Distance: 53.15 km
Ride time: 3:48:42
Average: 13.99 km/h
Total: 22120 km
Our campsite in Vila O’Higgins was a good one; nice and warm kitchen, wifi, and lots of cyclists. We were hanging around while waiting for the small supermarket to open (they have long siestas here). In the end it was almost 5 o’clock before we were leaving town.
I was feeling very excited as we were cycling the first kilometers up Carretera Austral. This “highway” stretches 1200 km though a very rural part of Chile. The last parts of this iconic road were built only 12 years ago. We were now at the very beginning, or actually, the very end of the road, feeling truly in the middle of nowhere.
It was cloudly and rainy, but luckily the temperature seemed much higher than on the other side of the mountains in Argentina. Michael even cycled in shorts. I hoped this would be a trend that continued.
A german cyclist couple had told us that there would be a refugio, a small hut where it would be possible to sleep, 50 km from town. At first we thought we had found the place, but the hut we were about to enter belonged to a local farmer. A few kilometers further down the road we found the real refugio. We were unloaded the bikes as the rain picked up, feeling lucky to have a roof over our heads for the night.
