| Location: | Pucon, Chile |
The road passes by lakes and winds through amazingly tropical looking forest, especially given how cold it was. It seemed bizarre to be passing huge ferns and lush green trees when we were freezing our butts off. Crossing from the Chilean border, the road descends quite rapidly and gets much warmer. There are steep cliffs around us and even from across the huge lakes, we can see massive white water falls crashing out of the vegetation, along all the cliffs. It looks more like the "Lost World" than Southern Chile!
We ride from here to Osorno and then upto Pucon, in the heart of the Chilean Lake District. Even though it is the second time we have ridden in this area, the sight of the volcanoes always leaves us amazed. Coming from England, such sights are rare and to have some many of them, at this time of the year, looking magnificent, still covered in snow and perfect conical shapes towering ahead, almost as if they are growing out of the road is awesome scenery.
But we are lucky, it is a sunny day and our views are faultless. For the next three days in Pucon, the Villarica Volcanoe hides from view behind dense heavy rain clouds. We are now on the last leg of the ride and in just a few days it will be Santiago, where we have to sort out the bike for flying back to Europe.
The bike is still running well, although a little tired (who can blame him!?). We got the bike new at the BMF in May. In only five months he has 31,000 miles on the clock. Our back tyre is perilously low, but we have our old tyres waiting for us at Williamson Balfour in Santiago and we are not going to put a new one on for the last 500 miles or so. We stick to the main Ruta 5 tarmac. Besides, as our friend Francisco told us when looking at the back tyre, "in Chile, it is no problem!"
