Cycling The Globe

Distance: 102.35 km
Ride time: 9:18:27!
Average: 11.01 km/h
Total: 21199 km

There are different ways to celebrate Christmas on the road; Petter had bought a bottle of Baileys which he put in his bottle holder on his handle bar. Looking at the weather forecast promising strong winds once again, something to lift the spirit seemed like a good idea!

We left Punta Arenas early in the morning trying to beat the winds. We had some success with this, as we had already made 45 km of progress at 11 am. From then on things turned worse, as the Patagonian wind was now blowing right into our faces. Even downhill it was not really possible to go much faster than 10 km/h.

At moments like these you might start to ask yourself what are you doing here – especially since Kayla and Jacque, two nice American cyclists had been trying to convince us to stay another night in Punta Arenas for the Christmas party there. Now we had to face the wind instead.

It took more than nine hours of cycling to reach Vila Tehuelches for the night. Once rolling into the village we were truly exhausted. Luckily Christmas took a massive turn for the better at this point. In true biblical terms we were pointed to a stable when we asked for a place to camp. We asked if there were any horses inside, but it turned out to be a very new and unused horse stable.

I had been carrying a bottle of champagne that we drank while cooking up our Christmas dinner consisting of mashed potatoes and sausages. The spirits were very much picking up at this point.

We imagined the rest of the world (or at least the Europeans celebrating Christmas on the 24th) having their Christmas dinners in their warm living rooms now, but we agreed that Christmas in a horse stable is as authentic as it gets.

The very best Christmas greetings to everyone reading this!