Tomorrow, Sunday Feb 2, I head to Thunder Bay to fly to Bariloche, Argentina to embark on a bicycle trip along the Carretera Austral in Southern Patagonia.
It’s been 6 years since I was last in this beautiful area during my 2014 trip down the length of South America from Quito, Ecuador to Ushuaia at the bottom of the continent. I’ve been looking forward since that time to exploring this section in Chile more extensively. Now I get my chance.
There will be five of us this time around. We all hail from Grand Marais in northern Minnesota. Lee and Scott Bergstrom were with me on a cycle trip from the top of the North Island of New Zealand to Bluff at the southern tip of the South Island in 2016. It will be great to share this trip as well. We have had many adventures together. Jane Alexander and Chris O’Brien will be riding a tandem in Patagonia. It should be interesting as the tandem will be fast on the flats and screaming on the downs. The uphills will be more of a challenge. But they are very capable. It will be our first trip together and I very much look forward to it.
The bicycling part of our journey will be about 1700 miles from Bariloche in Argentina to Puerto Natales located along the Chilean coast. From there we will catch a ferry up to Puerto Montt. The ferry will follow an “inland passage” along the fiords of coastal Chile. We are all hoping for good weather on this part of the trip. Nobody wants rain, wind or seasickness on the boat. A few good wishes from all of you might be helpful. a 3 – 4 day cycle will bring us back to Bariloche.
We will be self-supported. That means all camping gear, clothing and food will be loaded on our bikes. This gives us the freedom (and necessity at times) to camp in this rugged dramatic countryside.
I’m hoping to include a map here. Since I haven’t mastered how to load our route on a map I borrowed someone else’s. It doesn’t show the lower part of our route to El Calafate or Puerto Natales. It does include Puerto Montt in the upper left where our ferry trip ends. You can visualize the cycle route back to Bariloche from Puerto Montt.
I hope you’ll join us by following this blog. We’d like to have you along. buckbenson.org
