Friday
I did a stupid thing. After the long ferry ride, I started pedaling, without stopping to buy food. I’d half forgotten and half assumed I’d get to a town before I’d have to worry about it. Which might have been true, had the road been flat, but it was all treacherous hills, so we made it less than 15 kilometers.

Fortunately there was a we; I was riding with the two other cyclists on my ferry, Diego and Cesar, both from Chile. They grew up together in Santiago but now Diego lives in Puerto Montt, where he works as a tattoo artist. (He is also so much a vegetarian that he wouldn’t even eat the honey pouches from the gigantic flies.)

They had plenty of food but no stove, and campfires weren’t allowed where we stayed, so it worked out well for everyone. We cooked their rice and vegetables on my stove and life was good. It was raining but the campsite had a small shelter with a table and benches so we and all of our stuff stayed dry.

Santa Barbara
We biked together on Saturday through light rain and up and down many, many hills. There were no towns to stop in until Santa Barbara, and we didn’t get there until about three o’clock. I was super happy because a) we could finally eat lunch and b) I knew the road would be paved the rest of the way to Chaiten.

I was ahead of them so I stopped as soon as the ripio turned to pavement, to wait for them and adjust one of my front packs that had come loose from all the rocky, bumpy, downhill coasting.

The road was strange — it was the width of three roads, paved all the way across, but cones blocked entry to the middle section, turning it into a divided highway.

A car pulled up and the driver asked me if I was resting. I explained that I was fixing the bag that was starting to fall off my bike. He asked if I could move back just a few meters, as an airplane was about to land.

I looked back and saw Diego and Cesar a ways back behind a flashing bar that had come down blocking the road right after I passed. I rolled my bike a few meters back onto the dirt and pulled over to the side of the road, and the guy in his car went back behind the barrier — but I was allowed to stay.

A minute later, I was certain the tiny plane was coming right at me. Why had he let me stay here? The plane was buzzing like an army of angry flies and I could feel its breath; it felt so close there was no way it could pass over me without at least knocking my head off, if not crushing my whole body.

Obviously the plane came nowhere close to hitting me, still meters above as it passed on its way to the runway, but it was an exhilarating moment — and such a random and unexpected thrill.

We ate lunch in Santa Barbara, Cesar adding avocado to my usual meat and cheese sandwiches, which was delicious, and then it was just another ten kilometers to Chaiten, on smooth roads, though still infested with hills.