Cycling The Globe

Distance: 81.19 km
Ride time: 4:59:30
Average: 16.23 km/h
Total: 23831 km

I have enjoyed some nice sunrises lately, usually over lakes and mountains. Today the sun rose over Volcano Lanín as I opened my tent. A Beautiful sight.

We then packed our stuff and cycled towards the border with Chile, only a couple of kilometers away. The border crossing went well even though the people on the Chile side check the luggage rather carefully. You are not allowed to bring fruits, so I had eaten all my bananas before.

On the other side of the border the dirt road continued down through a valley. We agreed that we would miss the mountains a lot. In a few days we would be cycling on the flat roads towards Santiago. What Michael would not be missing was the dirt road.

It is interesting how the landscape immediately becomes more green and lush as soon as you cross the border to Chile. In Argentina the surroundings had been dry and sandy. Now we were among fields and forest again. We saw a local woman picking berries from the side of the road and followed her example. They tasted absolutely wonderful.

Another very positive thing is that the price level seems to have dropped from what we experienced on Carretera Austral. This makes sense since this part of Chile is well connected with good roads all the way to Santiago. Michael was very surprised when he ordered what he thought was a tiny hotdog for 1.5 US$ and got this.

We then continued down towards Pucon, having enjoyed a very solid tail wind the whole day. It seems almost too good to be true with all this tail wind, but I guess we earned the easy kilometers further down south.

Our first impression of Pucon was that it was very touristic, very crowded, and easily had the most beautiful girls we had seen in South America. We decided to stay for a few days.