We left the lovely hostel much later than usual, making good use of the inclusive breakfast and internet, but still managed to cycle 67M today. The two volcanoes that had been present through most of yesterdays ride continued to be visable over our shoulders throughout today and gave us a good gauge of where we had come from and distance travelled (not always that encouraging).
The journey today was along Ruta 5, the transamerican highway. The inital part to Puerto Montt was a busy dual carriageway. However there was a good hard shoulder and apart from not being a relaxing cycle was safe enough. With very limited spanish vocab (need to look up pump, inner tube and tyre levers in the dictionary), Gareth helped out a young racing cyclist from Puerto Montt with a puncture. The young rider was carrying a spare inner tube, but no tyre levers or pump! He also had the baldest most worn out tyres ever seen. I hope he made it home without getting another puncture!
From Puerto Montt to Pargua it was single lane road but still with a hard shoulder. Our rest and food breaks were relatively short and we made good time. No obvious camping at Pargua and the whole area smelt of fish processing plants so we caught the ferry to Chiloe. This was easy enough, they seem to go every 20-30mins and you just drive/ cycle/ walk on and pay on board, only 1500peso each for the bikes (about 2 pound). It was nice to have a break from the bikes, watch the retreating views of the volcanoes and the approaching green hills of Chiloe. We met Larry, a canadian motorcyclist, travelling down from Alaska to Ushuaia. really friendly, hopefully will meet up with him again on the island, but he is travelling a lot faster than us so possibly unlikely.
About 30minutes later we were back on the bikes and pedalling on much quieter roads (still ruta 5, the transamerican highway). After the port and the queue of traffic waiting leave the island, it was very peaceful with rolling green landscape. It very much reminded me of Ireland. 27km later we arrived at Ancud, the largest town on the north of the island. We found a campsite on a cliff above the town. We then spent a long time deciding if we´d risk the very exposed, windswept cliff-top camping with beautiful views, but eventually decided on caution in case the weather changed and pitched in one of the small sheltered sites. No view, but shelter from wind and rain.
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