23.5 mi / 8.3 mph / 1729 ft. climbing
Home: Fran & Alex’s AirBNB

“We’re getting up at midnight to start riding again”, Rett had declared yesterday afternoon at the height of the horsefly assault. Adhering to an activity cycle unaligned with your predators is a time-tested evolutionary adaptation, and I agreed that is was likely to be our most-effective solution too. We didn’t go quite as extreme as midnight, but our alarm went off at 4am. We packed up as quietly and minimally as possible to avoid disturbing our fellow cyclists in their nearby tents, and moved everything out of the trees to the bathroom building 50 yards away in the large open parking area.

Knowing that there had been zero chance of rain in the forecast, I had left the rainfly off the tent overnight to speed morning pack-up, but then it was lucky that we had packed it away so early. Because by 5:00am, cooler air flowed in from somewhere, bringing a blast of condensation that quickly wet down every exposed surface. By that point it was 46°F, but windless, so reasonably comfortable for making breakfast.

No one else had even gotten up to use the toilet by the time we rolled out with the 6:20am sunrise. Well, there had been a dad car-camping in the parking area who had been walking his wailing baby, which was by far yesterday evening’s and this morning’s loudest camper. The group of ~10 cyclists had been essentially silent. Apparently payment at these National Park campsites is made in the morning directly to park rangers when they come around, and while our super-early departure had nothing to do with avoiding payment, we sure weren’t going to wait for them!

Our strategy turned out to be quite effective; the first flies appeared at 9:15am, so Rett got three hours of riding in peace, and then even for the final 40 minutes, they didn’t gather in anywhere near the swarms that had terrorized her yesterday afternoon. And then we got every other “early bird” benefit too: cool temperatures, beautiful morning lighting, and almost no traffic; five cars passed in the first 18 miles.

At the Lago Blanco campground (our “stretch”, or in retrospect, “totally unreasonable” goal from yesterday), I branched down its driveway and it looked full, and without any sort of “group/overflow” area to pitch a tent like at Lago Negro. So it was doubly good that we didn’t push on for the extra hour last night. It definitely looked like a great campground though, with individual lakeside shelters that you had to “hike in” to from parking spots on the driveway.

Due to our crack-of-dawn start, we reached our destination of Chaitén at 9:56am, just a bit early for our AirBNB check-in (perhaps the biggest downside to riding super-early). Rett found a place with a good name (“La Peregrina”) that was perfectly a sort-of brunch cafe, and the bread on our breakfast-sandwich/scrambles was some of the best we’ve had in South America.

We explored some of the grocery stores in town, and I got cash from an ATM (thankfully my ATM card is still working even though stupid Capital One has switched to a useless network and will soon be disabling it). But then it was time to face our unhappiness and figure out how to deal with it.

We sat at the town’s new waterfront park and Rett cried some more tears, not wanting to be “a quitter” after wanting to ride the Carretera Austral for so long, but also not wanting to endure the terror of the flies (there were still some in town here even early in the day, confirming that they weren’t going to suddenly disappear). And this would be our exit point, because the ferry could take us from Chaitén straight back to Puerto Montt, but if we continue south, easy exit opportunities dwindle. I had no problem “quitting”, since relaxing in Puerto Montt (and/or riding back north through Chile) would certainly be more fun for me than feeling my wife’s suffering, and if we aren’t having fun, why are we doing this?

“If only I’d gotten a head net!!” was one of her frustrations, because she feels like it’s mostly when the huge flies buzz around her head and face that she can’t maintain calmness. Acquiring such a form of physical protection sounded like a good idea to me, so we went into a few shops (one actual outdoor-clothing store, a hardware store, and a grocery/general store), but Rett’s quick acceptance of the shopkeepers’ negative responses told me a lot about her motivation to actually find a solution.

But shopkeepers just aren’t going to think about our needs or ways to jerry-rig something, especially when we can’t communicate in the same language, so it was on us to figure something out. I figured the best compromise between our quit-or-continue desires would be to try something, ride two days to La Junta, and if our lives were still miserable, turn around and ride back two days to the ferry. A net bag from a 20-pound sack of onions could work! But I brought us back to general store, took one of their wood-framed fishing nets out of its plastic bag, tried the fit over her helmet, found it essentially perfect, so we bought it.

The net part easily came out of the frame intact, and the frame even had a bit of shock-cord attached (and I had a spare shock-cord tightener) that I could weave through the open end to close it around her neck. The holes in the weave were quite large, but so are the flies, and in my observations they never land and then move on foot. So I predicted that none of them would make even the slightest effort to penetrate the defense (and if they did, I could possibly sew thread through to divide the holes). Of course Rett’s helmet brim was a critical part of making this work, as it would provide space for the net to drape down without it being right on her face or neck. For ~US$30, it was a fairly expensive experiment, but if it works, it will be priceless.

We finally got the message that our AirBNB was available, and as we walked the bikes the few blocks there, we found Diane (met on the Hornopiren ferry a couple days ago) sitting at a restaurant having lunch. With sympathy, she voted for continuing forward, so it was nice to have that encouragement, and just nice to be riding in a rare place where there are others who understand exactly what we’re going through.

Our AirBNB was a super-cute place behind the owners’ home-based bakery, and after a few more grocery stops, Rett put together an excellent ramen-noodle/vegetable stir-fry in the Lamby-sized kitchen. We don’t know if the “horsefly solution” will work, but I think it felt good to both of us just have a taken an action and made a decision. We could now relax and enjoy our evening, and see what tomorrow will bring.