12mph through the Andes: Into the wind

The route to El Chalten has been windy. Very windy. There is not much in the way of shelter. There are few trees, few roadside embankments and somehow too few mountain ridges to provide shelter from the big blond lady in the sky who seems to have been doing her hair for the past couple of weeks. There have been days where I have stayed in town to save wasting my energy trying to cycle into the wind. In learning that this is indeed a sensible, if fustrating approach, one day I started out and cycled around 30km in 5 hours on fairly flat ground. I then decided that the going was so slow, the distance needed to be covered to the next town was so large, and as my food and water supplies on the bike are limited to around three days, that I turned around and cycled the same 30km back to town in 30 minutes. The wind dictates the pace in Patagonia.

It has been raining for a lot of the last two weeks. The temperature high for the days has not been above 12C, and it has felt like rather hard work on these days. Every now and again though there appears an oasis of geographic delight which makes the effort put in really worthwhile. I´ve been to El Chalten (Fitzroy) today and the Los Glaciars National Park here is beautiful. Photos will follow when I have an internet connection with a decent speed.

Remember that bald back tyre that I was going to change? Well I should have changed it. A bit over 7,000km done and the sidewall got a hole in it and the tube popped like a balloon. That was my third catastrophic puncture of the day. The first affected the valve and it would not seal after pumping it up, so that tube could not be repaired. I replaced that one with the Argentinian acquired Chinese spare that I had. That split after an hour to leave a gap that could not be patched with my modest sized patches. The weather was terrible that day. I´d stopped at the only hotel on the route to see if they had an available room. I didn´t know before I entered the hotel, but I did realise after 30 minutes of an attempted conversion, that the hotel was owned by The Word Of God. I think that I held my own ground quite well, fending off the attempted conversion over my tea and apple pie. In the end it turned out that they did not have an available room and they turned me back out into the near freezing torrential rain. No room at the inn at the Word Of God Hotel.

The third tube failure, the pop, also left a hole too big to patch. With my two spare tubes out of action I was stuck at the side of the road. Just as I made the diagnosis, a bus came along slowly. It was towing a pickup. I stuck my hand out and the driver stopped, as he did I noticed that it had no seats. A lady popped her head out and asked if I wanted a lift in perfect English. She had lived in Scotland for a year. I did want a lift. They had bought a Mercedes coach and converted into a motor home with satelite TV, air conditioning and the full works. The lovely Argentinian couple were on holiday with their bilingual 7 year old daughter and Old English Sheepdog. They weren´t going my way, but they were going to a town, so I went their way. Once in a decent sized town I bough three new tubes and got back on the road.

There is a superstitition that bad luck come in threes. That was my first day out after my last bike problem; the hub locked open half way along a 1,600m ascent. I did what any sensible mechanic would do and gave it a good bang on the side. That didn´t help. Which meant that when I was pedalling, the back wheel wasn´t moving at all. Not good for progress. I took the wheel off to see if I could do anything with the hub, but I didn´t have a chain whip with me which meant that I couldn´t begin to fix it. Five minutes after making the diagnosis, a pickup with nothing in the back came along. Nice timing again. The driver stopped and asked if I wanted a lift. Again I did want a lift. He owned a group of cabanas and he gave me a lift to where these were on the edge of a small town. Hugo was the man. All the cabanas were occupied, but he offered me the use of his garage to stay in for free. It was a big dry building and had a makeshift matress bed. Certainly more comfortable than my tent in the wet, and the accommodation in towns can be difficult to get at this time of year, the high season. The local cycle hire shop could not help. It turned out that the hub is a sealled unit and that I needed a new one, but they did not have one for a 9 speed rear gear setup. The bike was almost brand new before I left. A rather crap performance by the Specialized own brand hub that came with the bike. I took a bus to the next town and got a new hub there, a decent Shimano one. As the hub was a different brand, then I needed a new brake disc to fit onto it and also new spokes for the wheel as the hub diameter was different. All those replaced, I was ready to get back on the road.

San Martin De Los Andes