Park life

Patagonia’s southern peaks and plenty of pampa

Hello friends, family and those we've met on the road! Welcome to the twenty-third edition of our newsletter, this time penned from the port town of Punta Arenas, Chile.

Since we last spoke, Ed and I have traversed the final kilometres of the Carretera Austral, navigated two more border crossings and visited three of the region’s most popular tourist sites. We’ve also ridden into a fair amount of wind and rain, slept in a variety of abandoned buildings and are now within 600km of Ushuaia. It’s all getting pretty real.

The last few days of the carretera were certainly our favourites - skimming the Parque Patagonia and heading beyond the reach of casual motorists, we pedalled the increasingly isolated road towards Villa O’Higgins. We were wowed by the glacier melt cascading down the mountainsides, the delicious calafate berries lining the road, and the dramatic clouds which gave this section a moody feel. There are a number of refugios down here (shelters for travellers, a bit like a bothy) of varying degrees of weatherproofness, and they proved welcome places to catch an hour out of the rain, or to dry out our damp clothes by the fire overnight.

Villa O’Higgins is a small town most famous for being at the end of the road, but for cyclists and hikers it is a portal to Argentina via two notoriously unreliable ferries and a bike ride through the forest. After waiting a couple of days for good enough weather to depart, we donned our lifejackets and bounced across the first lake, before riding the gorgeous gravel road and single track towards boat number two. As you peep over the summit of the hill, you are treated to a fabulous view of Fitz Roy, one of Patagonia’s most photogenic peaks. Buoyed by the clear skies, we quickly descended the final kilometres before hopping on the second ferry and enjoying the crossing with some of the pals we’d made at the Villa O’Higgins campsite.

Back in Argentina, we rode towards El Chalten, a town frequented by hikers keen to get up close and personal with the area’s gargantuan glaciers and craggy peaks. Although we are generally allergic to trekking - our legs muscles are pretty cycling-specific now - we decided to make an exception for a day hike up to a famous Fitz Roy mirador. We were fortunate enough to experience gorgeous weather, quiet trails and not-too-terrible DOMS the following day.

From El Chalten we headed towards El Calafate via our first dose of proper pampa - the name given to the flat scrubland that dominates huge swathes of the Argentine countryside. It’s uninspiring scenery through which to ride, and the wind has become a constant challenge. Although we normally benefit from prevailing gusts, all roads have their variations in angles, and it’s impossible to have a day with it entirely at your back. Like thousands of riders before us, we are discovering the delights of being blown into the other lane of traffic, and how much needing to aim for abandoned buildings for cover affects your day-to-day freedoms on the bike. We’ve found ourselves doing much bigger days than we would normally, as we’ve been forced to take advantage of good weather, or to ride on past a comfortable point because our tent wouldn’t survive the night in the open. We’re thankful that at this point in the trip we have the physical and emotional resilience to change our plans at short notice, and that we still have the energy to try and outpace a rain cloud on the horizon.

After battling the headwind into Calafate, we had another few days off in order to resupply and enjoy a morning at the Perito Moreno glacier. It’s one of the sights I’ve been most keen to see since our pre-trip Youtube binge of other travellers’ content, and it was certainly as staggering as I’d been hoping for. At 4km across and 70m tall, it’s a bit grande, with the regularly falling chunks of ice creating loud cracks and bangs for tourists to gasp at. Here we thought again of George and Lili in Trevelin who, despite living only a ‘few thousand’ kilometres down the road, have never seen the glacier, and have it on their bucket list. It’s good to be reminded of the absolutely privilege it is to be able to take time off for an extended period, and to explore places by bike that locals often haven’t seen themselves.

Next, back into Chile for more pampa, more guanacos (llama-like animals), and more sleeping in bus stations on our way to Torres del Paine, another national park with a famous set of spiked peaks. It’s a beautiful but infamously expensive place, so we opted to merely pass through on the surprisingly beautiful gravel road, spending a night in a well-kept campground in the confines of the park and enjoying the gorgeous views over Lago Pehoe. Then, expecting more pampa upon our exit, we were delighted to find more greenery and trees on the road to Puerto Natales, a fishy-smelling coastal town that serves as the travel hub for Torres del Paine. We had a brief day off before once again packing up the tent to try and get to Punta Arenas ahead of an incoming downpour, and we sort of managed it, even if we did spend a few hours cowering in a bus shelter.

We’re now in a hostel in Punta Arenas, readying ourselves for the final push towards Ushuaia and the end of the road. We’re both feeling reflective and a little pumped, and as long as the weather is kind there shouldn’t be too many more days of pedalling in the schedule. Our current plan is to send a little update when we reach the bottom, and fill you all in on the details shortly after. Speak soon!

Toot or boot

Headwind BOOT

Tailwind TOOT

Seeing Dune 2 in Punta Arenas - our first cinema experience in more than 2 years! TOOT

The alien languages being in Spanish subtitles BOOT

Leaving my towel in Puerto Tranquillo BOOT

Fellow cyclists Skylar and Kaz reuniting me with it! TOOT

Thanks and shoutouts

Vera and Laurens

Cyril and Celian

Akis, Vula and Anastasia

Archie

Everyone from the campsite in Villa O’Higgins!

Nahuel and Lu

Stefan

Geronimo

Cédric and Gabriel

Anais

Matteo

Philip

Isaí

Sacha and Pippa

The many cyclists we’ve met on this section with whom we didn’t even exchange names - thank you everyone for your kindness!

About us

We are Edwin Foote and Suzie McCracken - thanks for signing up for our newsletter! Edwin is from England and Suzie is from Northern Ireland and normally we live together in Deptford, south-east London. We arrived in Fairbanks, Alaska, in May 2022 and are attempting to ride our bicycles the length of the Americas, hoping to finish in Argentina in 2024. If you have any recommendations of things we should do, people we should meet or places we should stay, we'd love to hear from you! Please reply to this email, leave a comment on Substack, or follow us on Instagram at ed_win and _suziemccracken.