Touristas: Pieces of the Carretera Austral

The alarm is still blaring, and it’s not even that early. Nacho rolls over, heavy sleep stuck in his eyes, sand grinding into his damp sleeping bag. Ass to ass, Sebastian is still sleeping, groaning through the morning, a dull soreness in his back. Three days now camped on this beach, the thick beads of granite sand have gone everywhere. The two plastic tents are lifeless and sagging under the Patagonian rain, flapping in the morning breeze, thwacked by the low-hanging branches that don’t offer much shelter. Nacho is up first. Everything is wet, mildewed, and sad after days and days of wetness. He crawls out of the small doorway and onto the tarp. He mashes his hands into his eyes to wake himself up and slips his shoes on. They gurgle out saltwater. They don’t fit too well. He throws on his coat, takes a whiff of the dripping cotton sweatshirt, double-takes, gags, and yells across the water, “Aghhhh! Puta!”

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The cows have pissed on their stuff in the middle of the night.

Nacho fires up the stove, lights up a joint, turns on the music, and the other two guys get up. It’s 10 a.m. Bo and I stroll into camp. We’re all supposed to be leaving now. Nacho is walking down to the lake to swim. The other two join in. They make maté for everyone, and we sit in the slivers of sun as the clouds roll off the water. The frigid lake is clear as light, snow peaks humming in the capillary ripples. Fishermen have left fish guts along the shore. Dirty diapers and Coke bottles, too. The joint is passed around. We accept life with the Chileans, clocks turned back, music turned up. I lay against my handlebar roll, take a puff, blow it out, and pass it along. Sebastian is dancing the cumbia.

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Bo and I are a month and some 1,000 kilometers into our ride through Chile and Argentina at this point. But until 30 kilometers back, connecting to the road out of Futuleufu, we’d been off the infamous Carretera Austral. We had been bikepacking more remote regions in the windblown Pampa of Argentina, but diverted by wildfires, we headed back to Chile. And within our first few hours on the route, we’d seen several bike tourers and dozens of signs and stickers, all signifying our merging onto one of the most iconic and popular cycle touring routes in the world. We waited out the rain in bus stations lined with graffiti saying, “Cicloviajando desde Alaska!” dozens of Instagram handles, stickers laden with doodles of panniers. And after pushing through another few hours of rain, we ducked into a beach promised by the just-as-infamous app iOverlander to be one of the nicest campsites along the Carretera.

The three Chilean bike tourers had their smoldering fire going for days. We pushed our bikes through the sand, and rattling and shaking from the cold, sat down to warm up. The boys made us tea. And soup. Brought out cookies. They never once stopped talking. Quickly, we threw aside the awkwardness and got into it. Music, language, culture, politics, nature, family. ¿Que piensas? Cristobal and Nacho, university students in the north, and Sebastian, a childhood friend now selling artisanal chairs he weaves from wood, they’re outside, and they’re living. They each carry three pairs of shoes. One for football. One for riding. One for dancing. A full kitchen, two speakers, a tub of maté, seven jackets each. They’re heavy. They’re slow. All night, we learn Chilean swear words, we laugh, we hunt for more wood, we cook slowly, pass the pipe, and watch the rain pound the lake and their two sad tents.

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The boys are riding the Carretera Austral in sections. This year, the stretch from Futaleufu to Coyhaique. Next year, hopefully, from Coyhaique to Villa O’Higgins. It’s Nacho’s first long bike ride. Sebastian and Cristobal are on their second and third. They stop in towns and play as hired football players on semi-professional teams to help pay for the journey. Seventy dollars a day they beam, and flick through a dozen photos of each of them holding various trophies, all mercenary champions in local Chilean football tournaments. A previous trip, Sebastian says he brought weed down the Carretera and sold it to fund his ride, because, like with everything, the further south you go, the more expensive it gets.

After Nacho washes the cow piss from his jacket, and the three dry up, shake off the sand from their things, and arrange them in their hose-clamped milk crates on their wobbly rear racks, the five of us roll out. Hours after our agreed-upon time. The boys don’t even register that we had agreed on a time. We stop for second breakfast.

Two weeks into this ride now, they’re settled in. They’re stronger than at the start, and they’re still having fun on the bikes. All excited to be riding together, Bad Bunny blasting out of the Chinese speaker clipped to Sebastian’s backpack, we sprint. The boys tuck on the downhills and speed off. Sebastian’s wheel is so out of true that it knocks against his frame, and his rack freely swings to the sides. They all ride in rain jackets, uphill, as the sun is out, and sweat hard. Nacho flaps his arms like a bird. They rap to the lyrics. We pump fists at the passing bike tourers. It is a fever dream of boyhood exaltation, of testosterone, of Boy Scout summer trips in the forest, with no parents and no rules, a long road and endless possibilities. It feels illegal, to be so chaotic, to careen down these roads with no plan and no care. The boys flip off the cars that don’t wave back. They throw cookies at each other and piss off bridges. And standing on my top tube, we fly down the hills. Together, funneled along by glaciers, rivers, and mountain peaks, we scream.

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We stop for lunch. Bread and cheese, chips and a Coke. Cell service. The boys all jump on Tinder and show off their new matches. No one really is planning this thing. No one is keeping track of time or where they’re aiming to get. It is blissful ignorance of any bad possibilities. They go until someone says stop. Nacho pulls out his fishing rod, and Cristobal and Sebastian make dinner. No stress. We’ll figure it out when we get there.

We’re finally riding down the Carretera. The boys are dropping us on the descents, and we’re sitting around basking in views. Riding the Carretera Austral is the closest thing to bicycle Disneyland I’ve found. It’s so logistically simple and visually stunning, with relatively easy riding and nothing dangerous (other than some cars and a few rogue storms) that the entire experience feels like a fever dream. My legs rolling over gently, glaciers over my right shoulder, the sun kissing the dew on my skin, peaks in the distance. This bliss is so good that it must be a simulation. VR goggles and a stationary bike, a steady dose of dopamine, cookies in the framebag, a nature documentary on acid. Pinch me, I’m dreaming, this firmware update is lit.

From everything I’ve seen, this must be the most pleasant bike-touring route, perfect for beginners looking to dip a bit more than their toes in the waters of traveling by bicycle. Rental options abound, as does the local Facebook Marketplace full of cheap bikes waiting to be taken south. I meet dozens of people who say, “Yeah, this is my first bike tour…I love it!” And for these riders, intimidated by the logistics of backcountry bikepacking, curious about the feeling of moving yourself and all you need under your own power, hoping to look a bit closer at the natural majesty of the iconic word PATAGONIA…it must be the perfect way to start. Because down here, oh, how lovely it can all feel when the sun is out and it’s all going well. When you can sit up, pedal easy, and just look endlessly at this fantastic world unfurling all around. Riding in valleys of snow-capped mountains, with rivers so blue, cold, and powerful they shock the system. Foxes crossing the road, hawks overhead, wildflowers, and pygmy deer. Lakes to swim in with trout the size of dogs to eat. Bridges to jump off of. Signs for hot springs. Signs for camping. Signs for empanadas and mote con huesillos. Volcanoes, old-growth forest, and organic vegetables. Towns with all the food and facilities that the thousand bike tourers a year have made necessary. Pedal and admire the view. How simple.

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Some riders choose to stop and hike to certain glaciers, to go river rafting, to take different ferries, to ride horses, to drop the bikes and backpack certain circuits. Maybe 1,000 bike tourers a year come down for the Carretera. And we all have very similar versions of a very pleasant experience. It is a holiday. We aren’t travelers but tourists. Cyclotouristas, they call us, with our cameras strapped around our necks, cooing over the forests and the ferns the size of houses. Infatuated by this beautiful world and the dozen national parks kept away from the saws, hammers, and claws of industry, we are the eco-tourists for whom they’ve protected this string of natural wonders.

Bo comes up to me as we ride down the highway. Nacho’s bike is grinding. Sebastian’s rack, 100 pounds weighed down and sagging, is flopping like a fish’s tail. Cristobal’s fork is gushing oil. She says, “We gotta get out of here before something goes wrong and we get stuck with them.” And before we can knock on wood, the weight of all the karma of the universe falls on us, and Nacho’s chain explodes. And the three of them just laugh and laugh.

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I get out my tools. In these situations, deciding how much ownership and responsibility you want to take is a little awkward. Working at the co-op, I learned that you want to teach someone else, not just do it for them. I’m also just curious to see what their plan is. “If I didn’t have a chain breaker, what would you do?” I ask. They pull off the milk crates and the panniers. Cristobal rifles around, and eventually pulls out a hammer. They’re going to hammer his chain back together. They all laugh, and I have to laugh too. They say it’s the third time this trip.

I fix the chain, and we pedal off together a while longer. We camp by a river, and with rain forecast for the next day, the boys say they’ll just sleep all day and wait for it to pass. We make a fire, and Cristobal mixes the flour, water, and yeast he’s been carrying, and they throw the dough right into the coals. Twenty minutes later, they pull out the steaming, fluffy white ball, soft and squishy between the fingers, and we’re all eating fresh bread with butter and jam, and my mind is blown. It’s so delicious and so easy. The ashes give a faint but pleasant flavor. I put this one in the camping cookbook. We go to bed at 1 a.m., rain pattering our tent, the river still rushing right by. The next morning, Bo and I pack up in the rain, and we try to tell the Chileans goodbye, but they’re still sleeping, and we don’t dare wake them up.

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The Carretera Austral, or the bits of it that we did ride, were stunning. It’s obvious why it’s become maybe the most famous bike touring route in the world. Every day, we’d see a dozen cyclists, and in towns, even more. We’d pull into iOverlander spots and stumble into cyclists lying in their tents. On the infamous ferry to El Chalten, 20 cyclists loaded their bikes and panniers onto the small boats in the groggy early morning. It’s like a rolling hostel, all of us bike riders, moving sort of together, seeing each other constantly. It feels like some sort of hippie movement.

Maybe it’s a bit of carryover from all of our traveling in Africa last year, but easily my favorite part of riding down here has been riding with the Chileans and Argentinians also riding the same roads, camping in the same places, and doing the same things. In Africa, it always hurt to be told you were seeing more of someone’s country than they ever had. But here, together, we’re appreciating the landscapes that have made their homes so famous. One guy left his job in Santiago, rode to Ushuaia, and then was casually riding back home. He had one lens in his safety glasses and a tube of PVC for all his canned food. He had the nicest smile I’ve ever seen, only bettered by the next Chilean bike tourer we met half an hour later.

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We met Chilean and Argentinian teachers, professors and students, lab techs, farmers and salespeople, all out riding around for a few days, weeks, or months. Bike touring is exploding down in South America. Lately, I think it’s growing all over the world. But here especially, with rising incomes, a highly educated and massive middle class group of people, and the ultimate backyard, it’s easy for them. Latinos tend to lean more spiritual, with more beads, dreadlocks, and tattoos than I find back home. This Latino spice carries more mystical and grandiose thinking about god, nature, energy, and how it’s all related. Bike touring—the sustainability, the pace, and both the external and internal immersion—pairs well with these ideals.

It would come up in debate often, when meeting new cyclists on the road, what sort of bikes we rode, what bags we had, what stuff we brought. I think it’s natural to break the ice with the easiest things to talk about, the stuff at all of our fingertips. But the three Chileans we rode with were easily on the worst bikes of anyone we met, and they were easily having the most fun. They weren’t bothered by broken chains and flat tires and soggy tents. Their unfaltering boyhood energy was catapulting them uphill, and together they flailed, giggling at the chaos, laughing with the pain. Nothing would bring them down, and they would not be stopped in having fun.

A week later, we’d meet a couple of other bike tourers who were so sober, almost depressed, standing on the side of the road with their fancy touring bikes, asking if our even bigger tires would make the washboard easier and make them happier. I wanted to tell them to learn from my Chilean friends. I wanted them to cultivate their youthful energy, to learn to ride the lows along with the highs, to find purpose in the process. Ultimately, I told them, regarding our tires, that they’ll only help to a very minimal extent here. My philosophy would spiral, and my eyes would glaze over. I stare at the sky. I am possessed by these ideals.

You can buy gear, but gear only gets you so far. Ultimately, nothing is perfect. Ultimately, we’re all still on bicycles. We have chosen these inferior and superior tools for a reason. It will always be hard in certain moments. And in those moments, you need to have a North Star, a reason, a mindset, and a rock. You can’t buy a mindset. You can’t buy friends. You can’t buy purpose. It is only this that will truly make the washboard better. The rain, the hills, and the cars too. With the right mindset, every moment can be an opportunity for growth, or fun, or excitement. But with bigger tires, you’ll go slower on the roads and scrape mud on your frame. You’ll eventually be angry over that. The key is to not grow angry at what hurts, at what can be better, at what you need to buy next. The key is to enjoy the moment, and the process, and to find solace in the grit. Use it to build community. Use it to look within. Use it to explore your mind. Use these moments to connect with the strangers on the roadside, to ask them about their lives, and reflect it back upon yourself. Do not focus on my tires. Focus on your mind.

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We talk so much on the internet about what gear we need. We spend all our time preparing things and not our minds. It was their first big bike ride, this couple. They’d spent thousands on all the right gear and were still surprised by how hard it was. But of course it’s hard. We’re riding bikes through Patagonia. It will never be easy. That is why we’ve brought bikes! John and Carol, a just-retired, 60-something Australian couple I met at the bottom of the Carretera, laughed at how much harder it was than they expected. They found this ride on YouTube, and knew they wanted something to keep them off the couch. They loved their ride though, stunned at how nice the people were, how fun it was to play charades through the language barrier, and how beautiful it all was. “Of course we’re going to do another ride,” they told me. “But it’s just going to be a bit easier,” laughing all the while.

The way people talk about the Carretera, myself included, is that it’s easy and straightforward. Because compared to the world of bike routes, it is probably the most gentle ratio between pleasant and unpleasant while still being long, foreign, and interesting. But don’t be mistaken. The unpleasant is still there. The Carretera can be hot. The washboard can be heinous. The hills roll endlessly, and all day long, it feels like you’re either climbing or descending. It rains. The wind howls. Cars blow you off the road. You eat pasta every night for two months straight. The food is never good. But the campsites make up for it. The views make up for it. The proximity to a life more intense makes up for it. Ultimately, I think bringing a mountain bike and riding off the main route added an exciting bit of spice that I found lacking. But to a first-timer, not speaking Spanish, new to the day-to-day slog of a bike tour, it’s already plenty spicy.

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So, dear first time bike tourer reading this and thinking about riding the Carretera, know there will be moments where you’re miserable and it sucks and you want to go home. But remember, just like the glaciers, the rivers, the mountains, and the lakes, this is also the point. There is no Fitz Roy without the storms barreling off the Pacific and charging over the ice field. There are no beech and alerce forests without the months of rain. There are no condors without the dead guanacos feeding the massive scavengers. There is no life without death. Without a bit of pain, what’s an adventure?

One day, we hitchhiked with a Dutch couple who had flown in, rented a camper van, and were driving to the hot spots. They followed the map, stared at the screen, listened to electronic music, and asked ChatGPT where to stop for lunch. They spoke no Spanish, interacted with no locals they weren’t paying, and stopped in no small towns. They didn’t understand the land they flew half the world to see. They missed the ñandu on the side of the road, the piché, and the zorro as well. They slept in parking lots and walled-off campgrounds. They never got rained on and never once felt pain. They told us they had a nice trip. A malaise travel experience aimed at the consumption of lists, technology, and money. I’m happy for them. Maybe a bit jealous too. The man had just sold his Chinese electronic goods importing company for millions of euros. His fingers bounced on his cigarettes, and the young girl looked lazily at him. They stayed in nice hotels and ate better food than us. I bet the Instagram posts got tons of likes. I wondered if they were truly happy. I wondered if it was all worth it. Bo said no. Bo said it made her ashamed to be Dutch.

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Today, the algorithms know what we’re all thinking. I was served this article, about a photographer who regretted his trip to Patagonia. He said it was trampled by tourists, devoid of culture, too expensive to enter the parks, and lacked originality. His butt hurt from too many days on long buses, and he felt too overwhelmed by the tourist culture to find inspiration for his photography. In bits, I recognized his frustration. In the iconic hotspots of Patagonia, El Chalten and Torres del Paine, I also found myself frustrated by the tourism culture that dominates the experience. Wildlands and glaciers and mountains used as selfie backdrops, trampled and shat on by thousands and thousands of gringos. The most remote hike we did, four days of backpacking, climbing peaks, ziplining over rivers, we shared campsites with hundreds of people. If I flew half the world to see the mountains and instead floated in the rainbow sea of Arc’teryx jackets, I’d too be pissed.

But in so many ways, we didn’t. We had mountains to ourselves, campsites to ourselves, small villages that don’t see tourists, where the people are still nice to the gringos, where every interaction isn’t related to money. We saw wildlife that made me feel more connected to humanity’s place within the species order. Other cyclists would be welcomed to see, to talk to, to ride with—not one more dot I had to raise my camera over. The mountain bike, the bags, and the tent, three simple ingredients you can rent in Puerto Montt, or you can buy for $200, I think can make all the difference between the moments you would write a blog post of angst and disappointment or a love letter to this preserved and iconic land of fire and ice, of vaqueros and condors.

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So know that a bike trip can and will be everything that that couple’s trip wasn’t. Or that photographer’s too. If you carry the right intention and the right mindset, this world is your oyster. Delicious and fatty, ready to be carved up and savored one pedal stroke at a time. This is just a bike ride. But it’s real. It’s integrated. You’ll be filthy and gritty, and you’ll feel the pain of pedaling up the Andes and the ache as you marvel at their beauty. You’ll battle saddle sores and baby foxes stealing your food. You’ll live for hidden camp spots so close to the mountains that the melting glaciers and the whipping wind hums you to sleep. Maybe a nice family invites you in and shares their culture of maté. You can slow down and learn how to make bread or ceramics, or knit a sweater, or grow vegetables. You can volunteer at a farm or a winery. You can go somewhere new and do something different to shake up your world. So shake the shit out of it. This is the point. Bring some friends if you can. It makes the bad bits easier, but the immersive bits slightly less so. And for the love of god, please learn some Spanish. It’s not that hard. Ultimately, this is all just a bike trip. It’s nothing fancy. It is life lived a bit more raw. Our time here is so tragically short. Spend less, earn less, live more. Those three Chileans’ bikes and gear and trip costs less than one night of that Dutch couple’s trip. And I know who had more fun.

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If you’re new to this crazy sport and considering riding the Carretera, and you’re nervous about whether you can do it or not, I urge you to go and try. Because in the process of doing it, you’ll quickly learn that you can. It will first feel impossible, pushing your entire life up a mountain in the Andes. You will swear, and you’ll feel tired. But then, after a few days, it will get easier. You might start to laugh. You’ll start to feel stronger. You’ll need to learn to shrug off the minor annoyances of a flat tire, a broken chain, and a wet tent. You’ll grow in the process. You’ll camp in the trees and be circled by condors. You’ll feel more alive, more alive than you ever thought possible. And what will you do after this shaking up of life? Only you can find out.

Further Reading

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