Monday, 16th Oct
An early start straight into a long climb that was to take up the whole morning. With a head slightly fuzzy from the red wine the evening before we took to the the dirt road that cut its way through the haze, passing farmhouses shaded by tall poplars and roaming horses that looked up to watch us go by. An hour in and we turned a corner onto 2km of dead-straight road with a gentle climb, enough to take all my focus to keep moving along. The sun was getting higher and to break up the monotonous and deceiving incline I counted pedals between telegraph poles and then counted my breath, restarting whenever my mind drifted. Minute by minute the horizon got imperceptibly closer while the few vehicles that passed threw up clouds of dust that drifted slowly across the fields.
When the corner finally came the climb continued, it took me though a small town where the road was being built. Cement trucks ferried up and down and hi-viz workers waved me by. I reached the peak of the last hill around 1pm and waited for the Ratbags who had stopped in the town below. There was no cover or decent places to stop so I sat in the shade of a road sign and made a cup of tea that quickly had a layer of dust floating atop, kicked up by passing cars. I sat on the curve of the hill for the next hour, my legs burning in the sun while listening to a podcast and picking at what food I had left. I drank a dusty mug of wine, kept chilled by the mountain air, and helped push a car that broke down in front of me.
When Ben and Tom caught up it was downhill the whole way into the city, 20km away. The wide dirt track easily gave us space to pick lines and let gravity pull at the loaded bikes. We could see Coyhaique in the distance at the foot of the domed Cerro McKay and were soon in the suburbs. We collapsed at the first park we found and were waved over by two brothers drinking wine in the shade and eating home-made ceviche from a tub. They shared both with us and told us of their travels, Chilean songs playing from their pick-up parked nearby. We weaved through the suburbs and found an empty guesthouse near the central plaza which was full of people enjoying the Sunday evening sun.
Austral Spring 