The past week has been full of activity as we make our way south in Chile. Our goal? Patagonia… and we hope some of the most beautiful scenery (and free camping) we’ve had yet in our journey.

In the meantime, we’re riding south down the island of Chiloe. We were able to take a tour of the “Penguineras”—the natural habitat for penguins off the northwest coast of the island. We negotiated with the tour company and they said if we rode our bikes out there it would cost $16/person instead of the standard $30. Well, that’s not a tough decision for cheapos like us. I mean, we’re on a bike trip, right? So, we decided we would ride the 30 kilometers and save $28. We’ve got plenty of time before our ferry, so we knew that wasn’t an issue.

We had some fantastic scenery for our ride out to the penguins...

What we didn’t know was the miserable terrain and road conditions we would encounter. That was the WORST 30 kilometers we have ridden in the entire trip so far. TERRIBLE. After about 15 kilometers of steady up and downs, the road turned to gravel (the girl had told us it was mostly paved). At first that wasn’t bad, just slow. But then, right when we were close to the penguinera, there was a detour. The gravel road started winding around and up and down steep inclines. By the way, that’s pretty tough on a fully loaded touring bike. So tough that we ended up pushing (OK, mostly me) a lot of the inclines since staying upright was a real challenge. Pushing a 50-pound bike up a steep gravel incline isn’t much better than riding it… but at least if the bike falls over you have time to get out of its way!

An awesome view from a terrible road!

We finally made it to the Penguineras (after several anger venting sessions and emotional meltdowns on my part).

It was fun to watch the penguins coming in and out of the water... obviously a struggle for them with the slick seaweed, steep rocks and crazy waves!

The ¨pinguinos!¨

On the boat to see the penguins!

We then found someone to give us (and our bikes) a ride back to the city in a truck.

It was a tight squeeze, but you better believe we were going to make our bikes fit in the back of this truck!

In case you’re wondering what the last week has been like for us, here’s a quick recap of how we got where we are:
Thursday, January 5: We went to the airport in Atlanta to fly standby (thanks Abigail!) to Santiago. We were fortunate enough to get the first flight we tried for… praise the Lord!
Friday, January 6: Woke up on the plane and landed in Santiago. Got a taxi big enough for two huge boxes (our bikes) and found a hostel for the night.
Saturday, January 7: Sorted out details in Santiago, checked out the city and hopped on an overnight bus to Puerto Montt (about 12 hours south).
Sunday, January 8: Arrived in Puerto Montt and assembled our bikes in the bus station. Found a room for the night, bought groceries, and booked a ferry ticket for the next week.
Monday, January 9: Spent way too much time wandering around Puerto Montt looking for some kind of camping tarp we can use to eat under… the weather here is completely unpredictable. We finally left town around 5 p.m. Yikes! Fortunately, it doesn’t get dark here until about 10 p.m., so we were able to ride (in the rain) about an hour outside of town and find a campsite.
Tuesday, January 10: Took a ferry onto the island of Chiloe. We rode about 50 kilometers (30ish miles), which is a short day for us. We’re definitely still recovering from our few weeks off over Christmas!

Since then we’ve been riding down the island, and on Monday we catch our ferry from Quellon that will take us 22 hours south through Chilean fjords… we’re pretty excited!