The most horrible border crossing ever invented : El Chalten- Villa OHiggins

Before we left New Zealand when we were planning our route we read of this "adventure" border crossing between Chile and Argentina that saved hundreds of kilometers of backtracking. It involved a 40km cycle from Chalten, a 1 hour ferry ride, a horrendus 1 day trek over a small pass with the bikes, another ferry and a 7km bike ride to reach a village in Chile called Villa O´Higgins and the start of the Careterra Austral, a famous cycling route. The whole event takes between two and three days, depending on the boat timetables at each end.

We had been hearing from other cyclists about how horrible it was for a couple of weeks (it is notorious for rain and misery) with many thinking we were insane. We chose to ignore these warnings and do it anyway. And most parts of it were great! We left Chalten in the morning to cycle the 37kms to Lago del Desertio, the first 10kms were into a headwind with deep gravel littered with big stones and progress was slow. Spirits improved after an unexpected coffee/fanta stop that came with complimentary toast and butter! butter! we carried on at a quicker clip passing mountains, lakes, forest and small houses.

Another Mt Fitzroy photo from the road out of Chalten.

Typical views along the way. By far our best day cycling.

Ben cycling across a bridge out of Chalten.

The ripio (gravel) road on the way to the ferry crossing to begin the trail in Agentina. The lakes and rivers were all very high after all the hot weather caused more snow melt. this lake was getting a bit too close for comfort.

Don´t cry for us Argentina.....The very scenic boat to the Argentine border.

We arrived for the 5:30 ferry an hour early so spent the time lounging around the very pretty lake looking at the trout swimming around. It was a bit like the outlet in Wanaka, but even we could have caught fish here. The boat ride was great with nice views, we camped on the lakefront next to the border police with million dollar views of the mountains. There were horses around and we asked the police if they would take out bags up to the top of the pass for us as we knew it was very steep and our puny little arms would struggle to push our bikes up. They agreed for a small price (beer money) and we were off at 9am the next morning.

Our horses, kindly loaned to us by the Argentine military for half the crossing in return for a little beer money.

Crossing a rotten timber bridge in Chilean no mans land. There was some mighty careful stepping going on here!

We would post some pictures of the first 7kms but it was too horrible to record and we are trying to repress our memories of this section. There was basically no track at all, just a vertical trench filled with rocks, roots sharp scratchy bushes and horse manure. This "track" was crossed numerous times by mud filled creeks with maybe a single flimsy branch to try and balance on. But we got through travelling at the lightning speed of 2kms an hour to the Chile side which was meant to be rideable. It sortof was, like riding a steep rocky riverbed is rideable. But despite the obvious risk to our bikes and lives we were happy to ride as when we stopped there were these huge biting horsefiles. We arrived a bit bedraggled at the Chilean border control mid afternoon, tired, muddy and scratched but very happy to be there.

Anna F crossing the Chilean border line. It would be fair to say that we weren´t have too much fun at this point. The horses had dropped off our bags 20 metres before.

We camped that night in a field overlooking Lago O´Higgins filled with wild strawberries and caught the boat to the village that afternoon. It took much longer than expected and we didn´t get to our hostel until 10pm. We immediately dropped our bikes and ran to get some food as we hadn´t eaten since lunchtime. We found a place that had no menu so we had no idea what we were going to get, but ended up with amazing fresh fried trout!

Pushing our bikes on the trail up out of Argentina.

Probably the nicest section of the trail on the Argentina side.

Our bikes on the ferry to O´Higgins. They tied them on quite tightly which we though was over the top, but when we turned into the wind waves were crashing over the bow, soaking our bikes.

Anna making bread whilst waiting for the boat to arrive to take us to O´Higgins. There was heaps of others doing the same thing, we are now all in the same hostel too. There was wild strawberries everywhere in the campground which provided tasty entertainment.

Our hostel in Villa O´Higgins. We´re writing this in the front room now. Its awesome.

Tomorrow we start cycling the Careterra Austral, a road started by Pinochet in the 1970s to link isolated communities on northern Patagonia. The road only reached this village in 1999 and is pretty much all gravel for the next 1200kms. It passes through numerous national parks and is regarded as one of the most scenic roads in the world. It is also famous for its rain and bad weather, but fingers crossed the sun shines for us!