After spending the night at a re-
mote Chilean border station,
accessible only by horse or foot or
helicopter, we were treated to a
delicious pasta lunch and then we
set off across a river through a kind
of no-mans land, only "an hour
away" from the Argentine border
station.

At first there were muddy tracks, but
these ended at a fast flowing river.
The Chilean officials had told Andres
and Guillermo that we would need
to go up river to a bridge that was
intended for sheep.

Andres and I lost Guillermo on
the way to the bridge, but he was
waiting for us there. On the way,
Andres had to help me push my
bike and trailer over some logs,
and I was glad for the help,
there was no way I could push
my substantial gear on my own,
without disconnecting the trailer.

I did need to separate the bike from the trailer when I crossed the bridge, as
it was barely wide enough for either piece of equipment. The bridge was also
missing one of the four posts that held it up-- an issue of concern to Andres
and Guillermo, who were both engineering students.

After we crossed the bridge, Andres and I lost Guillermo again, and proceeded
to get "which way is up" lost. Ever the stoic German, Andres said to me, "this
is not very fun." It was a funny antedote to my non-stop cursing.

... and I mean L O S T. We kept to one side of a big swamp, under a thick
swarm of mosquitos, but as the day wore on I convinced Andres that we
needed to bite the bullet and go through the swamp...

Knee-deep in water at
times, we pushed through
the swamp... finally
emerging at a rudimentary
dirt road-- with tire tracks!
While I was fixing two of my
three flats, Guillermo ap-
peared, happy as a clam,
with a story about how he
had gone to a "rural gate" 7
kilometers up the road but
turned around when there
was nothing to be seen.
Convinced that he was
going the wrong way he
went all the way back to
the Chilean border station.

After a few more minutes
spent on my tires, we head-
ed back up the road to that
rural gate, and about a half
hour past there, at around
11 PM, as the stars were
coming out, we came
across a green trailer hous-
ing the "Gendarmeria."

We were promptly treated to an
asado featuring many unrecog-
nizable sheep body parts. Andres
and Guillermo stayed up the
better part of the night swapping
stories with the guards. I took a
shower, tended to my saddle
sores, and crashed. The next
morning Andres and Guille, ever
the engineers, were desiged a
micro hydroelectric dam for the
stream next to the station.

The guards had offered us a ride to
some town in the middle of Pata-
gonia, and we hopped in their army
truck (a Mercedes) next to some large
empty wine jugs. We'd gotten no more
than a few kilometers before the truck
broke down, and we were on our own
again. If it were not for the sores on
my arse (from riding horseback before
we got lost), or the sad state of my bi-
cycle (the gears now shifted on their own), I might have been happy to get back on the bike-- but this was not my state of mind. "Are you okay?" Guille asked me as we came under our own power, once again.

We rode until we came
across an estancia, a
40,000-hectare sheep ranch
with some tourist cottages.

Guille got there first, and
by the time we got there the
rancher had already offered
to let us stay, for free, in a
workers' quarters next to the
pen where sheep were kept
before the slaughter.

We stayed there for a couple of
days, cooking on a 19th-century
stove, buying bread and lamb from
the old woman who cooked for all
the ranch workers. The tourists
were never too far away, but this
was very mucha working farm.

The rancher gave us a ride in his truck to San Juan, a port town on the
Atlantic some 10 hours away. The old Ford F-150 broke down too... but this
time the old man was able to fix it and we made it to town without having to
pedal.