conversation starter idea. I should start getting on airplanes carrying my helmet, even if I’m not on a biking trip.
Shaun: Yeah.
Laura: Yeah. And so the guy who’s sitting beside us sees the bike helmets. “Oh, what are you doing?” We kind of explain the trip we’re going to be doing and he goes, “Oh my goodness, that’s so cool.” And we’re talking about the route and he was so excited about it. So we’re probably about two weeks into our trip and we’re biking down this super random side road.
Shaun: At dusk.
Laura: Yeah. We were kind of trying to make it to a wild camp spot for the night. It’s kind of known that you can camp there. It’s not a formal camp spot. Here’s this really beat-up pickup truck putzing down the road in the direction towards us. And it stops and it looks kind of sus, doesn’t look the best pickup truck. And Shaun starts talking to this person in the pickup truck and I can’t see who it is. All I can see is like, oh my gosh, I hope we’re not getting kidnapped. Like, what’s going on here? And then Shaun goes, “Throw your bike in the back,” and I was like, “What?” He’s like, “Yeah, yeah, hitch a ride in the back.” So he loads my bike up and loads me into the back of the bed of this pickup truck. Again, have no idea what’s going on. And then we take off down the road and eventually we get there and I’m like, “What’s going on?” Shaun’s like, “This is the Canadian we sat besides on the plane. And we just happened to bump into him in this random, like, just such happenstance of the timing.
Shaun: Yeah.
Gabriel: Amazing.
Laura: And we ended up, yeah, spending the night. He’s building a house in Baja. Was under construction, so we just camp out on his yard and we got to hang out with him and he said, “Every time I saw a cyclist, I’ve looked and saw whether it was you guys.”
Shaun: Yeah.
Laura: It’s really neat. And that’s the thing we love the most about cycle touring is I think the bikes just give you such a level of connection with people and this like vulnerability like people really just we find unlike any other type of traveling, the amount of connections you can build with people is…
Shaun: People are so interested in your story and chatting with you.
Laura: And sharing their adventures and being part of it. Yeah. It’s just fantastic. Well, that’s how, you know, like the connection we’ve been able to have, through meeting you while cycling.
Shaun: Yeah.
Gabriel: Definitely, because Sandra and I, when we were going to do Paragonia and the Carretera Austral, we thought very seriously about doing it by bicycle, but then we decided not to. So that whole trip, I was like the Canadian guy in the pickup truck. You know, anytime I saw somebody on bike, I was like, “Hey, cyclist, cool!” And that’s exactly how we met. We had already checked into the camping and we were going for a walk and then coming down this dusty road, there was a pair of cyclists. I’m excited. Yay. And it was the two of you.
Shaun: Yeah.
Gabriel: Yeah. This is so far very, very good, but we’re still not in Chile.
Shaun: Yeah. And there’s countless other stories like this where people have just opened their door, invited us in, and we’ve seen some incredible places.
Gabriel: Yeah.
Laura: So we get back from Baja and now Shaun’s starting to be like, “Okay, now I’ve seen the international side of it. It wasn’t as scary as I thought it was. There was good food. He’s back to work. I’m back to work. We’re now back into working life. I always wanted to do the Carretera. When I was thinking of cycle touring, it’s always high up on that list and I always wanted to go to Patagonia and what a better way to tour it than bike. So I had this opportunity where I had another kind of block of time coming available off work. And I thought, if I don’t do it now, I don’t know when in life the opportunity will come back up. So I kind of told Shaun, I was like, “I have this time. I really want to do this cycle touring and I’m going to go do it.” And he’s like, “Okay,” because he wasn’t really keen to do it. It was a bunch of time off. He wanted to do different types of traveling. And I more or less said, “Well, I’m going to go do it. You’re welcome to come if you want. No fuss if you don’t.”
Shaun: And I was super busy at work. So I had a hard time asking for a month off of work and Laura said, “I’m going to go do it. So it would be great if you could come.”
Laura: No, no, I didn’t even say it was great if you can come. I just said, “I’m going to go do it. You’re welcome to join,” because he was dragging his feet. I was like, do you want me to book you a ticket? And he’s, “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know if I can do it.” And I’m like, “That’s fine. Like I’m not forcing you to do it. I’m offering up, If you would like to come, it’d be amazing.”
Shaun: And I’m like, “I can’t let my wife cycle through Patagonia by herself. That’s just not going to work.” So I go into work, talk to my supervisors and come up with an agreement. And I more or less get the time off work. Still to this day, don’t really understand how I managed to get it off, but I got it off. I nervously packed everything up and started heading down there. But it was a journey of a flight and a process. And I was a nervous wreck until we got on the airplane.
Gabriel: Wait, you were a nervous wreck? You mean all of the planning to get everything together?
Shaun: Yeah. So Laura does all of the planning. I’m pretty much like that kindergarten kid who just shows up with a backpack.
Gabriel: What a luxury.
Laura: Yeah, such a luxury.
Gabriel: I mean, first of all, you drag your feet about this and then you just show up with your backpack.
Shaun: Yeah, exactly.
Gabriel: Laura, you’re a patient woman.
Laura: Yeah, yeah. For trips for me, I really like to kind of have a rough plan of what we’re doing day to day. So I don’t have to get too stuck in the weeds during the trip. Like with a lot of flexibility, but a rough plan. I knew that to make that work, I would just have to sit down. So we went with an Excel spreadsheet of the kind of where the different camp spots could be and what these could look like so that we weren’t following any Olympic athletes for it.
Gabriel: Right. You were learning with every trip.
Laura: Yes. At this point now, we’ve done it three times. We’ve done two in B.C., one international. So now we actually have nice bikes and nice gear and we’re starting to actually go, “Oh, this is something we want to be putting our money into.” So that was nice. We were not going too fancy, but it was nice to now learn through the different process. Well, what years do we want? What bikes would be good? And really kind of refining what we can bring on the trip?
Shaun: And I guess I should say I was a little bit of a nervous wreck because Laura had been planning it for a few weeks or so.
Laura: A few months, but yeah.
Shaun: And then I only gave the okay from warrant maybe like a week before. I had a week to sort things out.
Laura: Shaun says it’s something about like, well, I don’t want my wife to go cycling alone or worried about her cycling alone. But we have a saying here. It’s called FOMO. It’s “fear of missing out.” And I’ve learned with trips that Shaun’s FOMO runs strong. So if I just go and do something you’ll have at the last minute, “Well, I want to do it too.” And honestly, it’s been my favorite cycle tour so far.
Shaun: Yeah, it was hard to say if it’s my favorite one or not. It’s up there. It’s had some incredible moments to it. But I feel like it’s tied with Mexico in some ways.
Gabriel: Yeah, let’s hear more about the trip, of course. Where did you decide to fly into and assemble your bike?
Laura: Yeah, so we flew into Santiago and then we took an overnight bus into Puerto Montt. Navigating the buses with bikes in Chile we found was difficult, because you don’t necessarily reserve a spot for your bike. You show up, you have your ticket for the bus, and if there’s room for your bikes, they can come. Otherwise, maybe you take the next bus and you’re like, “When’s the next bus?” They’re like, “Tomorrow,” and you’re like, “Is there going to be room for us in the bikes tomorrow?” They go, “I don’t know. You show up tomorrow, we find out.” So as somebody who likes to plan, it’s quite a difficult thing for us to navigate. It was quite a funny moment, the bus station in Santiago. We have our tickets to Puerto Montt and people start putting all their luggage in the back hold. And the guy’s like, “Oh, no room for your bikes.” But it’s very poorly packed in the back. It’s kind of like people have thrown luggage every which way. It’s not an efficient use of space. So I’m like, “The bikes will fit, but you just can’t pack everything in like this.” So I start popping into the back, organizing and Tetris-ing all the luggage so it’s really efficient. And the guy’s yelling at me in Spanish, “No, no, no, no, no, you can’t do this.” And I knew what he was saying with my limited Spanish, but I just played dumb tourist being like, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don’t understand.” And I’m in the back, swinging that suitcase, moving this, moving that. And the guy’s really trying to stop me, and I’m going as fast as I can to move everything in. And I’m like, “Shaun, pass me a bike.” He’s whipping me a bike. The guy’s like, “No, no, no!” I’m ramming it in. I’m ramming the two in. I, like, close it down and like, “Look good,” and the guy’s just like, “Argh!” Yeah, we take off. So we didn’t take no for an answer, but it definitely stressed us out. You’re not guaranteed that you’re gonna bring your bike along,
Shaun: Yeah.
Laura: So we got fortunate. The bikes eventually did fit in and we made it down to the start of our trip, Puerto Montt.
Shaun: Yeah, we started biking there and we had dolphins and it was beautiful right along the ocean It was a nice way to start.
Laura: Oh, yeah, all my thing was like, “Oh my goodness! Oh my goodness!” but leaving Puerto Montt you up a very steep hill. I remember us fully loaded. We got all our stuff. We’re gonna go do Patagonia. We do this first steep hill and I am huffing and puffing, Shaun is huffing and puffing, and we look at each other and we’re like, “Oh no! Patagonia has a lot of hills. What have we gotten ourselves into?” Fortunately, it wasn’t that the whole way.
Shaun: No, it was great. It was awesome, but the first night camping gave us a good taste of Patagonia. So we found a campsite. Looks great.
Laura: And by campsite, we just mean like an informal camp spot. So it’s not an established campground Yeah, we did a mix between what we’d called wild camping and established camping. So this was a wild camp spot. So we were trying to be discreet, get into our camp spot.
Shaun: Yeah, you want to stay away from local spots. You want to…
Laura: Blend in.
Shaun: Blend in to the scenery. So we find this nice spot. It’s between two small hills right next to the ocean. So it’s nice windbreak for the tent. At this point, everything’s still really new, so I haven’t gotten the weather forecast or we haven’t done anything else in the skies. We’re not thinking really twelve hours ahead or five hours ahead. We’re experienced campers and we’re camped between two little hills. Set everything up get in get all nice and cozy. A couple hours in wake up to some rain, and then it turns out it’s not just some rain, Patagonia rains. So it’s rains with a lot of wind. It’s relentless. And the next thing you know, our tent starts to fill up with water.
Laura: It doesn’t fill up with water, but it’s starting to feel like a waterbed underneath.
Shaun: It was pretty wet.
Laura: Yeah.
Shaun: My area was pretty wet. So we ended up having to, in the middle of the night, relocate our tent to the beach where we knew that the rock would drain everything away. So we did a nice midnight shuffle.
Laura: In the pouring rain.
Shaun: In the pouring rain, with our tent and moving our bikes and everything over, you know 20 feet and… Yeah, so our first night cycling Patagonia was a little bit of a wake-up call and we had to realize that, “Oh, yeah, this is very much like being back home. We should probably treat this a little bit more seriously.”
Gabriel: Oh. What an introduction to the Carretera.
Shaun: Yeah.
Gabriel: And the weather in Patagonia.
Laura: Yeah.
Shaun: But that was probably our worst night, yeah, by far.
Gabriel: Oh, that’s good. There’s a couple of ferries that you need to take fairly early on, and I don’t think it was an issue at that time of year, but there the bicycles are actually a benefit because with cars it can be a real question of whether the car can get on to the ferry when there’s a lot of people. There the bikes are no problem, right?
Shaun: Yeah, yes and no. I think in the high season of might be an issue because between the two ferries, to make the second ferry they actually put you on a bus, to carry the cyclists across.
Gabriel: Oh.
Shaun: Yeah.
Gabriel: Because it’s such a tight schedule?
Shaun: Such a tight schedule that they have to do that.
Gabriel: Oh, I didn’t know that. Interesting. So then you’re back to needing a spot on a bus. No!
Shaun: So this one we’re back to a bus and luckily there was room on it. It definitely could be an issue in high season.
Laura: Yeah, there was only one of the ferries where they had a limited number of cyclist – or I guess they’d call them pedestrian – tickets and we I think we got the last two for that day, but if not, we would just wait one more day. But being slightly off high season for the rest of it in terms of planning, we didn’t have to deal with many of the issues you run into at running at capacity, or you know the issues with cars, where there might be multiple waits.
Gabriel: The last in the chain of ferries brings you to the Pumalín National Park, created by Douglas Tompkins, the founder of North Face.
Shaun: The national parks, those ones were great.
Gabriel: Actually, one of the big events at the time was that the park rangers were on strike, and so officially a lot of those campgrounds were closed but only officially. So we had some incredible camp spots that we got to enjoy in Pumalín because it said “closed,” but I mean, there really wasn’t anybody, so we just kind of went in there.
Laura: Yeah, the Pumalín parks were just Stunning.
Gabriel: Yeah.
Laura: And the ones saved our bacon big time.
Gabriel: Oh, why?
Laura: We were very fortunate. For being in early season, the weather was really good for us. But of course, it’s still Patagonia, and you’re still going to get the big rains and the big winds, and there was one night where definitely the storms came in and because the park was completely empty, We just set up our tent under one of the picnic shelters, which was just beautiful. And we had the cosiest driest night just watching the storm blow through the mountains. We would have been fine in our tent, but not having to pack up a sopping wet tent and to enjoy just listening to the rain hitting the roof, it was lovely. It was such a large space to be able to air out all our stuff and let it all dry out. It was pure luxury. And that the grounds are so well manicured we… I kind of said we were staying at the Four Seasons.
Shaun: It was amazing.
Laura: It felt like it.
Gabriel: Yeah, I think it might be the most – I think “luxurious” is the wrong word – but the most amazing campground I’ve been to anywhere.
Laura: Yeah, it’s just stunning.
Gabriel: Yeah, and one of them had this view of this lake and there was a roof over your head for the tent and a place to eat. Wow! And of course it was totally closed. So we were the only people there that night, and you were probably the only people your night.
Laura: That we knew of. Yeah, absolutely.
Shaun: Yeah, so we stayed at two of those in the Pumalín park area, and one of them, we actually, like, we rode our bikes, I think around the ranger hut, and there was people in there and they, you know, they saw us. But we’re cycling. It’s pouring rain almost snowing. They were okay with us just…
Laura: Hunkering down.
Shaun: Hunkering down into one of the shelters.
Gabriel: We saw some rangers at some of the other parks and they were super friendly.
Laura: And nice that it wasn’t so locked down that you couldn’t camp there, because those are kind of the hiccups that on a bike, we can only do so many kilometers in a day and you kind of count on there’s this big swaths of parkland that you’re traveling through. So if they had not turned a blind eye to us camping there,
Shaun: Yeah.
Gabriel: Well, that’s the thing when you meet people from Europe or North America, everyone is like, “But wait, it’s closed and We’re gonna get kicked out.” In South America, things work in a little more of a relaxed way and sometimes that’s a real frustration, but in this case, it was awesome.
Laura: It was absolutely perfect.
Gabriel: Did you have any more adventures between Pumalín and Cerro Castillo, where we met?
Laura: I think the funny thing was, is that we kind of knew roughly each day, you know, how the distance we were going to travel, the elevation that we roughly were going to do… We had a rough plan to make sure that we could make it back to our flight on time. And some days we’d be like, “Oh, this is a short day. Not much elevation, not much distance.” And those days sometimes would just kick our butt, because I remember this one time, it was not far, maybe 60 kilometers, not much elevation. It’s like, “Oh, we’ll do a few hours. It’ll kind of be like a quasi rest day.” And we had a horrendous headwind and the road was just so many potholes and ruts and washboard and tons of traffic kind of coming and going on this gravel road beside us, and it took us way long. We were expecting this half day and I think it took us the whole day. So kind of every so often you get a day like that. We’re like, “Oh, it’s going to be so casual,” and then Patagonia is like, “Nah. No, it’s not.” You’re just cycling as hard as you can into the wind. Going down to Villa Castillo is what I remember. You climb this big hill and it’s nice gradual. You can kind of pop in a low gear and just put your head down and kind of putz up the hill, and we had a pretty significant headwind going up that hill. You really just went with it and knew you were not going to win any speed races. But you get to the other side of that pass and it descends into the town through these really wide serpentine turns and we had no cars near us at that time, so you just kind of let off the brakes. Probably 10 kilometers plus of going downhill on this smooth, windy road with these beautiful views and it still stands out in my mind. That descent was just so beautiful. These stunning mountain ranges just opening up in front of your eyes.
Gabriel: And was that little stretch gravel or paved?
Laura: That was paved. Yeah. Shaun just listened to me do 10 kilometers going, “Woohoo,” all the way down. “This is so beautiful.” He heard a lot of, “This is so beautiful.”
Gabriel: Yeah. And there we must say that, although there are some spots with a fair amount of traffic and sometimes truck traffic, hitchhiking we sometimes did not see any cars coming our way, as far as potential pickups, for 30 minutes,
Laura: Oh, yes.
Gabriel: When you think highway sometimes you think, “Okay, there’s lots of cars,” but at least in many stretches it’s a highway in name, but it’s gravel. There’s very little traffic, and you can spend a lot of time waiting.
Laura: Yes, absolutely, especially as you go further south.
Gabriel: Yeah.
Laura: All the drivers on the Carretera Austral – one of the things Shaun and I found amazing – was just how polite they were, giving you a lot of room, taking their time passing you safely. I’m not sure if it’s the same through the high season, byt when we were there it felt incredibly safe biking on the roads, and we were very appreciative to the amount of respect cyclists were given on the road.
Shaun: Yeah.
Gabriel: That’s a perfect segue into the next stage, which is, we met at the camping, and it set up a bit of a pattern with us, which is that you would pack up your bikes and head out and we would go out to the Carretera and stick out our thumbs. And on several occasions, we coincidentally ended up at the same place on a given night. Now, I do remember that there were a few places that we were able to hitchhike to and then we saw the local attractions. And, because you were on a bit of a tighter schedule, I think you ended up at the same place by bike, but you didn’t really have time to see some of the stuff. Am I remembering that?
Laura: Yeah, we were kind of playing a bit of leapfrog, where we’d kind of say our goodbyes and have a great trip, and then two days later be like, “Oh, hey, how’s it going?” Because we always expected you guys to get way ahead of us, and that would be the end of seeing you. And all of a sudden, there was that group of all of us who would always just kind of keep reconvening every few days, and it was so much fun to see these familiar faces popping up and hearing the adventures. It was pretty neat. We really came to Patagonia to cycle and to do the trip, so we only did a little bit of um hiking. We didn’t spend a lot of time doing anything other than cycling.
Shaun: Yeah.
Laura: I think we saw you in Puerto Río Tranquilo.
Gabriel: Yeah, that’s it. In Puerto Río Tranquilo, we had gotten there earlier in the day and then we had gone out to see the famous marble cave…
Shaun: Oh yeah.
Gabriel: Formations that you can go by boat to see. If the lighting is right, it’s just spectacular. Right. We met you at that campground and we asked if you had gone and you’re like, “Ah, gone? We’ve been biking the whole day. So no, we haven’t.” And, “Oh, will you go tomorrow?” Like, “No, no, we’re biking the next day.” That’s what I remember happened a few times.
Shaun: Yeah.
Gabriel: Further south, there was another ferry crossing, from Caleta Yungay to Río Bravo.
Laura: We had an app which kind of told us different spots you can camp at, including kind of informal camp spots and one was that you could sleep in the ferry terminal on the other side. So you take the ferry you end up on the other side. You sleep in the ferry terminal and then you continue on your days. It’s like, “Oh, that sounds nice.” Camping indoors, you know, nice and dry. Fantastic. So we take the ferry across. It’s probably about a 30 minute sailing if I remember off the top of my head, it’s been a while. And we head to the other side and this ferry terminal is definitely under construction, and there’s no way we’re going to be able to camp there. So we go okay, and we look on the app and there’s no real other camping. We thought, okay, we’ll bike 10 kilometers down the road and see if we can find a nice spot to camp. So we kind of bike and the weather’s starting to get a little worse and you know night’s going to come soon and at some point there’s going to be the final ferry back from where we came from and we can’t see really anywhere to camp that wouldn’t involve a whole bunch more biking than we wanted to do, because we already had done a big day. So then we turn around, we bike back to the ferry, we take the ferry exactly back to where we came from. Fortunately. It was a free ferry, and then spend it in the ferry terminal on the other side. And then speaking about just the kindness of people, so we kind of asked, “Is it okay if we stay here?” They go, “Yeah, yeah. No problem.” And then I think it was a sea kelp operation that they were moving it between different vessels over throughout the night. And the workers came in with this big pot of food into it and offered it up to us because they had the leftovers. And it was so good.
Shaun: Oh, yeah.
Laura: And then the the military had come down and we’re, “Oh, no. We’re gonna get in trouble. Like they’re gonna kick us out. I don’t even know where we’re gonna camp now.” It’s, like, definitely nightfall and the military’s come here and they come and check in and they’re like, “Are you okay? Do you need showers? Do you need anything?” And I’m like, “Is this…?” Somebody’s giving us food. The military is offering us showers. Like, just such kindness. And then, in the morning we pack up and we take the ferry back again to the other side. So we did that ferry three times.
Gabriel: Yeah, then from Río Bravo, it’s the last stretch to Villa O’Higgins. And if you want to continue further south, there’s yet more ferries.
Laura: Yeah, because by this time we knew that once we got to Villa O’Higgins the ferry was going to leave on a Wednesday and a Saturday. So when we started getting a little closer we started going, okay, how are we making out against our schedule? Do we think we can make a Wednesday? Are we looking more like a Saturday? And I think we kind of knew oh, I think we could make the Wednesday. So I think we were a bit more focused on trying to make that sailing.
Gabriel: Speaking of that, that was mentioned in the episode with Michelle Savacool, the amount of uncertainty around that ferry was crazy, because it hadn’t really been running for two years due to COVID, and there was the rumor among all of the travelers that it was starting up. Nominally it’s Wednesday and Saturday, but as we got closer we heard from people that, “Well actually no, it’s never actually gone.”
Laura: Yes, yeah, we were starting to hear that too that oh, they didn’t do the start of the month, but maybe this Saturday. Oh, no, they didn’t go this Saturday, but maybe Wednesday. So we wanted to make sure you know, if we were planning on doing it, we had at least a week of trying to wait for it to go before having to try to make our way back via other means. And so yeah, it was definitely added that stress of okay, it sounds like it might be happening, and we should probably start getting down there if we have a shot of it going ahead.
Gabriel: Yeah, exactly.
Laura: But there were the whisperings amongst everyone, right? Like all the travelers. “Well, what have you heard about the ferry? Is the ferry going have they started it?” “They cancelled again.” “Oh, I heard they haven’t started yet.” And there was this sense like amongst everyone of like, “What are we going to do?” We’re all going to get to the end of the road and then go, “Huh, where do we go from here?”
Gabriel: Right, because from Villa O’Higgins, with a car it is definitely the end of the road, but there is a ferry, a small boat, that goes further south that is accessible to cyclists and hikers. And through that ferry you get a way to El Chaltén and back on kind of the main path. But if that ferry is not running, then you have to backtrack on the Carretera quite a long way, and it’s a huge detour. It was a really big deal and certainly a lot of uncertainty about it. Yeah, so we saw you a couple of times, and then we got to the campground in Villa O’Higgins and there was this rumor that the boat was going to go the next day. And so we thought, “Oh my gosh, Shaun and Laura are not at the campground here in Villa O’Higgins, where everybody else that we were traveling with is, and we didn’t know where you were. We were told the night before, like, “You have to be ready to go at, I don’t know, 6 a.m. or something. It’s an early departure, because the winds are just going to get worse and worse. Then at 6 a.m. everybody was up ready to go and we were told, no, it’s actually too windy right now. It may not go at all. You’re on standby. It was later in the day, and I don’t remember exactly when, that we were finally told, “Go, go, go, go. Get in the van, go.” And so everybody headed down. It’s about 7 kilometers or something from the little town of Villa O’Higgins to the actual dock. And I still remember, who is sitting there waiting? The first people. It was the two of you. How did that happen?
Laura: Yeah, so we have this funny story. We had planned that we were going to arrive in Villa O’Higgins, I think it was the day before it was supposed to go, or maybe two days. We thought we were going to have time there. We’re getting there. We’re like, “Oh, end of the Carretera. What are we going to do?” And Shaun’s like, “Oh, I’m going to have such a good shower. We’re going to get some more food.” Like, it’s end of the trip before we do the next stage and you’re kind of Mentally prepared yourself for being done.
Shaun: So we’re like we’re going to have a celebration. This is just going to be great. Then we can plan the next section of the route. We can do whatever we need to do for that little section and figure out how we’re going to get home. This was kind of a bonus section for us, because we didn’t know whether or not the ferry was going to go. And the ferry is a very loose term. It’s just a very small boat.
Laura: In the last few days, we’ve been mostly offline. It’s not really a very populated area. We’ve been wild camping. So we pull into the campsite and we’ve heard really good things about the campsite in Villa O’Higgins. It’s kind of like where we’re anticipating to see everyone and is a famous one for cycle touring as well. And we pull in and we go to the owner and say, “Okay, can we stay the night?” He goes, “Well, you can but I recommend you don’t. The ferry or the boat’s going to be leaving in about an hour. And there’s a big storm system coming through so they’re not sure when they’ll run the boat again. So you probably won’t get it Saturday. You’ll be… who knows if you’ll get it next Wednesday,” or whatever the schedule was and we’re like, “What?” He’s like, “Yeah, so you we need to go get your ticket from this person and then get to the boat dock.” And he’s like, “Oh, and the boat dock’s not in Villa O’Higgins, it’s like 7 kilometers down the road.” So you also have to bike there and we go, “Oh!” So then all of a sudden we’re running around to get the boat tickets. We didn’t have food anymore because we were planning on you know washing up doing our next grocery shops. We’re running around going okay. What food do we need? Because the other thing about this boat is there’s two boats. So one boat takes you to this plot of land amongst two lakes and a fjord, and it’s where you cross from Chile over to Argentina, so it’s a foot crossing. And then another boat takes you to El Chaltén.
Gabriel: Well, it’s a dock on the other end of the Lago del Desierto, the lake that you cross, about 36 kilometers from El Chaltén.
Laura: Yes, but if you get dropped off in this kind of what I call no man’s land, you’re not guaranteed of when the boat’s going to take you the other way so you kind of got to make sure you have enough provisions to possibly wait out weathers or mechanicals. There’s no provisions on that side. So you kind of have to get prepared. So we are running around with our heads cut off trying to get this all done to get to the boat in time, because we know if we miss this, likely we’ll have to work our way north again and get out of Villa O’Higgins not by the boat. So we get all our stuff together, and we are doing that final seven kilometers, literally as fast as we could. We’re sweating down the road. We’re just huffing and puffing and we get to the boarding area and there’s no one there. So we’re like, “We must have missed the boat.” They said everyone was leaving today. There’s no one here and I thought well, let’s just sit here and defeat for a while. I think we’re charging our devices or something with a plug and then all of a sudden, yep, the van shows up and you guys all start piling out. So what a pleasant surprise that was.
Gabriel: Oh my gosh, it is so crazy because had it been that 6 a.m. departure, there’s no way you would have made it.
Laura: No, not at all.
Gabriel: So the wind, that delay helped you.
Laura: Yeah, absolutely.
Gabriel: Oh, wow. You found the perfect window and you were waiting. There you were. It was amazing.
Laura: Yeah, the universe definitely was on our side for how that all worked out in our favor.
Gabriel: So then we took the first boat, and we had to camp in that no man’s land, which is basically…
Shaun: Such a ripoff!
Gabriel: Right before the border crossing.
Shaun: Yeah.
Gabriel: A ripoff? Wait, what? How was that?
Shaun: Oh, sorry. The campsite. Because we had to camp in that whatever that field was, and we weren’t allowed to do any wild camping.
Gabriel: But was it an expensive place?
Shaun: Uh, I’m not sure if it was expensive. It’s just I was disappointed because, we were very much on South American time with the border agents, you know, we showed up and there was enough time to do some processing. But, they were kind of looked at everyone and went, “No, not today.”
Laura: Yeah, we close in about a half hour. We don’t want to really…
Shaun: We don’t want to start anything yet. We’re winding down for the day.
Laura: You can’t blame them at all.
Shaun: Yeah. They said, “No, you have to go back and camp over here.”
Gabriel: Yeah, that’s true to be fair though, we really wouldn’t have wanted to get going on the other side of the border control. There’s not much there. I think that was okay.
Shaun: Yeah.
Gabriel: Yeah, the next day…
Shaun: You guys got to, Take the jeep up, right?
Gabriel: Mm-hmm.
Shaun: To the trail, whereas the cyclists would bike the road, which wasn’t terrible. And then the footpath, the trail through the mountains was actually quite beautiful.
Laura: About three kilometers. That’s a bit of, not so much biking, a little bit more hiking your bike. And it was tight between the trees. You do end up having to take your panniers off and so super thankful, you know, everyone was so kind of helping carry gear and helping each other and it was fun, that little crew that we kind of kept all bumping into each other and creating real teamwork of getting to the other side, to the Argentina side.
Gabriel: We took the jeep and it was this bumpy, uphill road which you did by bike and then the jeep drops you off at the actual border, because of course there’s…
Shaun: Oh, that’s right.
Gabriel: The Chilean border guard and then when you get up to the top of the hill. That is the actual border.
Shaun: Yeah.
Gabriel: From there, the jeep turns back, and people start walking with their gear. And then of course you guys have to get the bicycles. I remember there’s places where there’s just some logs that are put down over the stream and you need to cross over that however you can. Everybody was working as a team to get through this passage.
Laura: We were waiting for the boat at the Argentina border checkpoint, and there were three Brits. And they were the first three there, and I think they were camped there.
Shaun: It was like a week.
Laura: It was a long period of time that they were stuck waiting and waiting and waiting for a boat to finally take them across the lake. So once we all arrived they could finally make their journey, but it was pretty neat because they were the first ones Since the border shutdowns in 2020 to do that land crossing.
Gabriel: Again, we got very lucky because We were these wave of people that were coming through basically where nobody else had been and those three I think they were bike…
Laura: Yeah, there were cycle tourists.
Gabriel: Yeah. So the three of them, they were not on this wave.
Laura: No, they were a little early.
Gabriel: The boat showed up.
Laura: Yes. No certainty on these boats. It is, will they show up will the weather be okay? Because we remember those winds crossing that lake? Those winds were something else.
Shaun: Yeah.
Gabriel: Yeah, and the interesting thing was it was, at the boarding area that the Argentinian’s passport control was happening. And that ended up for us being a disaster because, somehow, this man who had absolutely nothing to do – I mean, imagine being the border guard at a place where in one week three people have shown up – and then suddenly, okay, another I don’t know, 10 people show up, right? That’s all he has to do. Well, guess what he forgot to stamp our passports.
Laura: Oh, no, I didn’t know that.
Gabriel: I know. So we had no entry record. When we were leaving Argentina, traveling on a bus, everybody else was processed immediately and then for the two of us, they held us back. “How did you get into the country?” Now, just imagine trying to describe it: “There’s this jeep that takes you to the border, and then you walk.”
Laura: Doesn’t sound suspect at all.
Gabriel: No, not suspect at all.
Laura: Goodness. That must have been stressful
Gabriel: Yeah, it was totally stressful. “Okay. Well, you don’t have an entry stamp, so…”
Laura: This is where you live now.
Gabriel: Yeah, this is where you live. Welcome to argentina! Yeah. Okay, back to the boat. So we are on that boat and the winds were crazy, yes.
Laura: Yeah.
Shaun: We’re on the ferry and we have no means to pay for it. Well, they were about to kick us off.
Laura: So they had told us we could use our credit card on the second boat crossing because you can’t pre buy your boat ticket before you leave. But they assured us that we’d be able to use the credit card because we didn’t have Argentinian dollars yet because again, we arrived in Villa O’Higgins with literally minutes to get everything in order to get to the boat. No time to do any pre-planning. So they say, “No, no, you can take your credit card.” “Okay, great. We have that.” And we get on the boat and they go, “Oh, no, we don’t do that.” And for some reason, we didn’t have U.S. dollars on the trip, which we normally do, and so that was, you know, our mistake. And so we have Canadian dollars. We have Chilean dollars and a credit card, and they go, “Nope. Nope. Nope.” So, you and sandra definitely saved our butts from not getting kicked off, thrown into the lake.
Shaun: Yeah.
Laura: We’re like, “Well, we can go into El Chaltén with you and, like, take out money out at an ATM. And they they really were not solution-oriented.
Shaun: No.
Laura: No.
Gabriel: That was so crazy, because they’re that was my instinct again. Like, they were going to leave you.
Laura: Yeah.
Gabriel: They were literally going to leave you.
Laura: In the no man’s land. So what were we going to do? Like, back to Chile.
Gabriel: I said, “There’s no way that they’re getting left behind.” “What?” And they’re like, “No, sorry. No cash, no ticket.” That’s it. I said, “No, this is crazy.” So, I said, “Sandra, do we have enough dollars or euros to cover their fare?” And… luckily we did.
Laura: Yeah, very thankful for that. Kind of, we were kind of all of a sudden going, “Oh, no, we’re gonna be stuck in no man’s land.”
Gabriel: No, I mean just the fact that there is no recourse? Now we’re seeing the downside of the South American mentality.
Laura: Yeah, good luck.
Gabriel: Good luck. Maybe we’ll be back in three days. Maybe one week.
Laura: Maybe never, who knows.
Gabriel: Wow.
Laura: And then the cycle from where they drop you off at that boat to El Chaltén. We were cycling with the three British guys. The worst road in the entire trip is not far, maybe 30 kilometers if that. And it was just massive, I wouldn’t even say gravel, like just rocks on the road. So we were our handlebars and everyone’s bikes are getting such a workout just like, dadadada. Oh, it was so slow and the five of us were just like we’ve done this most amazing cycle tour, and this is how we’re ending.
Shaun: Yeah, it’s definitely the the worst riding of the entire trip, hands down. I would never do it again.
Laura: I mean, you do it. It’s a story.
Shaun: You’re just riding big river rock, yeah, for… I don’t know.
Laura: Too long.
Shaun: Too long, to the point where it’s just it’s hurting your joints.
Gabriel: Sounds really miserable. El Chaltén that was the last time we saw each other. Then we really did go different ways.
Laura: Yeah, so then we have to start moving our way back up to Santiago for our flight. There’s a few different ways to make your way up from El Chaltén. We definitely did not choose the best way. It was a little stressful getting back up to Santiago with many different planes, trains, and automobiles. Yeah, but that would probably be a whole other episode. That one week of getting back to Santiago probably added more adventure than the entire cycle down. We’ve learned that I think one of the things we love the most about cycle touring is, when you’re actually doing it. So not getting from point A to point B with your equipment, but when you’re on your bike, a lot of the time you’re in control of your own destiny. Like, you’re like, to get from A to B, I just pedal. And I love that about the nature, where you can really use your own force to get places. You’re not at the whims of when the boat’s leaving getting left in no man’s land or is there going to be room for the bikes on the bus? Once we’re actually just pedaling and using that are means to to get places, you just fall into such a nice rhythm.
Shaun: Yeah, and you can camp almost anywhere, especially in places like Patagonia where there’s just so much fast wilderness. Your tent footprint is so small. You bike until you see a good spot and then you set up camp.
Gabriel: Yeah, and one of my big rules is it’s great to be on the bicycle, but the moment you get off the bicycle the bike is such a pain…
Laura: Yes.
Gabriel: In the butt. And that’s what you faced, trying to head back.
Shaun: Yeah, trying to get back up to Santiago you get buses and planes, but you couldn’t do them together with the bike.
Laura: I forget which town it was but on our way back up to Santiago, we ended up going to this small airport that would then fly into Santiago.
Shaun: It was Coyhaique.
Laura: I think it was outside. Yeah, I think it was outside of Coyhaique.
Shaun: But it was the Coyhaique airport.
Laura: Yes, and it’s in a very very small town. So one of the big things when you’re flying with bikes, what we get concerned about, is bike boxes, which you can find in most of the major cities. But we’re in this very very small town and of course they’re not going to have a bike store or bike boxes. So we go and try to scrounge from all the local merchants their biggest boxes they have, which are not very big, and then get some rolls of tape and tried to fashion these bike boxes out of these small boxes. And we thought we had left enough time to do this, because we got to the airport super early and tried to get it all packed up. I don’t think we had enough tape for how many small boxes had to go together to do this and it just looks terrible. It looks like raid one art project. And they are not structurally sound. Like you breathe the wrong way and they were falling apart. And so I was like, “Well, our flight’s boarding. Like, we got to just check these bikes in.” Like, this is what we have to do. So we move these haphazard packed bikes to the conveyor belt and the baggage handler goes to pick it up and it just falls apart every which way and I’m just looking. And we’re tired and we’ve had such a…
Shaun: A journey.
Laura: Just a journey of errors trying to get back up to Santiago. And I’m just like near tears. Like, they’re welling in my eyes. Like, they’re not going to take our bikes. And the guy’s like, “Yeah, your bike has to be packed.” And I’m like, “I’m out of tape. I’m out of boxes. Like, I don’t know what to tell you.” And I’m just like literally just looking so overwhelmed and some lady’s like, “There there, there there.” And, like, shrink-wrapped our bikes back up and we thought our bikes would never cycle again after putting them on that airplane in the state we had them, but yeah, it all worked out.
Gabriel: The transcript for this episode is available on the Accidental Bicycle Tourist website. I welcome feedback and suggestions for this and other episodes. You’ll find a link to all contact information in the show notes. If you would like to rate or review the show, you can do that on your favorite podcast platform. You can also follow the podcast on Instagram. Thank you to Anna Lindenmeier for the cover artwork and to Timothy Shortell for the original music. This podcast would not be possible without continuous support from my wife Sandra. And thank you so much for listening. I hope the episode will inspire you to get out and see where the road leads you.
Gabriel: Sometimes I knew that you guys were at the campground because I could hear your cooking stove.
Shaun: It sounds like a jet engine. It is so loud.
Laura: My friend had this same stove and her comment is, “My stove makes dinner, not friends.”