lots of internet access, but not much time. poor girl, so i will do the writing part for a while.
ok, we left temuco on a nice paved road with the destination cunco, the first village with a lake near by, so our map said. a good choice to stay and do some nice trips to conquillo national park or to check out lake collico.
the paved road to melipeuco became a dirt road that became a construction road and we returned just when the rain began. we found a place in a little cabana, that had a wooden stove. it was very cosy, cos it was raining more and more and a storm came up.
the weather was undecisive next day, and we stayed one more day for our first experience in hill-cycling on chilean dirt roads, bikes unpacked. finally we arrived at lake collico after 12km and gave up our ride to the thermas in the mountains, cos the road was too steep and had bad gravel.
good, cycling worked only on paved roads with all our luggage, but what to do, when there only dirt roads, leading further south? ride on, we said and left to villarica on a dirt road parallel to an old railway. the backwind and the flatness of the road took us to los lagos. a tiny pueblo in the middle of nowhere. when eva had her internetsession, i had a little spanish conversation with two little boys about our trip.
after camping at catrico, we finally arrived at villarica the next day. cycling was very hard, even on paved roads, and eva had another hill-hangover. she was very pissed. she said, it was the worst day of our hole trip and she felt lost and exhausted. but we struggled on to villarica.
we checked in "la torre suiza", a backpacker-hostel, run by two world travelling cyclists, claudia and beat. a nice place, where we rested for 3 days. we met lots of nice people there and it was very interesting for planning our chiletour. eva gained faith and felt better. summer came to chile and we had a good time in villarica.
best of all, we met andrea, a girl from switzerland and cycling as well. we sat on the terrace with all our maps and decided to travel a little time together. going over the andes to argentina and do some hills. andrea was "packlight", so we sent a 8 kilogram box to germany. expensive, really expensive !
andrea left a day before on her own, but we met in conaripe again, the next day after we had an ice creamcone and a cafe con leche. never try this, its really just nescafe with milk. we found her in an hospedaje and had picnic at the lake.
we left conaripe early and had a hard day of cycling the gravel roads, we thought they are not to cycle. hills became mountains and we climbed more than 500 hight meters. even downhill was hard, cos the ramps were steep and the road in very bad condition. pushed bikes sometimes.
but the landscape was amazing and believe it or not, it was a great trip!
about 10 kilometers before porto fui, the road was to bad and we hitchhiked on a truck the rest of the route. alfedo and nicole picked us up and we had a nice evening together, drinking mate and vine. camped at lago pirihueico for free, waiting for the ferry next day.
arriving at san martin we checked out the prices for accomodations and a firstclass cabana was cheaper than a place for three cyclists at the hostel. we had a real argentinean steak for supper, and it was the best piece of meat, we ever had. best of all, argentina is half pricy than chile, so we can save some money.
