Distance: 32.21 miles

Time: 4:17

Elevation Gain: 1,270 feet

Unsurprisingly, given the bleak conditions the previous evening, there weren’t many other inhabitants at the campsite, just a Colombian couple who had been sheltering from the rain, and had been on the road for two years already, having pedalled from Colombia all the way across Brazil and then started south from there.

Whilst I was packing up my bike, I was taken aback to find that a weld had failed on my seemingly hard-wearing Brooks saddle and now the leather had lost all tension and was lying limply on the steel support rails. It did not look comfortable at all.

A weather window of warm sunshine rather took us aback, and we rushed to get going, before it started raining again before we’d even begun.

Along the roadside there were constant reminders that it had rained, a lot. Firstly, when we past a heavily gushing waterfall, and secondly when we saw the heavily swollen Río Vargas.

We were forced to consider just how full the river was when Desiree’s bike slipped from its resting place against the side of the bridge, causing her cycling gloves to fall off her bag and into the water below. Watching them swirling in a pool underneath the bridge was distressing for her as the gloves had been gifted to her by Felipe, the campsite owner of El Nortino, in Villa Cerro Castillo, a full week before. She tried to see if she could rescue them, but the bank was just too treacherous.

Just as we were readying to leave, the rain came on much more heavily, and it was accompanied by a biting wind, that chilled us to the core.

We had been following the Río Vargas for some time now, and soon it joined forces with the far more substantial Río Baker, which we’d last seen some time before Cochrane, and would now be following out towards the sea, at Caleta Tortel.

We turned off ruta 7, at the junction with the road for Puerto Yungay, and took the extra rough X-904 towards Tortel, steeply downhill at first, but with it flattening out as it went along, the pronounced pooling of the stones on the road made it difficult to keep traction, and we struggled to find good lines to keep upright.

The conditions didn’t help, and it was noticeable that Desiree was suffering a bit in the wet and the cold, so I suggested that she put on another layer, as I thought that would help her. I was feeling uncomfortably comfortable, in that I was wet, but I was warm enough, but I knew that being cold and wet was a dangerous place to be.

Stubbornly though, she persevered, and despite the significant drop in her core body temperature, and her discomfort, she still kicked into action as soon as we reached the town, and while she pressed the tourist information assistant for information, she was interrupted by one of the owners of some Cabañas nearby, and they really weren’t far away at all.

And while Desiree made full use of the cabin’s gas heater and shower, virtually turning the place into a sauna by the time I returned, I tried to find my way around Caleta Tortel’s labyrinthine boardwalk network to reach a shop, and pick up a few hard earned bottles of Patagonia Brewery beer, with which to help her relax after a trying day.