The worst (and yet most exciting) birthday ever. And then Pavement :-)

After our interesting / miserable (depending on whether you were Ben or Anna) boat trip to the marble caves we left Rio Tranquilo under overcast skies to head north towards Cerro Castillo, a village 120km and two days away. We were feeling a bit run down from the lack of vegetables, fruit or protein in the last two weeks and the gravel out of town was very loose. It at times resembled cycling up a dry riverbead. The weather was very cold and we could see alot of rain over the mountain pass ahead. Anna was feeling particularly bad and after cycling a pathetic 5kms we were seriously considering hitching a ride in one of the many utes that had been passing us. The moment we starting thinking about it though all traffic dried up and no cars passed for a whole hour - typical. With rain closing in we pitched our tent about 5 metres from the road and went to bed at 5pm.

We awoke the next morning to Annas birthday - it was her first roadside verge birthday and we had no choice but to cycle on.

Cycling around the lake. The bridges are obviously paved but there is road/riverbed in between. We were not happy campers.

The weather was a little better in the morning and we managed 40km before the rain started in earnest again. Sheltering from the rain in an abandoned farmhouse for lunch, Anna got stung by a bumble bee. This simply added to the already wonderful brithday she was having, but being in the middle of nowhere we continued riding as the rain got heavier and heavier. We still hadn´t even reached the bottom of the pass we were meant to be going over today but we felt that hitching a ride was very unlikely so pedalling was our only option.

Ben putting on a brave face before the rain got really heavy.

About ten minutes later a huge transporter truck came up behind us. We wern´t expecting it to stop for a moment, but Ben hopelessly stuck out his thumb without even getting off the bike whilst Anna undertook a passive-agressive roadblock by cycling down the middle of the road. Against all odds he pulled over (and a choir of angels sang from above). We looked at the back of the lowbed, on it was a van. He must have used all his rope to tie the van on (no chains, just rope like it was a load of firewood). He looked a bit puzzled for a while while he was working out how to fix our bikes onto the deck without any rope, then he just opened the back of the van, folded back the seats and we proceeded to put our bikes in the back. It was great!

And we were off, sitting in the cab of a Mack on a road that he probably should have had a pilot for as there was not much (no) room for any oncoming traffic. We nearly ran one car off the road during our ride as it came around a blind corner way too fast and Joe (our driver) had an expression on his face like sh%t that was close.

During the ride Anna was still not feeling that well and became concerned that she may experience imminent gastic distress. She gave the phrasebook to Ben (who was sitting next to the driver) so he could tell Joe that he might need to pull over. That was not easy for Ben and as he fumbled for the right chapter Anna intervened in fluent spanish "pare. banyo" (stop. toilet) which got the point across. She experienced her moment of gastic distress under the goose neck of the trailer in the middle of the road, with no toilet paper. By now this was without a doubt the worst birthday she had ever experienced.

Once we were over the first pass Joe met some friends in a ute coming the other way and pulled over to have a chat for a while. He then climbed back in the cab, moved it of the road and said that he was going to to their house for a coffee and we should unload our bikes and carry on riding as the town was "just over that hill" We now know never to trust a motorist when they say something is not far away. But having got through the worst of the rain and now with a tail wind we were happy again and set off on what we thought was a gentle ride into town.

If you´re going to hitch a ride, might as well do it in style..

Of course this gentle ride into town turned into two small mountains on the worst gravel we had ever seen. It was so bad people were stopping to ask if we were ok. Just short of the town a French guy in a land cruiser modified camper that we had talked to about four days earlier stopped us and asked us if we´d like to join him camping just off the road. We had been eyeing up hamburgers for dinner [Ben was even practising asking for a table for two] but he offered us wine, cucumber salad, bread and steak. We contributed pasta and it was a nice meal.
The next day we slogged the remaining 10km into town and rewarded ourselves with giant hamburgers from a roadside bus. This was also the start of the pavement, our first proper road in 500kms and something well worth celebrating.

Scene of wonderful hamburger breakfast.

We were initally thinking of staying the day here, mostly to shower and recover from the gastric distress of the day before, but the hamburger spurred us to carry on and over the biggest pass on the Careterra Austral and towards Coyhaique, the biggest town on the road.

Anna pretending she was enjoying herself at the start of the pass.

How Anna was actually feeling.

Downhills.

The top of the pass. Much easier than expected.

Yep, thats us nearly at the tree line.

 We found the pass much easier that we had thought, and made it over the second climb without actually realising we had been climbing. After that we roared downhill into the valley before being stopped in our tracks by a raging headwind reminisent of southern patagonia 30km from town. There was a great Hosteria nearby that cooked us great dinner, had very modern rooms and best of all new egyptian cotton towels in neutral tones. Anna nearly fainted with joy. The women there were a real treat, they fussed over us and we spent a great night practicing our spanish on them.