Flying has been a headache since 911 and even more so now after airlines trimmed down during the pandemic. Lindsay struggled with delayed and cancelled flights plus a damaged bicycle that arrived a day after he did. These delays stretched his trip to 40 hours before arriving in Athens. I had an adventurous connection in Newark, thanks to a delayed flight from Minneapolis. I had just 20 minutes to spare when I got to the gate. We then sat in the plane on the runway for three hours before it could take off. Crazy plane traffic and bad weather in Newark. This is the new norm in air travel. I still feel lucky to go tho!

The Parthenon sits on Acropolis towering over central Athens where we are staying. You can find other small ruins all over this part of the city. They are perhaps the only structures here that have escaped graffiti artists. The graffiti on every building, wall and signpost was a little unnerving. The narrow streets jutting out from each other at all angles charmingly follow no rules. On the weekends like this there is traffic of all types trying to navigate through all the pedestrians on these narrow paths. It can be quite an adventure trying to find home after a few turns on these angled streets.

We have one more day in Athens then are off on the bikes. Last night I slept really hard for four hours. Wide awake at 2am. Brian much the same. Then it was barking dogs, partying people on the streets and in the bars, and motorcycles roaring down the narrow streets below. Dropped off again sometime in the wee hours with hard blessed sleep till 9. I needed that. A few time zones crossed and long hours of travel take their toll.

I leave in two days for my first bike trip since the “great escape” coming back from a great trip in remote Chilean Patagonia in spring of 2020. When the pandemic erupted that spring we were already at the midpoint of our trip. Somehow we managed to stay one step ahead of travel closures, quarantines, and closed borders. That’s hard to do on a bicycle. We ended up on the last ferry from Chile into Argentina, the last flight out of Bariloche, and one of the last flights out of Argentina. At midnight of the evening we flew, the President of Argentina closed all the countries airports. By that time we had landed in São Paulo. However, since we were scheduled to fly into Thunder Bay, Ontario, and Canada had just closed it’s borders, we had to find new flights into Minneapolis. It was a little chaotic. We got home and quarantined ourselves into our respective homes with no idea how long it would all last.

Now I’m off to Athens with good friend Brian Bennett. There we will meet Lindsay Gault who is traveling from his home in New Zealand. We know Lindsay well from previous bike trips. Together we plan to ride across Greece, Albania, and Montenegro on the EuroVelo bike route. When we reach Split in Croatia we’ll leave the EuroVelo for more remote trails along the Adriatic Crest into Slovenia. From there we’ll pick up another set of trails through the mountains and eventually into Ljubljana and our flights home at the end of May.

We will be bikepacking throughout our trip. That means we’ll be carrying our sleeping bags, mats, cooking gear and more on our bikes. Food we’ll pick up along the way. We won’t always camp and cook by any means. The cuisine on this route is just too good to pass up and there will be lots of charming options to stay. But by carrying everything we’ll be ready to camp in all those remote places we are longing to find.

I plan to blog and post photos as often as I can as we move along. I hope you’ll join us by following along.

The ferry taking us to Puerto Montt is a monstrous beast that can swallow whole semi-trucks through its gaping maw. They sit there, down in the hold, along with big containers, passenger cars, machinery, goods of all kinds, and (strapped to the wall on one side) our precious bicycles.

This ferry is a very spartan one for passengers. It is utilitarian. The cabins are small. Cramped small. Clammy. Claustropobic small. Food is poor. Light is poor. I have one roommate in a cabin with two bunkbeds. I can’t imagine how it would have worked if the other two bunks were occupied. Only one person at a time can fit in the aisle between beds. There is a tiny bathroom in one corner. We paid extra for this convenience. There are only 76 passengers onboard a vessel that holds 320. Also 44 crew members.

My roommate is a retired bank manager from Germany. He has that kind of physique that could be referred to as hulking. Maybe lumbering would more kind. About 6’3″ or so. A little too top-heavy. Like his body can only bend one part at a time. Getting into the lower bunk requires great patience as well as a plethora of grunts and groans. The betting odds partway through the process are less than 50-50. Sometimes he hits his head on the upper. He also mumbles to himself on a regular basis.

Getting into the upper bunk? I wouldn’t want to be there for that one.

He is here in Chile and Argentina to photograph steam locomotives. He’s traveled all over the world doing just that. He showed me a slide show of a book he has published of steam powered trains in Turkey. It is beautifully done. I have no great interest in the topic. One can always appreciate anything that is really well done.

It would have helped if the weather had not been so damp, foggy and oppressive. It is typical of what this coastal climate gives you. We did have one glorious afternoon with some sunshine, lower breezes and temps that allowed one layer to be shed. The seas calmed. We tromped out on the upper deck. We saw porpoises, whales, and various seabirds that I hesitate to mis-identify. Fresh air is so good for the soul. My cabin is not.

Since the open ocean portion of our voyage was relatively smooth sailing, our captain took advantage and spent more time there. It meant we would make better time and arrive early. It also meant we would miss seeing some of the highlights of the trip located along the inland passages. We missed seeing a ship that grounded on top of an earlier shipwreck in one of the main channels. Also an indigenous village of 120 residents that can only be reached by boat. Spending more time in the small channels also would have afforded us much closer views of the mountains, islands and fiords. Such is life.

We have over 80K to bike on Saturday once we get off the ship. We can’t leave until they can unload the cargo. Landing early will allow them to do just that and us to start pedaling sooner. We should reach Ensenada at a reasonable time. The open sea decision was not all bad.

We have spent four days now off our bikes in Puerto Natales.  Located just north of Punta Arenas along the coast of southern Chile, Natales is a charming seacoast town of about 20,000 residents.  Whereas El Chalten is a hip little mountain town with a main street maybe just a little too Americanized,  Puerto Natales is just what it should be.  Earthy and authenic.  With Torres del Paine just a short bus ride away, the town attracts visitors worldwide. That afforded us plenty of great little restaurants to sample and shops to explore.

Lassitude is just now starting to set in for me.  A little too long off the bike.  I’m happy that our Navimag ferry will be docking today.  We can board tonight for our early morning departure.  It will be four days and three nights before we disembark in Puerto Montt.  The ferry spends most of the time traveling narrow waterways along the fjords of Patagonian Chile until sometime late on the third day when it breaks out into the open ocean for a few hours before pulling back inland on the last stages of the voyage to Puerto Montt. 

This boat is not a cruise ship. It’s a regular ferry carrying cars, trucks, freight and just over 300 passengers like me. There are simple meals and shared accommodations. No alcohol on board. Some snacks can be purchased on the way. No frills. No wi-fi. Perfect for us. They’ll take our bikes and us up to a point where we can finish our trip up where we started – Bariloche. The scenery should be fantastic. We’ll sail past and through coastal mountains, long fjords, lush temperate rain forests, and large volcanoes. We are promised views of marine mammals including whales plus birds of all stripes. What’s not to like.

It would be nice if you all could close your eyes for just a moment and pray for good weather for us. It likes to rain along the coast.

When we reach Puerto Montt we will immediately hop on our bikes and pedal up to Petrohue on Lago Todos los Santos to spend the night. The next morning we’ll take a ferry for two hours down the length of this large Lago. The next section will find us biking some bad ripio for 28K and 1000 meters of climbing to the second ferry. We have about three hours to accomplish this before the ferry departs. Otherwise we have to wait till the following day at 4pm to catch it. We cross over to Argentina in this remote section. There is one more ferry and then about 25K to get to Bariloche. At that point our biking trip is over.

Chile and Argentina have been wonderful hosts to us. So warm and inviting, we couldn’t ask for more.

Life is good.

We’ve been incredibly lucky with weather on this trip in an area of the world which is notorious for foul weather. Rain, high winds, low lying cloud cover, and cold mists are the norm. A climate made for sweaters and rain gear. Warm socks and mittens.

When we biked in to Torres del Paine we were greeted by sunshine and just a whisper of a breeze. Not a cloud resting on the mountains. The iconic rock towers were visible from all aspects. I mentioned to Scott and Lee that you could spend a week here and never get views like this. Better take photos. It could change on a dime. Breath-taking scenery.

I should mention that Scott, Lee and I ride together each day. The tandem that Chris and Jane are on has a completely rythmn in the day’s cycling. Hills are a challenge and steep downhills require great caution. Yet it can fly on the flats and lower rolling changes in elevation. Everybody is riding at a pace where one can enjoy the countryside and stop often for photos. This rugged Patagonia ripio with its sharp climbs and steep descents dictates that we ride apart. So during the day we are often on two separate trips. My photos are of Scott and Lee. Chris and Jane’s photos are of themselves. Weather experiences can be different, so can the people we meet and the animals we see. However, each evening we are all together for meals, camping and catching up on the day.

We biked through the park in two days. The first day brought us all the photos you might have seen on FB and in our blogs. It was absolutely a stunning day. The second day was spent mostly in mist and clouds as we cycled to beat the high winds and rain scheduled to hit the park that evening and stay for the next two days. We arrived in Puerto Natales after a 96K day with lots of climbing before the weather hit. Chris and Jane also beat most of it – just getting wind and rain the last 15K or so.

We have four days to relax here before the ferry leaves for Puerto Montt. We hope to enjoy the countless fjords and wild coastline of Chile’s remote southern Patagonia in good weather. The ferry will bring us up to the latitude where we began our trip in Bariloche. From Puerto Montt we will bike generally east to finish where we began.

There are more photos on my Facebook page.

It’s been sometime since I last communicated on this trip. We were heading south on a very bad stretch of ripio (gravel) below El Bolson when my phone was jarred out of its mount on my bicycle and onto the road. I didn’t notice when it happened. We were now about 11K out of town. I started backtracking to try to find it.

When I was planning for the trip there were, of course, many decisions having to do with weight and volume on the bike. There is only so much room to carry things. Weight is definitely a factor. I have to be self- sufficient. Tent, sleeping bag, clothing, food…you get the picture. Do I carry panniers. Do I use a seat bag. What tools to bring, All of the little decisions can have consequences. Most can be adjusted for somewhere along the way to varying degrees.

I carry a Garmin GPS unit to help stay on course. I used to carry a Canon G – series camera for quality photos. I also would carry my smart phone for communications. As the trips evolved and smart phones become great little cameras, the phone became more the central piece of equipment. Other than the bike, of course.

So my decision this trip was to buy a new phone (iPhone 11 Max Pro) with a great camera and forgo the new Sony camera. Only one piece of equipment to carry. Less volume, weight, and simple to keep track of…..unless you lose it. Or a car runs over it before you find it.

Lee found it in the middle of the ripio. Face-down. Screen smashed. No more photos with this one. The touch-screen was gone. You couldn’t even open it up. All the info I had researched and saved for our trip now gone. Contacts gone. Maps and websites. At least a few things I had printed out. Ferry ticket. Basic itinerary.

All this to explain why you haven’t been getting my blog.

There are no iPhones to buy along these remote routes we are biking in Patagonia. No way to pull it all out of the Cloud. I did get a Samsung phone in Coyhaique that will keep me in email and FB contact. And take some adequate photos.

And the trip has been fantastic.

Great scenery. Wonderful people. Fresh air and wilderness. Good weather. All one could ask for.

I miss my phone for all the obvious reasons.

But the trip has been just as wonderful without being documented.

Tomorrow we enter Torres del Paine National Park in Chile. The next chapter in our bicycling route of Patagonia. I’ll try to get a few photos and a blog post out your way.

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