Right, basically it's been a couple of hard weeks slog and it's getting pretty expensive to use the internet out here! I'm therefore going to give you an abridged version of the travel from Cerro Castillo to El Chalten.

We left Cerro Castillo quite late, having stayed in a hostel the previous night and not feeling over-inclined towards getting out of bed.

The road between Cerro Castillo, the Chilean frontier and visa checkpoint, and the Argentinian side was all ripio, so the ripio continued for a few Km past the Argentine border until we hit a newly paved section of Ruta 40. The wind was at our backs for most of the morning - which was really nice and we made good headway because of the nice stretch of paved road. Then after these nice K's we turned onto an unpaved section of Ruta 40! This was some of the worst ripio we've experienced to date, an undulating road typified by a washboard surface and giant stones. We stopped for the night about 40km down this road and made camp by a police station - not quite sure what was being policed!

We set out the next day bright and early, accompanied by a black border collie that appeared to want to come with us - the dog followed us for about 30km before it ran out of puff and turned back home - I had the theme tune to the "Littlest Hobo" running around my head all day! We stopped for our first break at the point where the ripio became pavement again. We had a good run that day, the wind not being anywhere near as bad as expected - although we did climb to quite an appreciable height pretty much until lunchtime - when we hit the edge of the Meseta (table land) and the valley containing el Calafate fell away before us, literally. We had 10km of steep downhill to get to the base of the valley and we took our time over it - savouring the luxury of making metres without having to pedal! Even savouring the downhill we still got to overtake a couple of lorries on our way down - the lorries have to go really slow and you can smell burning break pads as you pass them.......

We had about 60km from the base of the valley to go and we decided to stop about 40km shy of El Calafate, at a place called rio Bote, this was the idea anyway. When we arrived at Rio Bote the hostel and campsite that was supposed to be there was closed, delapidated being more the apt expression - a couple of diseased looking dogs and tumbleweed appeared to be the only residents. We had a short discussion and decided that the best course of action was to try and push onto El Calafate that night..... even if it did mean arriving quite late! We pushed on as the wind got up and we struggled home, after the first couple of hours, when we were within 20km life became much more bearable, the wind died down somewhat and we were within the home stretch....

We arrived at El Calafate and found our lodgement. A nice little camp site called Los Dos Pinos - hot showers, large kitchen and sit down area and lots of cycle tourers!

We spent a couple of well earned days in El Calafate - it's a pretty touristry town and not really economical for travellers on a budget. It's pretty much a staging point for Perito Moreno Glacier - and that's it. There was a nice tenedor libre and we glutted ourselves on beef, lamb, chicken, tentacles and all manner of other delights - including the "ice cream libre".......

We left El Calafate and began our three day trek to El Chalten, Argentina's youngest town formed in 1985, the town sits in the Nacional Parque de los Glaciares and lies under the shadow of the impressive Mount Fitzroy. The road from El Calafate to El Chalten is a mixture of pavement and ripio, although fortunately the pavement seems to predominate.... we had been expecting wind on this stretch and we were not disappointed - a very strong wind was blowing off of Lago Viedma on our first day as we started heading northwards around the two lakes that separate El Calafate from El Chalten - a couple of pickups with locals in stopped to ask us if we wanted a lift and to give us warnings about the wind but we indicated that we knew about the wind and were gonna press on through it. We may have come to regret this slightly as about an hour after this the wind really started howling. Blenk and myself had to take shelter in a large drainage tube under the road and there we stayed for about four hours waiting for the wind to die down - we passed the time drinking tea and reading our books - and also singing some songs........

Eventually the wind died down and we were able to make it to a little campsite in the middle of nowhere - we shared our campsite with a calf bull who was very inquisitive and he almost managed to set himself on fire investigating our stove!

We intended to break camp early and hit the road early, accordingly we rose at five but the wind was still howling and after a quick meeting of the war council we decided to go back to bed for another hour or two.

We continued onwards on a road which seemed to consist of sand and large rocks in equal measure - it did not make for good riding. We carried on for about half the day when I began to feel a slight pain in my knee..... this was nothing new as i'd had aches and pains on and off for a while. However after lunch I noticed that the pain came back much more quickly than usual and it was hurting much more than usual. It was at this point I realised that I'd "done myself a mischief". Me and Blenk got off the bikes and had another council of war, we were only about 80km outside of El Chalten and I was umming and arrrring about whether or not I could make the ride in. In the end I decided to hitch a lift into El Chalten........ I arrived pretty downhearted about the whole affair...... hooked up with Rich in a free campsite at the edge of town and went to bed. As to what happened to Blenk I'll leave him to take up the story.......

We'd heard people raving about the Torres del Paine national park - touted by Lonely Planet as the finest national park in the whole of South America - so we decided to take a 100km detour to see what all the fuss was about.

Our route would take us via Cerro Castillo, the place we would eventually have to return to cross into Argentina on our way to el Calafate.

Dicky and the Ecuadorians left for the Park a day before me and Blinky. The Norse Woodsman and myself passed a quiet day preparing for the journey to the park. Buying lots of bread, jam, biscuits and of course pasta.

The ride from Natales was lovely - there was little to no wind, for the first time in a long while we experienced some really nice views - mountains, valleys and an extinct volcano that looked like it had blown it's top for the last time a few thousand years ago. We had been told that the road was gravel all the way but that some stretches might be paved. This turned out to be true, for us at least. The stretch of road between Puerto Natales and Cerro Castillo had been paved in great strectches every few km's but none of it was open and there were workmen on every stretch. Miles of empty virgin pavement and we had to ride on gravel! Just as we were cursing our ill luck a couple of workmen spotted us and waved us over - they asked us why we weren't riding on the pavement - it's not open we replied - don't worry it's okay for bikes they replied. Suffice to say the Chileans are much more relaxed about people bombing about on their construction sites! So we had vast stretches of road all to ourselves - pretty much all the way to Cerro Castillo. This made us happy.

We had planned to stop at Cerro Castillo for the day and set up camp but with the wind being fair and the best cycle path in the world beneath us we made very very good time. We decided to push onto the park entrance - which was another 50km away. It was worth it. After some pretty tough riding over some really rutted ripio roads we made it to the Park Gates for about 9. I say it was worth it because we got to pitch our tents facing one of the most spectacular vistas we have ever seen. For those who don't know the Torres del Paine are three large rock pillars thrusting 2500m into the sky, surrounded by snow covered mountain peaks and fast flowing rivers, cascades and incredibly blue lakes. Our campsite gave us a perfect view of the Torres at sunset, framed by the surrounding mountains and wispy clouds floating amongst them it truly was a sight to behold. We have photos but not the technology at the moment to post them - they will be up soon though and they will be worth the wait!

A word of warning - the National Park is beautiful but expensive. Take your own food and be prepared to pay the equivalent of 15 pounds or 30USD for entry.

We yomped over to where Dicky was camped the next day and once again we had some amazing views, and some terrific climbing (we gained 400m vertical height for about 5km riding at one point)

We were welcomed by Dicky and the Ecuadorians with open arms and more tantalisingly freshly caught Salmon from the Rio Sorrento which ran along the back of our campsite. Natty, one of our Ecuadorian pals made me and Blenk some Agua Panella which is basically water, powdered milk and raw unprocessed sugar. It was very sweet, but hot and revitalising. So it was that we settled down into a routine of fishing, eating Salmon, drinking Agua Panella and learning some excellent Spanish swear words (we of course reciprocated with some excellent english colloquialisms! - Paco, another Ecuadorian, was an excellent student of english in this regard, even giving Blenk a new nickname, which I'm afraid can't be repeated here. )

The daily fishing trips were organised in an almost military fashion by Gerardo, "el dueño", we would be roused out of bed in the morning for breakfast with shouts of "trabajo! - levantate!" (literally - work! get yourselves out of bed We would stumble out of sleeping bags and tents bleary eyed to go to work fishing. It was a little bit boring if I'm honest - i've never been a very patient man and fishing is pretty boring when the fish aren't biting - and they weren't biting...... I think after 2 days even Gerardo got a bit fed up with it.

On the last day Gerardo suggested that maybe we could all get into his 4x4 and that we could get dropped off at Cerro Castillo. On the face of it this was a crazy idea, and as it turned out in practice this was a crazy idea - but it worked! Also because I was largest Gerardo suggested that I drive, I say suggested what I mean to say is he pointed at me and in his broken English said "You drive!", I thought about it for a moment and then accepted. As an afterthought Gerardo checked that I had a driving licence! So let me set the scene - on the day of the drive there were 6 people, one baby, one small dog, five mountain bikes, five tents, all our luggage crammed into, onto and around this 4x4. With some horrendously filthy "Rigaton" music playing (like hip-hop but with a different beat) we set off and made it safely to Cerro Castillo.

next stop el Calafate where we would be reunited with Dicky and the Ecuadorians again.

Unfortunately I have to go change up some Chilean Pesos so you will have to wait to hear about the journey to el Calafate.

Until then.

Ciao!