Into the Park

Waiting for a ferry to across Lago Pehue, I'm staring to worry about pace.  Amy seems hell-bent to move, move, move.  I seem to be more of the opinion that I need a day off.  We rode another 21 km yesterday in about two hours.  All wind.  I'm more tired than I expected to be.  Fortunately, it was sunny and the views phenomenal, otherwise I would've totally lost my recently reclaimed faith.

Bridge into Torres del Paine

As promised the road into the park was nearly empty of traffic.  There was one large group camping along the way -- employees of a gas or oil company.  They wanted us to eat with them and stay the night, but we insisted we needed to keep moving.  They wouldn't let us leave with giving us a company t-shirt.  Not wanting to seem ungrateful, we took them, but I honestly don't know what to do with it.  My bags are filled to bursting with my portion of eleven days of food.

(In going through my journal, I find it interesting the things that I didn't write about.  One of those subjects is food, which I touched on here but rarely elsewhere.  I'll post an extra entry about it later on.)

At the end of the road was the bridge over the Rio Serrano, at least what was left of the bridge, and beyond it, Torres del Paine.  A storm the previous winter had washed out most of the bridge decking but there remained a single track, wood boards perhaps 12-inches wide, that spanned the river.  We unloaded the bikes and carried our bags across and then returned to bring the bikes while the gusting cross wind tried to hamper our efforts.

Once in the park, everything seemed easier, as if the river crossing had been lurking the back of my mind, an unknown that could turn us back after three days of wind and gravel.

This morning we took a gamble and got up at 6am to try and catch a phantom bus that, according to Chip and Amy, went past at 6:59.  We didn't get to the road until 7:02.  Instead, we managed to hitch a ride to the ferry launch, where it turns out there's a 10:30 departure.  No officials anywhere in the park seem to know about these things.  Typical Latin America...

I guess that so much else goes smoothly in this country that it pisses me off even more when you run into the "typical Latin American attitude."  In Mexico, for example, I'd expect it. And because it's expected, it's somehow okay.

I must admit to concerns about some roads in our future.  We were looking at to cross from Torres del Paine into Argentina without going back to the main road but the direct road doesn't show on some maps.  And we heard the border crossing is supposed to be illegal.  On the plus side, there is supposedly very little vehicle traffic.  If the road is like the previous two days we'll be hard pressed to get to El Calafate before our food runs out.