January 7- day 3 carretera austral

We woke up on our private beach to less wind and the sun trying to break through.  Each of us took out our stoves and made our morning coffees. (Al actually made his coffee inside his tent, to avoid the remaining wind).  After coffee we cleaned up our dishes and I tried out one of this mini towels my daughter gave me for Christmas.   The little towel when stored is about the size of a mint.  you add a couple drops of water to it and it expands to about 24"x24".   I cleaned my helmet shield and my dishes with it.   Totally awesome!  We then packed up and hit the road.   A few kilometers along the road, it turned into single lane dirt, and a sign said "parque de quelat".  For the next 50kms we wound our way through the park, spending more time stopping for photos than actually riding.   The park looks almost prehistoric in many ways.  Huge ferns, lush vegitation and snow capped, jagged peaks.  The road, although ominous looking, was for the most part quite decent to ride on. 

Every valley that we see has a river running through it, and the water looks amazingly clean.  Scattered along the road is the occasional farmhouse.  It is a very unpopulated area, and you only see another car every 15 minutes or so.

  After about 2 hours, and 90 kms or so, the road turns to pavement.   Even though the dirt road had been beautiful, we were ready to give our asses a break and ride a normal road again.  The next 150 kms was paved all the way in to Coyhaique, or stop for the night.

We got in to Coyahique ( apparently pronounced Coy-Ya-Key, which people are more than happy to correct you on), and found a hotel.   

Next stop was to find a laundry, as all us had been recycling the cleanest clothes for a few days.  We found a lady in one laundromat that was able to do it the same day, she told us to come back at 7pm, and she charged each of us by the weight.  

We wasted a little time exploring the city.  It is the largest city for about 600 kms, and has about 20,000 people.  Nine of the others probably have more then 1000.  While exploring the city we meet a guy from France, Xavier.   He flew over and rented a bmw 800 adventure bike for 4 weeks, and is also touring the area (although he plans to go further south).  Later on, as we are heading to diner, Al sees Xavier across the street from us, and asks him to join us, since he was on his own (Al is always like this, which I must say, is a very admirable way of life). 

  Xavier joins us, and we find a nice little restaurant and get seated upstairs.  Xavier turns out to be quite an entertaining guy.  He tells us that the day before, when at the border crossing into Argentina, he decided to cut in between 2 parked cars, which is something he does all the time in France.  Unfortunately, he forgot he was on a rented bike with large metal saddlebags.  Ass he went through, he got wedged and stuck between the two cars.  He is telling as this, and all three of us are howling with laughter.  Then he shows us pictures of the scraped up cars.  He also mentions that in the restaurant downstairs are 8 guys from Manchester, England also doing a bike run, and that they had been at the same border.   Xavier is good fun to be with, and he laughs at himself as much as we did.

 Later ont hat night I met the Manchester guys.   One of them had moved to chile 3 years earlier and, along with his son, was taking all of his friends on a patagonian tour.   His son, the first of them I spoke too,  had only been riding about a year, so this is quite a challenging adventure for him.

The waitress, although no English at all was quite entertaining.  We find out that her husband is the cook and her sister is the other waitress.  upon leaving, we get a photo of our new friend, Xavier, as well as one with the restaurant folks too.

We head off to bed.