From Anchorage to Ushuaia by Bike

Wednesday morning, Rebacca offered us breakfast: really nice banana bread and scrambbled eggs. Then she guided us to the beginning of a trail that was following the highway while following the river. The first kilometer was ok, but then the trail became very bad: we had to push our bikes in very rough passages. We arrived to a point where we would have to take all the bags off the bikes to be able to continue. This beautiful trail became the “Pain Trail”! We finally went backwards and lost 2 hours … 8 kilometers … and a lot of energy.

Back on the highway, we biked uphill and uphill to the campsite where we slept for the night.

The day after (Thursday), still up hills … but also some downhill which made us lost the altitude we had before… and we had to go uphill again! In fact, we are actually going up to a pass which is 1000 meters high. After a long downhill and just before a steep uphill, we met a fisherman who gave us a soda that we accepted right away! He had seen us on the morning! Very tired, we stopped around 8pm in front of a small café, already closed. The owner answered us anyway and accepted that we camped on his propriety. We preferred to ask him after the recommendations we had from different people we met: landowners do not really like to have strangers camping on their land. We could see that all the way with signs such as “Keep out” or “No trespassing”. While we were taking our breath in front of a house, we saw 3 big dogs rushing out, very aggressive … we left right away!

So we had one night of wild camping, without a shower … next to a cabin!

Today, as soon as we began to bike uphill, a pick-up stopped. A man who was wearing a roadwork jacket came out. We were going to cross long road works. He invited us strongly to put all our bags and bikes in his pick-up and he drove us to the end of the road works. It was in fact the security man! We were 5 kilometers away and after a long uphill in the dust of the engines!

We preferred to bike only few kilometers today, not to be tired for the 1000 meters high pass tomorrow. We camped at the Grand View Café … a campsite in the middle of nothing, where we could have a hot shower, a washing machine … and a wifi Internet connection!