Direction: South towards Ushuaia.
The roads looked something like this
Doing a good 100km/h on a great gravel road shown above, I lost the rear once again. I make it to a full stop and by this time I wasn’t surprised to have yet ANOTHER flat.
Nail went in through the middle and came out through the side.
Another tube left behind. Good thing I had bought one in Bariloche.
I change the tube and try to inflate it. The SLIME compressor I had purchased at Wall Mart before leaving has kept me good company along the way but like most Wall Mart products, it was limited to a real minimum number of uses. I was able to fix it just enough to get about 5psi in the tire and make it back to town a few KM back. The gas station was closed and so were all the businesses as it was Christmas day but luckily they left the compressor running so I was able to get the tire back up to normal pressure.
I rode all day and it was starting to get late. I saw a camping sign on the right side of the road and went to check it out. I was in a national park and true enough, there were nice camping spots but no one there. I tried to find a person in charge but there was no one working on Christmas day. So I camped and shot a few pictures. In the morning, I turned on the hot water heater and even took a nice hot shower. It had been a few days that I haven’t showered so I can’t tell you how good it felt to be clean again.
Empty insect shells.
Cooked up some spicy rice with dried mushrooms.
Next morning, back on the road. Luckily, no forest ranger came by to ask me for $$ so I ended up spending the night for free by the nice lake where I had running water and HOT shower! Pure luxury…
A few km down the road, I met this couple. They were riding on 2 BMWs in the opposite direction. Had a short chat and we went on our way.
The roads turned purple
Even though the roads were nice, mainly gravel and I was having a blast riding on them, I couldn’t stop thinking that I didn’t have a spare tube anymore for the rear tire. What would I do if I’d get another large nail and blow this one too? Coihaique was coming up and I thought I’d be able to find one for sure. It was a large enough city with Wall Mart type looking stores so a tube shouldn’t be a problem. Well, I was wrong.! There was one motorcycle dealer in town and only had the wrong size tubes for my bike. I tried every store in town but no luck. The next larger town was going to be a few hundred km south. While running around, I did meet Matt. He has been traveling south as well from the US. He did most of the trip on a bicycle in Central America, then crossed the Darien Gap in a Canoe and in Colombia decided to get a motorcycle so he bought a used Suzuki DR200. He wanted to get to Ushuaia before New Years, doing all South America in 30 days I believe… he succeeded! Crazy guy!
We found a nice green place to camp for the night with spectacular views and some trees to keep the wind out.
The next day, we split up. Matt made a left at the bottom of this windy road towards Argentina, meanwhile I continued south through Chile. He wanted to make it all the way to Ushuaia for NY, meanwhile I was aiming closer to El Calafate.
Calgary to Brazil on a KLR 650... 