Sun and Condors

12th Jan, Wild camp Old road to Wild camp Condors (65.7M)

Very chilly morning, but no rain. Porridge was cooked outside the tent for the first time in a while. Once packed up we set off on the bikes with multiple layers of clothes on, although these soon came off as the day warmed up. The weather gradually improved throughout the day to the point of sunburnt faces by the end. Beautiful scenery and rolling tarmaced roads suddenly made it all worth while again.

Towards the end of the day we passed through Villa Manihuales where according to a French cyclist we´d met en route today there was some camping in ´Jorge´s´ garden. We unfortunately didn´t find Jorge or his garden so elected to carry on for a few more km out of the town. We then had 13 very hard km straight into a headwind blowing up the valley from the sea. Both of us were on the look out for campsites but there were no official ones and there were relentless fences on both sides of the road. 

13km out of Villa Manihuales we came to a fork in the road. 62km to Coyhaique along dirt road or 72km along Tarmac (although our map actually said the tarmaced route was longer yet). Eventually we decided on the dirt, it was shorter, it wasn´t into the wind anymore and there was probably more potential for wild camping. It was a good decision. We found a lovely pitch on a grassy bank above the quiet dirt road that we had chosen. We cooked and ate in the warm setting sun and we could watch the condors circling on thermals around the surrounding mountains.