So today was all about finding that tyre for the fat one. I mean how hard could this be, right? Back home, most towns would have a place where you could buy a bike tyre or at worst, wait a day to get one. I had to travel 300km to get here and the return leg is 750km and 2 border crossings because the ferries don’t run every day.
The days ride to Esquel..
Anyway, managed to find a tyre for the BMW at a KTM dealer in Puerto Montt and then started the LONG shlep back. On the upside, the ride around this part of the world continues to be magnificent although because I was trying to make distance I made few stops for photos and as it turned out I didn’t make it back to Enrico.
How ironic that the KTM and a KTM dealer should be the place to rescue the fat one!!
One of the interesting areas I rode through was of another more recent volcanic eruption which happened in 2011. The area is still covered in ash, so much so, that it actually looks like snow.
According to the Buenos Aires Herald of June 4 2011, “The entire city of San Carlos de Bariloche turned dark and became isolated as ash spewed by the nearby Chilean volcano Puyehue began falling all over town. The volcano, which had remained dormant for decades, began belching ash over 10 km into the sky and prompting the Chilean government to evacuate several thousand residents, authorities said. The eruption in the Puyehue-Cordon Caulle volcanic chain, about 920 km south of the capital, Santiago, also prompted Chilean authorities to shut a heavily travelled border crossing into Argentina. It was not immediately clear which of the chain’s four volcanoes had erupted because of ash cover and weather conditions. The chain last saw a major eruption in 1960. The Cordon Caulle volcanic range has entered an eruptive process, with an explosion resulting in a 10-kilometre-high gas column and It was the latest in a series of volcanic eruptions in Chile in recent years. Chile’s chain of about 2,000 volcanoes is the world’s second largest after Indonesia. Some 50 to 60 are on record as having erupted, and 500 are potentially active.”
Looks like a winter wonderland…
By the time I hit Esquel with 150km to still go, I was exhausted, found a hotel, ate a cow and collapsed!
