We are coming to the end of our time in Patagonia, but it has been wonderful! There are countless adventures for the outdoorsy type, so we’ve made a point to venture off the bikes here and there!

We took one afternoon to hike “Bosque Encantada,” a trail in Queulat National Park. We parked our bikes outside (with eight others!) and changed shoes for our hike in. The hike took longer than the sign suggested because we went past the end of the trail up the rocky riverbed to the lagoon at the top. As we crested, we could see enormous piles of ice in green water… chunks that had fallen from the glacier looming above.

There's the glacier!

It wasn’t easy (especially in our spandex riding gear!), but totally worth the hour and a half into the woods to see this “hanging” glacier!

The glacier and the lagoon below

We pedaled up the Carretera Austral toward the city of Futaleufu, where we planned to take two days off. In Futaleufu, the “thing to do” is rafting. The Futaleufu River is world-renowned for its Class IV-VI rapids. Rafting expeditions are not cheap, so we had to decide if we wanted to splurge and spend big dollars on such a trip. One thing we’ve decided in the course of this journey is that we are really going to see and experience the places we go. We think it would be better to do that than to have the money to go everywhere but not fully experience every place. So we did it! And we have no regrets. We’ve both been rafting before, but this was far and above any whitewater rafting we’d done in the past.

Dave and I are the two in the front. Yes, we got wet! Yes, the water was cold! We were grateful for our wet suits and splash jackets.

We knew it was serious rafting when our guide gave us the safety talk. Typically, they teach you how to help other people back in the boat in the event that someone gets tossed out over the rapids. But here, he made us actually do it! He told us how to help each other, then actually made us take turns jumping out of the raft into the icy cold water so we could practice pulling each other in!

The kayak on the right was our "safety" guide... there was another one in a giant "cata-raft" as well. We're glad we didn't really need them on our expedition!

Meanwhile, the riding conditions through this part of the world have been challenging, to say the least. Most of the roads have been “ripio,” which is really just dirt/gravel. There are times it has been difficult just to keep our bikes upright! But we’re grateful for beautiful scenery as we pedal along.

Just a normal vista in Patagonia!