With the possibility of a winter trip to Chile in mind, I did consider not going on a cycle tour in the summer, before, eventually deciding that I would be better to have the extra miles in the legs if I was to tackle a challenging route like the Carretera Austral, a route which comprises 40% dirt roads.

In the end, I enjoyed an excellent route through Norway, a country which I was expecting would offer similar challenges and climate to Patagonian Chile, however, considering the lengthy spells of good weather I enjoyed, perhaps it would be optimistic to expect the same again?

The journey started with a trio of flights, the middle flight of which would be, by some duration, the longest flight I’d ever been on, 15 hours it would take to whisk me from Heathrow to Santiago, Chile’s capital city. The flight passed quite quickly, probably largely because I knew I was unlikely to be able to sleep on the plane, so I lined up a series of films to see me through, taking in my first Christmas films of the season by watching Die Hard and Home Alone, perhaps a little late as my family had already had our own Christmas celebration two days prior to make up for the fact that I wouldn’t be around on the day.

After what seemed like another 15 hours, waiting to get through Passport Control at Santiago Airport, I was soon on my final flight, to Puerto Montt, the starting off point for my route. This flight also passed quite quickly, largely because I was chatting to a keen hiker, Zoe from Manchester, who had previously summited Mount Kilimanjaro and trekked to Everest base camp, and was travelling with her infant daughter Aurora. Zoe’s partner is Chilean and runs a hostel and guest house in Puerto Natales where my route will finish, so potentially somewhere to stay when I get that far.

On landing at Puerto Montt airport, my intention had been to get some form of transport to take me and my kit the 12 miles into town, but on collecting my bike box from the baggage carousel, it was looking a bit structurally unsound, so I decided to rip it open and set about putting my bike back together there and then.

For this tour, I am using a different bike from my previous tours, a Thorn Club Tour, that I have had for several years and bought with the main purpose of taking it on routes which would feature some poorer road surfaces. I have fitted a set of Schwalbe G-One Overland 45 mm tyres, hopefully they should soak up some of the bumps in the road.

Removing the bike from the box, everything looked fine, but I soon realised that I was missing a critical part of the back brake, a V-brake noodle which ensures the cable runs correctly, and without it the back brake wouldn’t work properly. I also noticed that changing the handlebar stem – at the last minute – had caused the rear derailleur cable housing to be pulled too tight, so the gears weren’t working particularly well either.

Luckily the route into Puerto Montt appeared to be quite flat, so I decided to see how I got on…

Making it into town, largely able to skirt along the shoulder of the road and thus avoiding some very heavy traffic, I quickly checked into my hotel for the next three nights, the Courtyard by Marriot, Puerto Montt, and rushed down the hill to Decathlon which, fortunately for me, happened to be open until half 9 in the evening, and also happened to sell the elusive V-brake noodles.

After finally getting some sleep that evening, I didn’t plan much for my first full day in Chile, paying a visit to the vast Jumbo supermarket, to pick up some sun tan lotion, and its companion homewares and DIY store, EASY, to pick up some wire cutters for the bike cables, insect repellent, and a gas canister.

My Christmas Day was largely spent working on the bike, the brakes were an easy fix, but the problem with the gear cable housing took substantially longer to deal with, involving unwrapping the bar tape and feeding the housing through the handlebars, before putting it all back together again.

Eventually, the bike was ready to go and I retired to the hotel restaurant to enjoy a traditional Christmas dinner of seafood soup and herb-crusted salmon with risotto.

Tomorrow I would be setting off along the Carretera Austral, and I still had a significant amount of packing to do…