For us, apart from visiting the country where we met over 10 years ago (yeah, yeah it has been a long time and we are getting really old in the process… ), we came up with 8 other very good reasons to return to Iceland. Here they are:

1. Geothermal activity:
   

   Strokkur ready to fire

   When cycling Iceland, one can always get over this “shitty part in the rain, mud and on a bad road” thinking that tonight one might soak in a natural hot pot or at least in an outdoor swimming pool. Iceland is a geothermally very active country being on the edge of both the American and the European continent. Therefore it has an impressive amount of hot springs, geysirs, mudholes and fumeroles. The good thing for us as cyclists, is that there is (almost) always some hotpot nearby to put our sore buttocks in and relax our aching muscles.

2. 

   Classic pastries (tebollur og snuður)

   Icelandic pastries: Now a lot of countries have good pastries (especially northern countries do, it must have something to do with the cold, long and dark winter nights, where the only thing you can do to wave off your blues is eating home-baked cookies…), but we think the Icelandic ones are among the top ones! As some examples, we can mention “vinarbrauð” or “kanilsnuðar”. Yum yum! And the good thing: when cycling you burn enough calories to binge on Icelandic pastries every night and still not gain any weight.

3. The Icelandic: Icelandic people are very nice. On numerous occasions they will actually turn out to be very curious and talkative, even though at first sight they seem to be a bit distant. And once you get them talking (which is in general very easy if you can speak a few basic words of Icelandic), they will especially be asking you “why all those foreigners come to visit Iceland ON A BICYCLE???” as to them this is a crazy concept. The Icelandic have a humour which is a mixture of downright straightness and irony (especially when it comes to themselves or their country). As an example: On the last day we hitchhiked on a stretch of road close to Reykjavik and the Icelanders who took us of course asked where we came from. When we answered that we were from France and Holland, the immediate reply was “Did you have any savings in Icesave?” (therewith referring to the diplomatic dispute between Iceland, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, which started with the collapse of Landsbanki in the 2008 crisis and left many cities and households in both the United Kingdom and The Netherlands without anything left of their invested savings). As we didn’t have any investments in Icesave, we could laugh about the remark and appreciate the ironic humour! They will also go out of their way to help you when in trouble. A few examples are the friendly workers of a power plant close to Pingvellir who drove us 50 km to get our bicycle repaired when it turned out they couldn’t help us, the employees at numerous gas stations who would call to inquire about taking the bikes on a local bus, or the friendly lady at the Isafjördur sports store, who never had heard of something like bicycle spokes, but still managed to organize us some for free.
4. The diversity of the landscape: Iceland is incredibly diverse. When we lived in Iceland 10 years ago, we had visited large parts of the country and thought “we had seen it all”. But luckily we were wrong: this year we visited the inlands by riding over a highland route and the far-and-away Westfjords (Vestfirðir), both regions that are again completely different from anything we had seen so far. The highland is barren, with little to no vegetation, but incredibly beautiful with azur blue lakes and glaciers that seem to arise everywhere. The Westfjords are quite green (it rains a lot) and are marked especially by the sheer absence of human intervention and the long routes that follow fjords. Distances can be huge, even if settlements are quite close to each other as the crow flies. But it makes it all more nice and there are few tourists who actually come out there, which makes it for some nice riding without too much traffic.
   
5. Iceland still has (relatively) few tourists. Although tourism has taken a great leap now that the exchange rate is so low, it’s still relatively mass tourist free and it is pretty easy to get that “out in the wild” feeling just by avoiding the main roads and main “attractions”. Expecially when travelling by bike it is easy to enjoy the landscape “all by yourself”.
   
6. Cycling distances: Although we spoke about “long distances” in the Westfjords, distances are actually pretty small in Iceland and even suitable to cyclists who don’t want to bother bringing tent and sleeping bag. If in Patagonia we sometimes had 500 km stretches without anything, in Iceland there is rarely a stretch of road longer than 100 km without “anyting” and most of the time small guesthouses or campsites are at about 50 km out of each other, which makes that you can always get some food or accomodation when the Icelandic weather decides to play tricks on you.
7. Seafood: They have delicious seafood coming fresh out of crystal clear waters. Especially in the Westfjords the water of the sea is so clear that you have a hard time believing that it IS actually seawater and not some high altitude alpine lake you’re looking at. It’s just the perfect cyclists’ meal nibbling on some dried fish as a snack or stocking up on proteins with fresh fish in the evening.
   
8. And finally, but this reason is completely personal: We just think it’s the most beautiful country in the world. But we will not spend any text on that. Just get your bike into an airplane, enjoy the advantage of “slowliness” that cycle tourism offers and find out for yourself!

Vera & Jean-Christophe

Kerlingarfjöll

But what an adventure! We had beautiful weather, allowing us splendid views on the Langjökull Glacier in the West and the Hofsjökull in the East. We also enjoyed some soothing hot springs at Hveravellir and treated our eyes to pure Icelandic beauty (steaming fumerolles, boiling mud potts and amazingly coloured mountains) at Kerlingarfjöll. Not to mention the everlasting beauty of the deserted inlands with cristal blue lakes now and then.

Yesterday it started to rain though and it hasn´t stopped until now. Well, one has to admit: that’s Iceland too! And to be honest: it´s not too bad having a rest day in the rain, when you are sitting with your sore butt (hihi) in a hot tub of about 39 degrees just after having eaten some Icelandic pastries.

Vera & Jean-Christophe

Poor Grass! Luckily they have a nice sign to protect them!

The picture below (sorry for the quality) definitely shows one of the finest examples of Chinglish we encountered, a restaurant named “Hong Kong succeeds the sign powder gruel aristocratic family” at Guilin. We think that even Google would have translated this better!! But then, in China access to Google is forbidden. That maybe explains some things.

No idea what those words all together mean!

And thinking about it, we are actually quite happy that they don’t have any access to translator-services like Google, if not, we would not have been seeing the translation on the following picture, seen on a menu of a restaurant in Chengdu:

Unfortunately they ran out of “Strange Flavor Noodles” so we didn’t get a chance to try them. Too bad!

Vera & Jean-Christophe

The man in the picture had been doing some Tai Chi before and was now resting on this trunk. It seems that he is talking to someone, but he was alone (or at least in our eyes, maybe he saw something we didn’t see).

Vera & Jean-Christophe

Vegetarian's Heaven!

Vera & Jean-Christophe

Anybody still has a bike he needs transport for?

So this is a sure example of something that is very common in South-East Asia: overloading! And this is the proof, that they not only like to overload buses (yeah, yeah, 50 seats, but 120 people, what’s the problem sitting on a bag of rice for 12 hours???) but also mini-vans, cars and basically any means of transport.

So anyone still interested in transporting his/her bike? There is still a loooooooot of space left!

Vera & Jean-Christophe

First the hadag has an important significance in the well-wishing and greeting in Mongolian culture as it represents the highest symbol of an honorary greeting. The Mongols cherish the ancient tradition of greeting and saluting each other with respect and honour. Following this tradition, the elders and distinguished persons are greeted first.  The young ones respond to them in respectable manner. They even have a traditional ceremony dedicated to greeting which takes place once a year: Tsagaan Sar. During this ceremony, the ancient tradition of greeting with a blue silk scarf is performed.

The hadag is blue because this is the most sacred colour in Mongolian culture, representing the eternal blue sky. Mongolia is also known as the Land of Blue Heaven.

The importance of the hadag in Mongolian culture can be noted from its representation on the state emblem, where it represents the welcome-greeting.

For us, as travellers in this outstretched country, the presence of blue scarfs added some magic and mystery to this beautiful country and every time our driver horned at some blue scarfs attached to a group of stones in the middle of nowhere, it was enough to draw a smile on our faces and enjoy this country even more.

Vera & Jean-Christophe

The Australians have this no-nonsense attitude, which makes they greet everybody with “Hey mate!”. And when we say everybody, we mean everybody: from young to old, no matter the social class. We clearly remember one evening when a rather old lady greeted Jean-Christophe with “Hey mate!” and he got a little bit panicked about how to greet back, because, let’s face it, in Europe it would never ever come to our mind to greet someone the age of our grandparents with “Hey mate!” let alone that this person would greet us like that in return. But the Australians they do. No problem at all!

Below are some other examples of real Australian humour, there is absolutely nothing to add to this.

Seen in the Sydney Harbour

Seen at a market stall selling delicious chocolate

Vera & Jean-Christophe

Playing for Change is a multimedia movement created to inspire, connect, and bring peace to the world through music. The idea for this project arose from a common belief that music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people. No matter whether people come from different geographic, political, economic, spiritual or ideological backgrounds, music has the universal power to transcend and unite us as one human race.

Source Playing for Change

With their project the initiators recorded musicians and artists from all over the world and then assembled those recordings to make absolute “feeling-bloody-good-songs”!

For us, when we listen especially to the song above, we always end up dancing in the living room forgetting about our blues!

Vera & Jean-Christophe

PS: Our good mood is especially improved by the cute accent of the first French singer: Lez donte werie my brozer…

Today we want to talk a little bit about yurts. During our time in Mongolia we decided to go on a tour to see the country. Mongolia is vast, there is only one official road connecting the current capital, Ulan Bator with the old capital, Karakorum. All the rest of the roads are “dust tracks” that are impossible to get along on, except if you have a sturdy old Russian jeep and a driver who for some reason knows that if he meets this one particular bush that is opposite this one mountain and with the sun setting over this one sandhill, that he has to make a 90 degrees turn to the right. In other words: it’s impossible to know where to go as everything resembles; all the bushes look the same, as do the mountains and the sandhills, but those drivers “just feel” where to go and during our 12-day trip we never got lost and always found some yurts to sleep (although, to make it even more difficult, Mongolian people are nomads, so those yurts move all the time too).

Bautiful decoration of the wooden lattice inside a Mongolian gher

In Mongolia, yurts are actually called gher and most families own 2 of them: one for the family to live in and another one for guests. As mentioned before, ghers are designed to be dismantled quickly in different parts so that nomads can transport them easily while their flock moves on in the search of rich grassland. Traditional ghers, like in Mongolia, consist of a circular wooden frame carrying a felt cover, which is made from the wool of the flocks of sheep the family owns. The timber of which the external structure is made, must be obtained by trading in the small settlements as wood is nearly impossible to find in the treeless steppes (source: Wikipedia).
The picture above shows the wooden lattice crown of a Mongolian gher seen from the inside. It’s most of the time richly decorated and the wooden lattice forms a whole through which the smoke of the heater (heated with yak dung) can escape. It’s very nice to lie in the gher, on a wooden bench covered with a blanket (yep, that’s the bed – stone hard really!) and look at the stars which twinkle in the pitch dark sky and think about how lucky we were to actually be here.

Vera & Jean-Christophe

PS: For those of you who would like to know more about Mongolian nomad life, we highly recommend to watch the movie “The cave of the yellow dog” a Mongolian/German film of 2005 which depicts very acurately the life of nomads nowadays.

“The act or habit of arrogating, or making undue claims in an overbearing manner; that species of pride which consists in exorbitant claims of rank, dignity, estimation, or power, or which exalts the worth or importance of the person to an undue degree; proud contempt of others; lordliness; haughtiness; self-assumption; presumption.”

Source: Wiktionary

Arrogant advertisement with potential

Vera & Jean-Christophe

For a related article on Chinglish, see our first impressions on China.

As long as the guy stood there, the TV would work

Vera & Jean-Christophe

But there is also a downside to all this: tourism generates a lot of trash.

The downside of tourism

This picture was taken on the Annapurna trek where, a little bit out of sight and hidden from direct view, a pile of plastic bottles and bags where waiting to… Well yeah? Waiting for what? When we asked our guide, he said that “it will be taken down”. The question is just: when will that be and who is going to pay for that? There are some NGOs operating in Nepal and cleaning up the place, but it is a sad fact that they have a trash problem due to tourism.

Luckily the government is getting more sensitive to this problem and even proceeded to a complete ban of bottles on some treks (like on the trek to the Annapurna Basecamp). Tourists have to bring their own bottles which can be filled up with safe, treated water on the way (a project set up with help from the government of New Zealand).

But maybe the problem should be attacked more at the source: tourists should get more conscious of their behavior (locals are drinking water from streams, bottled water is too expensive for them). And although every guidebook we got to see talks about it, trying to get tourists to think about their actions, we unfortunately found that not everybody is quite there yet and the number of times we heard “but the water is so disgusting with those pills in it” or “I don’t feel like filtering my water for 10 minutes every morning” or “well it’s just so easy to buy bottles” is just incredibly frustrating.

We used a water filter, which we found to work very well. Let’s just hope that by reading this article and seeing the evidence of “what stays behind” make people a little bit more sensitive to the problem in the future.

Vera & Jean-Christophe

However, something should be said about the last part of our trip. After the small accident with Jean-Christophe’s derailer (which could, thank God, get fixed in Rio Grande) we started the last part of our trip: 220 km into the nicer part of Tierra del Fuego (because one has to admit it: the northern part sounds more exciting than it actually is really…) with snow-capped mountains in the background, forests and rivers.

But the most interesting thing on this part of the trip was probably the number of cyclists we encountered and especially how everybody seemed to know one another. So we met Thomas and Celine (French) who knew Jeff (the Canadian guy we cycled with for a few days) and through him, they had already heard of us. They also knew Heidi and Markus (Austria) whom we didn’t meet yet, but we had been reading their website through Jeff’s website. And then we met two Australian guys, who knew Celine and Thomas, but not Jeff, Heidi and Markus. However, some Argentine cyclists had spent some time on the road with Jeff, Heidi and Markus. Still following?

It was great meeting all those people and it gave us a lot of energy to know that they were at the beginning of their trip, while for us it would soon be the end. One thing is sure though: seeing those people being all excited about their project, just made us think about new projects, in the future, including the bikes of course and a lot of new interesting countries to explore.

It’s a Magical World. Let’s go exploring!

Vera & Jean-Christophe

Patagonia, with its harsh and unpredictible weather, could be the right place for experiencing a shitty day. For this you need two naive cyclotourers and some spices like “the absence of a good place to pitch the tent” (resulting in no other choice than pitching the tent next to a dry river bed as this is the only flat spot in the are) and all this taking place at spring time, when the snow on the mountains starts to melt!

So how does a shitty day start? It starts with emerging out of some bad dreams of getting flooded after a night of rain drops hitting hard the tent. And while the rain pours on, one urgently has to get out of the tent (and his warm sleeping bag) to relieve himself of some natural needs. Going out in pajamas and a rain jacket is never fun, so that’s a good start!

It just started like that for us that dreadful 4th of November 2008, just 12km after Rio Bravo on the latest stretch of the Carretera Austral. But that day, after stepping out of the tent, we quickly forgot about relieving ourselves or the coldness or even the water falling from the sky. No, that day we saw a river bed that was no longer dry, and that was wanting to leave its bed, just like us. In no time, we passed from sleepy-mode to panic-mode and never before we packed-up our things and unpitched the tent so fast. But now we had a river to cross to go back to the road!

Still not completely awake after this fast start, we fancied crossing this river cycling! Just having some fun like back in New Zealand! Great! We remembered too late that the river was made of loose gravel and small rocks which made it impossible to cross it on the bike. By too late we mean, we had to step down from the bike with one foot in the icy cold river and trying to keep our balance so the other foot and shoe would stay dry. After quite some gymnastics for such an early morning, we managed to remove our shoes and crossed the river. Later we would realise that all this effort hadn’t been worth it, as one hour later the remaining dry foot/shoes was as wet as the other one, thanks to the rain (you remember, we were still cycling in an all-natural shower).

But that is just the start! Cycling in the rain is no fun at all, it means that the landscape is hiding behind the clouds or that stupid (so-called) rainproof hood. So, you can only admire your handlebar and your hands getting that neat glacier blue colour. That was the Day where we met the rain Gods and no “so-advertised” guaranteed to keep you dry jacket could match those mighty Patagon Gods. And as we were guaranteed to be wet to the extreme by those Gods, nothing was spared up to our most inner piece of clothing.

That was a really bad day and worse (yeah we know, that is a lot of bad, worse, etc. but we do not even exagerate it!) was that the temperature was pretty cold (100m above our head, it was snowing, not raining), actually so cold that at a point we were not so far from hypothermia. And that is when we passed by a road-workers settlement (campamento entre rios on the last stretch of the road to Villa O’Higgins). They were having a rest next to a fire and we came by asking if it would be possible to dry a bit here and get warm again. For a couple of hours still we were shaking from the dampness of our clothes and the coldness.

So shall we call it a day? We mean a real shitty day?

Mightier than the Patagon rain Gods are the Patagons themselves. The road workers gave us company, attended the fire so we would be warm. They prepared hot bread and shared it with us, and then later even shared their evening meal with us. They offered us shelter for a night so we could go on afresh the next day.

So the Day we met the Patagon rain Gods was not a shitty day after all. But a day of enjoyment and of sharing some humanity with others. And we were even more rewarded the next day by a beautiful sky and a fantastic journey to Villa O’Higgins. The landscapes, the day before hidden, were now marvelous and we could enjoy them. Perhaps, as long as there will be some humanity, a shitty day cannot possibly exist.

Jean-Christophe & Vera

It’s almost the end of our trip. Almost. Because one really can’t deny that doing some 550 km, after having done 3000, should really just be a piece of cake: we should be up to it and the bicycles too. So with a lot of motivation (it’s exciting to think that we’ve almost done it and really will get to Ushuaia in the end) we started the last part of our trip, starting in Punta Arenas, where we took the ferry to Porvenir from where we started cycling along the coast of Bahia Inutil towards the Argentine border.

And then it happened: Jean-Christophe said the words that never ever should be said: “Well, we have been really lucky with the bikes so far, nothing really broken or anything…” Now for the small anecdote: a few weeks ago, Jean-Christophe had the same idea saying that “we have been really lucky with the rain” and promptly we got rewarded with a day of rain that we will remember for the rest of our days. On this, Vera had forbidden any phrase that included “have been really lucky” in order to avoid the attraction of any evil spirits.

And yesterday, in a moment of fatigue, Jean-Christophe’s mind took over and made him escape those words thereby awaking the evil spirits only waiting to be revived. So first his low-rider (front luggage rack) decided to crawl under the weight of the bag and the neverending vibrations caused by the ruta de ripio (unpaved road). Prepared for anything we managed to repair the rack with duct tape and tigh rips, so it will probably be fine until Ushuaia. But then (what bad did we do to deserve this???) the real bad thing happened: Jean-Christophe’s rear derailer kind of exploded leaving it completely destroyed in two pieces, with a broken chain and some spokes that got seriously damaged in the whole process. We don’t know exactly what happened, but the result was beyond repair.

And we have met a lot of cyclists, carrying a lot of spare parts (including complete wheels, etc.) but never ever did we meet anybody carrying a spare rear derailler with him (and neither do we). So there we were, sitting on a road with little to no traffic, and with our only company being some sheep looking at us a little bit dumb-struck, probably not very far from how we must have looked…

But then we motivated ourselves and shortened the chain so Jean-Christophe could pedal (more or less) until we reached the border, where some bus drivers were friendly enough to take us to the next big town, Rio Grande, where we are sitting now, having a forced “rest day”. The bicycle is in repair now and everything should be fine.

No evil spirits will get us down now and we will do the last 250 km to Ushuaia! But don’t let anybody ever say those evil words again…

Vera & Jean-Christophe

To hike into Argentina, it all starts with a boat to cross Lago O´Higgins. That doesn’t sound like a lot of adventure, except when you take into account that there was a wind so strong, that the boat was just a playball of the high waves. When, on top of that, one of the coworkers of the boat kindly asked us to all go and sit on the same side of the boat to prevent it from capsizing (?!?!?!) we seriously asked ourselves why we were on this boat, on this lake and in Patagonia in a general manner…

But the boat was strong enough and we safely (if not for our upset stomach) got to the other side, from where we started our hike into Argentina. “Hike? I thought you guys were cycling?” Well, let’s say that for those 20 kms into Argentina, you can’t really speak of “cycling” as it is actually a combination of cycling, walking, pushing the bike and carrying it. We rented a horse to carry our bags for a day as the road is really bad, especially for the last 8 km, where it basically turns into a very small hiking path, impossible to pass with bags on the bike. Add to this about a week of Patagonian rain and you are just about imagining correctly the mudbaths, rivers that are so high that the actual bridges (read: pieces of a tree, probably ment to be a bridge) are about half a meter under water, and bushes we had to cross.

If we had fun? Yeah, actually we had fun! Even despite the snowstorm that we got into in the middle of the day and a broken spoke which really couldn’t have come at a worse moment, we had fun and felt very proud actually walking into Argentina and seeing the beautiful Lago Desierto marking the end of this trip.

And then, a day like this is still better than cycling the Ruta 40 or working!

Vera & Jean-Christophe

PS: You can check some of the photos from this adventure.

1. Continue the Carretera Austral south to a place called Villa O´Higgins where basically the road stops. From there, our only option is to take a boat to the other side of a lake, where we can rent a horse to carry our stuff for a day, while we carry our bikes over an almost undoable path to enter Argentina. Sounds nice hu? Well, there is also option 2.
2. Enter Argentina and follow the famous Ruta 40 south, known for heavy side- and headwinds and the absence of water over distances of as much as 120 km. Doesn’t sound appealing neither right?

Finally, after doubting a lot and tossing several coins (never decide anything important by tossing only one coin!), talking to other travellers and reading about other cyclists’ experiences, we decided to take option number 2, thinking that it would be a nice change to cycle in the wind instead of the rain.

So after a few days cycling and travelling by boat between Coyhaique and Perito Moreno in Argentina, we took the famous Ruta 40 having our bags full of food to survive for at least 10 days and enough water to last 2 days.

And the first part, we really wondered what everybody who had done the Ruta 40 by bicycle had been complaining about: the Ruta 40 was asphalted, there were small streams everywhere (so no need to carry a lot of water), mostly rolling terrain and foremost, we had the wind in our back! Just to give you a small idea of what that means concretely: sometimes we didn’t have to pedal uphill, as the wind would literally push us uphill, thereby even increasing our speed! So the first 50 km were done in no time, easier as ever! The Ruta 40 rocks!

Then, for some reason we didn’t quite found out yet, things changed: we don’t know if the road turned, the wind turned or some kind of evil god decided to turn his back on us, but the wind got so strong and from the side and against us, that it was sometimes impossible to stay on the bike! We would just be blown off the road (and the bike for that reason…)! Water got scarce (where did all those streams go??!!), so we were rationed while fighting against the wind on a very bad road (where did the asphalted road go??!!). After a night in which we almost didn’t sleep, due to the tent that blew around our ears and was on the constant verge of flying away (probably with us in it) we continued our quest pedalling for 6 hours over 25 km… Exhausted…

And then there was a point where we asked ourselves “Do we really enjoy this?”. And as the answer was a full positive “NO” we decided to go back. To go back to Chile, with its everlasting rain, (but hey, at least you only have to open your mouth, look up at the sky and drink, no need to carry a lot of water ) freezing cold, but with a normal amount of wind.

And what about Villa O’Higgins, and the impassable path and the horse and stuff? We don’t know and we don’t want to know for now. We’ll see that when we’ll get there. Time for other adventures later!

Vera & Jean-Christophe

Criollo is a culture of the huge pampas where Gauchos on horse lead gigantic herds of cattle. It is also all what makes a good Gaucho: from the cloth to his emblematic knife (the fácon) and the famous asado (huge barbecue).

We found out that we are quite criollo, perhaps most than city dwellers in Argentina. We do not ride a horse but a bicycle, we have also special clothing and even an all usage knife (the little swiss army knife). And to complete our cycling Gauchos training, we made an asado!

We did improvise our little version of the asado. We went to a butcher to buy roughly a kilo of meat for 2 persons (that is little here!). We had 2 morcilla (blood sausage), 2 slices of Nalga (filet) and a vacío (a part from the flank of the cow, some 500g of meat at least!!).

As Argentines say, if you know the meat, then you know how to make your barbecue. Depending on the type of meat, you might need to have a thin or thick layer of coal. This is art according to Argentines!

So as they instructed us for our meat, we started a fire, added the coals and when they were bright red, we moved the coals under the grill and cooked the meat. Our first asado was made and we enjoyed it! We were real Gauchos now

Though we did break 2 asado commandments:

• Asado is the men’s arena, but Vera helped me starting the fire.
• It takes 3 asados before one can make it right, but our first one was a great success.

Jean-Christophe & Vera

PS: We even completed our training further. For 24 hours, we had our own dog following us next to our bicycle. It would even chase the cows and sheep in front of us. This poor and beloved dog followed us for 80km (40km per day) and kept watch on our bicycle when the night came. Furthermore, we are now drinking Mate, a herbal drink that is heavily popular in Argentina.

From Puerto Montt, we took a ferry to Chaitén (yes, the village that recently got more or less wiped off the map because of an erupting volcano) from where we started cycling south over a thick layer of ashes in the beginning and with acid rain in our eyes (we couldn’t see the volcano due to a thick layer of clouds, but locals told us that it is still spitting ashes into the sky). Luckily about 40 km south of Chaitén, clouds of ashes got less and we were left alone with the “normal clouds” producing fairly ordinary rain.

The most remarkable thing of this road is probably the absence of people in any form: no tourists, but also no inhabitants. First because we are travelling outside the high-season, most of the hostels, hospedajes, campsites and hotels are closed.  Add to this the events in Chaitén and they will probably stay closed this summer as tourism is low. But when there are people (we came through a village where one person lived with 3 cats and another village with 5 houses of which 2 were occupied with each one person…) they are always very happy to see some cyclists come by to keep them company for an evening to chase their solitude. For us this meant cozy evenings around the fire-place, eating fried bread, drinking mate and enjoying a nice and warm bed while listening to the wind and rain outside.

And when the sun finally comes out (in our case it did after two days of rain and clouds) the landscapes are just spectacular! One glacier after another, uninterrupted mountain chains, snowy hilltops, jungle, clear blue lakes, rivers everywhere… and the best thing of all: nobody around! Absolute silence, (almost) no cars and empty national parks. A thing hard to imagine in our overcrowded Europe.

After 7 days we reached Coyhaique, where we entered “civilized world” again. And as all needs to be seen in perspective, we have to admit, that it was quite nice to enjoy the sun on a terrace with a good coffee and a piece of cake.

Vera & Jean-Christophe

The nice thing about cycling in the rain, is that (most of the time!) in the evening we manage to find a nice little cabaña (cabin) with a wood-lit fire where we can cook some nice meal and dry our wet stuff before we cuddle into the nice and warm bed while listening to the rain outside.

The nice thing about eating dehydrated survival food (rice, pasta, muesli bars) for a few days is that after you really appreciate some nice and fresh food prepared with care. Especially when the place is nice and warm around a fireplace and the bread comes just fresh out of the oven.

The nice thing about not taking a shower for several days (except for the natural ones in the rain) is that when you get the chance to get one, you really appreciate the hot water cleaning your whole body!

The nice thing about cycling uphill for a day, is that you always get some reward by going downhill!

It’s all a matter of perspective!

Vera & Jean-Christophe

What else to say? The weather has been nice acceptable: we had good weather most of the time, but on one bad day, we had to pack our tent wet in the morning after a night of rain, in the hope that in the evening we would be nice and toasty in a guesthouse, but thanks to our bloody incredibly precise map, we had to emergency camp somewhere in the pampa, in our wet tent and damp sleeping bag…

We hate love Patagonia! And cycling here was the worst best idea we ever had!

Vera & Jean-Christophe

For buddhists, it’s not the month or the year that are of importance, but the day of the week that you are born. The people on this picture are without doubt born on a Saturday. The symbol for Saturday is a fire-breathing dragon (on the very lower edge of the picture), placed at the south-west corner of every buddhist temple in Myanmar and connected with the planet Saturn. People born on a Saturday come here to worship the dragon by putting water over its head, lighting candles and offering flowers. Like this, they believe to receive luck, happiness and fortune.

While in Myanmar, it is also a very common question to ask “What day are you born?”. And the funniest thing is probably that they deduce all kind of character traits from this fact. As such, Jean-Christophe, born on a Saturday (and thus a Dragon) is supposed to be somebody who “puts value on grace and splendour” (???) and Vera, born on a Friday and thus a guinea pig (connected with the planet Venus), is supposed to be somebody with a long life and who talks a lot…

Vera & Jean-Christophe

Vera & Jean-Christophe