Author: lindsay

When I was a child, there was a Chinese takeaway shop just up the road from us. It was a real hole-in-the-wall type of place, a high counter opening to the street, where you placed your order. Run by Cantonese people, it sold both European and Chinese takeaway food. The Chinese food was probably that version that seems to get sold to Westerners, but not within China, but that’s by the by.

On a Friday night, we would frequently cook some steak on the BBQ, and get some chips to go with it. All well and good, but I could never understand the quality of the chips that Chung Wah produced. By all appearances, this was a very successful business, and operated there for many years. But the chips were horrible nasty greasy things, soggy and disgusting. I am aware of certain guidelines on how to produce quality potato chips, involving things like temperatures, oil, time, etc., and I’m pretty sure that Chung Wah didn’t follow any of them. But people kept going back. After some time I managed to convince the family to frequent Adriatic Fisheries instead, which produced decent chips. I should also note that Chung Wah has now been replaced by “Great Wall Takeaways,” which produces a similar line, but in a nicer shop, and they do know how to make good quality chips. A special tip: When ordering chips there, use “Jackson” as the pick-up name for an extra large serving.

Now the reason I bring this up is because by and large, the potato chips (or French fries, or papas fritas) are appalling. Even Chung Wah would be embarrassed by some of them. Chilean food is pretty poor generally – even some Argentinians were complaining to me about it the other day – and chips are fairly prevalent. But they seem to have no idea what decent chips look like. Until here. I’m not sure what it is, probably something to do with the far more mixed heritage of Punta Arenas, but I have either eaten or seen, at at least 6 different establishments, potato chips worthy of the name. True, they aren’t “Mr Chips chips, mister,” but they are pretty good. If only I could get them to consistently bring me the Aussie Gravy when I do order chips, I would be sorted. My Spanish is sufficient for most restaurant/bar situations though, so it’s no big deal.

The ferry from here to Porvenir, Tierra del Fuego, doesn’t run on Mondays. So I have had four days off here, not doing a huge amount. Had a broken bolt on the bike, found a bike shop, the helpful owner took me up the road to a engineering shop. No problems, we can sort that. So I pick up the bike an hour later, and as I’m putting the rack back together, I snap another bolt. So I’m back at the machine shop in half an hour, with a wry grin the engineer takes the bike from me again. This time it was a bit trickier, the blowtorch was required, as there was Loc-Tite on the bolt, making it almost impossible to remove without heat. Going to have to get some touch-up paint on that. But it’s now sorted, and hopefully that will be the last broken bolt for this trip.

Tomorrow I’ll head to Porvenir, weather permitting. A 2.5 hour ferry ride, then a couple of days of gravel road riding, then a few days of tarmac to get to Ushuaia. Almost the end…will have a look at the wind, and decide if Ushuaia will be the end of riding in South America, or if there might just be a bit more. The engineer was telling me about 200km/h winds just a bit further up the coast…

A few photos from around Punta Arenas, taken with the new camera

In a real bed! With a TV! And central heating, no less (excellent for drying clothes). Sheer luxury I tell you, here in Punta Arenas.

Not bad, since I woke up that morning in a gravel pit, by the side of the road, only 3 degrees in the tent. Took a crap in view of northbound trucks (luckily not that many at that time of day). Then rode most of the day in crosswinds, apart from when it started hailing. Rain I can handle, since I was wearing all my rain gear as protection against the wind. But hail stinging a man in the face does wear you down.

Captain Stokes, the first captain of the Beagle killed himself not far from here, writing beforehand:

“In the south…a man’s soul dies within him.”

Now it didn’t all work out badly in the end, because he was replaced by Robert Fitzroy, who would choose a young Charles Darwin to accompany him on his next voyage. And I am certainly not in the same situation as Captain Stokes. But I tell you…if I had to spend years sailing around here, dealing with day after day after day of gales, sleet, hail, snow, rain, well…I could understand his choice of exit. This Thing of Darkness is an outstanding book about the Beagle, I highly recommend it.

I rode down from Puerto Natales in a couple of days, with the winds being more manageable in this direction. I met an American couple who had been on the road five days, and now had 35km (out of 245) left to go. Here’s some free advice for would-be bike tourists in Patagonia:

1. Do some research into the wind! Do not ride north or west, unless you have an astonishingly good reason to.
2. Get some decent wet weather gear. Yes cold is a problem, but rain is a constant too.
3. Do not, under any circumstances, take your girlfriend on her first bike tour to Patagonia. Take her to France, or South East Asia, or Switzerland. Nice, easy, non relationship-breaking. I have met several couples where she has given up on the bike, and gone onto the bus. If this is their first experience of bike touring, why would they come back?
4. Get a decent bike, and test your gear out first. I’ve seen plenty of bikes broken by the ripio. Mine too, but so far only minor.

So since I’m staying in a nice place, and it’s a reasonable town, I’ve decided to stay a few days. Riding in Patagonia has taken a lot out of me (or maybe I didn’t put enough in?) and I need the rest. 3 days off would have been enough, but due to ferry timetables, I will have to take 4 days off. Plenty of shopping around here, and I needed to get a replacement camera. I could get a new GPS – same model as before, or a shiny new touchscreen one – but the prices are too high. Even at the duty free area, the prices for cameras were a little high. Annoyingly, they’re also refurbished ones, although you don’t find that out until later. Oh well. It’s still better than the one I had.

I’ve also been eyeing up a netbook, as there are so many for sale here. Around $400-$500USD for a reasonable little notebook computer, it’s very tempting. But given the weather, the roads, and my propensity to get stuff stolen, I think I’ll hold off on that. It can wait until the next trip, when the iPad has taken over the world.

A final note: Google is removing the FTP publishing feature I use for this site, to publish content to northlandboy.com/blog. They want to further assimilate me, and host the blog at blog.northlandboy.com. It’s something I could really have done without, especially since they’ve not given us much notice, and these things are always a pain to sort out on the road. So I’m going to have to look at my options, possibly move to WordPress. The timing is bad – if it was a month later, I could get it all sorted when I get home, but instead I may have to migrate, then shift again later. Argh. You get what you pay for. Anyways, there will be some changes over the next few weeks – if it all goes well, you shouldn’t notice too much difference, although RSS feeds will probably need updating. Will let you know.

I was going to write about the last few days, riding from El Calafate to Puerto Natales. I would have written about the scenery, from mountains to open altiplano, back to valleys, and down to sea level again for the first time in weeks. I would have mentioned the cold – some snow at 500m even – and of course the wind. I would have told you that I enjoyed the open spaces, although admittedly not so much when I was tacking into the wind.

I would have mentioned the dead horses at my campsite – no, beating them didn’t help. Plenty of live wildlife though, guanacos, Darwin’s rheas, foxes, and oddly enough, sheep and cattle. I would have even posted pictures of some of them.

Long distances, isolated places, these would be mentioned. And then reaching Puerto Natales, where I found Baguales, a micro brewery that has now opened a bar that would not be out of place in Kingsland (or perhaps Leith, for my Scottish readers). They served me excellent beer, and the best hamburger I’ve seen so far in South America. And then holy of holies, I found peanut butter! One last jar at the supermarket, right at the top at the back of the shelf, where shorter customers couldn’t see it. It was from the United States, so luckily it had bold writing on the side, proclaiming: Warning: Contains peanuts. Well I should hope it does.

But…after returning to my campsite from dinner, I saw the front zip partly open. This was unusual, because I generally close the zips fully, as you don’t know what the weather will do. As I opened that zip, I saw the inner zip was not closed fully either. I pretty much knew what had happened as I opened the zip. Sure enough, my bag was open, looking rather empty. Empty camera case tossed aside, GPS missing, inner pocket opened, and one of my cash supplies gone, along with memory cards missing.

Sigh. We’ve been here before.

Could have been better, could have been worse. This time, the passport was stored somewhere else, and not touched. Technical issues in Calafate stopped me copying my photos to another drive. But I have been uploading photos along the way, general in full size, so they’re not all lost. There was quite a bit of cash, as I had been carrying extra amounts because I’ve got a few different currencies. The mobile phone wasn’t taken. The GPS hd track logs, waypoints, and full maps, which were very useful…but no more. I still have a copy of those maps, but nowhere to view them. Luckily it’s not too much further to go now, and the roads aren’t too complicated here, so I should be able to work it all out. The travel journal was left too, and no credit cards were lost (they’re distributed with my other money supplies. Strangely, my water and fuel bottles had also been taken.

Well I suppose everyone gets stuff stolen in South America. Just that it’s usually in the poorer, rougher countries, not the relatively developed Chile and Argentina.

Just after seeing what had happened, I met Max, an Australian riding down from Alaska to Ushaia. He’s staying at the same campsite, but I hadn’t seen him earlier in the day when I arrived. A pity I hadn’t, because he’d seen someone at my tent around 8:30, when I was out. They were sitting at the door of my tent, wearing a headlamp, and looking like they belonged. Not knowing whose tent it was, Max didn’t think it was out of the ordinary.

Interesting sidenote: On a hunch, we checked the rubbish bin out on the street – and there was my fuel and water bottles. Lucky, because getting a replacement fuel bottle isn’t easy, and would have rendered my stove useless. So the thief was probably trying to look like he went to the tent, grabbed the bottles (which were sitting in the vestibule), and strolled out, looking like he belonged. Which is part of what makes me think it was a tourist, not a local. The locals tell me that a local thief would have just taken the whole bag, and I would have lost a travel journal too. But then why did the stupid **** take a crappy 3yr old camera, and my memory cards, which would have been worth bugger all.

Anyway, Max speaks fluent Spanish, and was a tremendous help. We spoke to the staff of the campsite/hostel, and they got the manager in. We went over what happened, and went around the corner to the police station, to file a report. The carabineros are a solid, respected force, but there’s not much they can do. I’ve got a report for insurance purposes, but there’s not much else that will happen. They were hassling the campsite owner, saying he should have better security. But there’s not much more he could do – the site is fenced, there’s one way in and out, but if you look like you belong, you probably won’t be challenged, given the numbers of people passing through this town.

Oddly enough, after all that, I slept as soundly in my tent last night as I ever have. You just have to deal with these things. But maybe I should not have balked at the $31USD I was quoted for a dormitory room at a hostel in town…

I’ll head to Punta Arenas from here, which is one of the biggest towns in the region, at around 120,000 people. It has a duty free area, so I’ll try and pick up a new camera there. Will probably give the GPS a miss, since the prices won’t be cheap.