Monthly Archives: November 2025

Rider v Pillion

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The scenery is getting better every day. Waterfalls everywhere you look, amazing snow capped mountains, spring flowers of purple, pink, blue and yellow and crystal clear streams, rivers and lakes. Photos just don’t do it justice. 

Riding my own bike makes for a very different trip to being a pillion. There were several concerns I had and still have about riding on this trip, which mostly centre around off road riding….narrow roads with oncoming traffic that don’t move over….over taking on dusty roads…insane winds the push you over into oncoming traffic…riding on the wrong side of the road (I feel I have mastered this one!) and falling off a cliff etc.  So far the roads haven’t been so bad….mainly hard packed gravel with the odd bit of loose stones. The journey has only just started though so I’m not cheering yet!  

I don’t love riding off road and am not confident pulling over suddenly to take photos, and as I can’t take my eyes off the road, I am probably missing out on some of the sights….luckily I have my own personal photographer who can take photos for me.

‘that looks amazing’ I say as I quickly look to my left ‘would make a great photo’

‘no worries babe, I’ll stop and take one and will catch up with you’

Poor Dean has to spend all day riding in my dust so he can keep sight of me.

While I love being on my own bike, I do miss the connection of being on the bike with Dean, and sharing experiences. Little ‘wake up Dean’ squeeze of my legs at traffic lights, holding his sunglasses when it starts to rain, reminding him to drink water by bumping him on the helmet with the water tube…..the odd power nap here and there…

But, riding is so much more engaging. Even the off-road bits, despite not loving them, are a lot more enjoyable on my own bike compared to  hanging onto the back with Dean’s bum in my face and my eyes closed whilst being smashed around everywhere. Funny that.

Riding with other bikes has also been a concern of mine. Knowing how many riders do this trip, I was worried about feeling pressure of having other riders behind me, and feeling as if I am holding them up.

Yesterday we had to take a ferry and despite still being early in the season, there were about 50 other bikes on the ferry – I’d hate to see it when it’s high season!

Leaving the ferry, I knew we had a bit of off road to ride so I was worried about holding up other riders and had plans to wave them all ahead. We all rode out of the ferry up the steep ramp and approached the gravel road. Everyone took off and continued to ride slowly…I wasn’t sure why everyone was going so slowly so I followed them for a while….then I overtook a couple…then a couple more… Before long we were ahead of them all.  Phew! The complete opposite to what I expected! They all had such big heavy bikes with so much luggage. It was almost comical.

There are always those riders who don’t want to be overtaken, especially by a girl. Yesterday we caught up to a couple of guys who would not let me pass them. It was one thing for Dean to pass them but I, was too much. On the straights they sped up (well done guys, you have bikes over 700 cc and mine is 300) but when I caught them on the turns, they wouldn’t move over or let me through. It was pretty frustrating and dangerous. These guys obviously have very small penises.  

Today was a beautiful day and the roads were great. We rode from Puyuhuapi to Villa Cerro Castillo with Ben, who we’ve met from France and it was the best riding day yet with amazing weather! 

Tomorrow we are planning on walking up to Cerro Castillo and then heading on to Puerto Rio Tranquilo. We are making the most of the beautiful weather and trying to time our journey to sit out any rain so we don’t miss out on any of the stunning scenery.

Oh, and the food? Still very average.

A false start…

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Tacna Time

Definition. the act of spending time in a v small town (where there’s little to do), while waiting for conditions conducive to moving on.

Origin. Spending four days bored senseless in Tacna (Peru) while waiting to be contacted by Peruvian smugglers in 2013. Followed by another three days in Desguadero (Bolivia). Time mostly spent playing cards, drinking Picso, being stressed out of our (my) mind, and visiting every single shop, restaurant and street in said towns.

We arrived in Hornypillion yesterday morning thinking we’d buy tickets for today’s ferry when we got here… But today’s ferry was booked out. Ffs.

There was a 6pm ferry but it arrives at 10pm and there’s a two hr gravel rd ride on the other side, which we weren’t keen on in the dark at 4deg c.

Cue Tacna time.

So far we’ve done our washing, bought some spares for the trip ahead, done a nut and bolt on the bikes (made sure nothing is about to fall off), cooked some food, been scalded and frozen in 30sec intervals by the shower, lost a padlock and alarm fob (don’t ask), walked laps of the town, sat and watched the rain outside, played cards and of course, drank (drunk ?) Picso.

This is our tiny cabana in the middle of town, there’s a main room maybe 4x4m, a small bedroom and a tiny torture room (shower).

It’s not really Tacna time (too short a stint), but it was an unexpected delay.

Tomorrow we have the ferry at 10am that takes us through a Fjord, then a 10km ride and another short ferry to Caleta Gonzalo before we’re back on our own time.

Looking forward to making some miles soon.

xo

Starting the Carrettera Austral

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As we’re running a little early it’s still really cold further south, so there’s absolutely no hurry to get anywhere soon.

This does not suit our personalities at all but we’re trying.

So we kicked around Pucon a couple of days, paid too much for an oil change and debated where to go next.

We have a little road map that has a mark on a town called Valdivia and the word ‘bohemian’ written next to it.

So Valdivia it is.

The ride there took us through an area called the Siete Lagos route, (Seven Lakes). Lots of lush scenery, really nice riding.

Other than a university district, the town itself was not all that bohemian, but there was a colony of seals living on the river bank in the middle of town.

An enormous one took a lunge at Sally when she got too close trying to take a pic, causing her to trip over and land on her ass, I think that was my highlight of Valdivia. Oh and the brewery.

From Valdivia our route took us back to the lakes where we did a lap of Lago Ranco and then Lago Llanquihue complete with 3 (or 4?) volcanoes surrounding it. Amazing.

We got our first bit of rain late in the day, and decided to call it at Frutillar baho, another cute town on a lake where we found a cool little bnb without too much hassle.

From here we debated whether to spend another couple of days on a detour to see a peninsula sw of Puerto Montt (the start of the Carreterra Austral) or just get moving onto the Carreterra A.

Surprisingly we chose the detour. Loaded up, fueled up, and travelled 60km before getting the shits with riding around in circles, changed our minds and detoured to Puerto Varas.

As a side note, there are a lot of well cared for dogs in Chile. Never seen so many people walking dogs, and one such dog has just tried to join Sal and I in the Cabana we’re in for the night…

He was quite insistent, and almost pushed Sal over trying to get in :-). Two falls in one week… Now that would have been worth blogging about.

Back at Puerto Varas… we went through a check list of stuff we wanted to get done before embarking on the C. Australis.

Get more Chilean pesos and spread out the various bits of cash we have between our riding suits, no small task. But done.

Recharge the phone (fail).

Replace a headlight (fail x 2)

Find a bag to store the smelly fuel bladders in (fail)

Get a bit of hose to syphon fuel if needed (done) and…

Find some antacid medication for me (done) thanks pm.

Pay an etag bill (fail)

Get insurance for Argentina (fail)

Do some housekeeping for life back home (win).

I realize all of this is somewhat boring, and the extremely strange hotel we stayed in, with it’s cast of equally strange residents, burning smells wafting thru at all hours and pillows full of critters would make better reading, but life on the road is not all roses (or weird hotels).

(inside Sally’s pillow, there’s critters in there!).

Stay with me though, I’m almost done. Now it’s today.

Back to not being in a hurry and waiting for the weather to warm up a bit… So next destination we chose was just 60km away at the foot of a Nat Park called Alerce, which contains among other things an Alerce tree that’s 3000 years old. That’s not a typo. 3000.

Todays forecast was for rain, so we reasoned it would be better to walk in the rain than ride in it, so we did the short stint to this cabana where the same black dog still wants to get in…

… unloaded all our stuff and went hiking in the rain.

Good thing our rain suits are in good nick because it rained solid for the three hours we were walking…

(Sals hood isn’t waterproof so she put a plastic bag on her head to stay dry. Bag head.)

There was a nice waterfall at the end, and the 3000 year old tree too… Did I mention it’s 3000 years old. Holy shit! That tree was here 1000 years before Jesus!

Tonight we’re staying in a cool little cabana (small holiday house), that looks over the Reloncavi Estuary. A lot of the accommodation along here is in tiny self contained houses so we’re making the most of the kitchenette.

We have a bottle of wine, 2 beers, some locally smoked salmon, a pack of pasta, an onion, a few small tomatoes, some salami and cheese, peanuts, and a bunch of saggy asparagus to turn into dinner.

Should be a wild night!

(our view)

xoxo

Into the Andes

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After a couple of nights at Viracay national Park, we decided to head up to the frontier with Argentina at the Pechuente pass, with a yet to be decided plan thereafter.

The options were to cross into Argentina, ride a bit of the route 40 and return to Chile, or just turn around at the border and come back down the same way.

There were a few things at play… We had no mandatory Argentinian third-party insurance, but could possibly buy it at the border (cost penalty unknown). We also had no Argentinian pesos, which would usually not be any sort of problem. However, there’s a currency crisis in Argentina which means it’s actually quite hard to get cash. You can withdraw cash from an ATM but the maximum withdrawal is $50 and the ATM fee for doing this is $10. Not really the way we roll.

Alternatively, we have some US dollars on us which we could have possibly changed on the black market, and the last option was to do what all the other travelers here do and transfer money to ourselves via Western Union and go pick it up in a Western Union office, which surprisingly ends up being one of the most cost-effective ways of doing it.

You just need to find a Western Union office. In the Andes. That has cash. Seems easy enough.

The last problem was that our new bikes only have 11 lt fuel tanks and we weren’t really sure where the next petrol station was going to be….

On the way up to the pass I was feeling quite nervous. It’s been 7 or 8 years since we last did this stuff, would we still remember the ins and outs?

The road wound its way up higher and higher from forest Forest into open mountains, snow covered peaks around us, mountain lakes and snow melt rivers coursing down along the roadside.

We only got as high as 2,500 m, which is moderate for the Andes, further north we saw 4,900 m on Betsy! But the scenery was magnificent nonetheless. Just the scale of the view is like nothing else, it’s vast.

And a bit scary when you’re alone and unsure about fuel range. Predictably we arrived at the border and decided to cross over and work the rest out as we went. The insurance was a non-event, no one asked for it, and there was a guy selling fuel at the back of a restaurant behind the Argentinian customs post. This time I filled a fuel bladder as well just in case.

Then I got talking to some Argentinian bikers at the same restaurant to get the lowdown on the currency rates, and managed to change 100 USD with one of them!

Win 3

Killing it babe, we have fuel, food, dodged the insurance, and now have cash. It’s no longer no cash here.

Next was to get to a town with a Western Union office and get loaded up on pesos. This part of the Andes is extremely remote, road conditions very wildly and you can’t really trust anything anyone tells you about the road, including the info on the maps we have.

We suspected the road to the next town included some non-paved sections, which from what people had told us we guessed might be about 70 or 170 km worth, but the description of that section varied from, it’s excellent dirt, it’s volcanic rock, to its deep sand the whole way.

Okay, let’s head out for a look, if it turns to snot, we can just go back to Chile. Sally seemed good with this plan.

In the end it was just a normal gravel road, with some sections of vaguely loose small stones, which on Betsy would have been comfortable at 120 km an hour with my eyes closed, but on these Chinese bikes was not so comfy even at 80. Anyway, we got there.

The bikes are actually not horrible, particularly for what they cost, we’re just used to something better. It’s going to take some adjustment.

We made our destination late in the day and quickly (Not really) found a nice Posada to sleep in, with a little restaurant just next door. Perfect.

Next days mission was to get pesos. This was an important task for us because we think that the further south we go the towns will get smaller and the task of getting cash might get harder and harder. Compounded by most places not taking credit card payment.

We had two waypoints for Western Union agents in subsequent towns 100 km apart or so. The first was a no-go, a place selling knick-knacks with no cash here. But the next looked more promising, there was a line of locals with bundles of cash in hand paying their bills.

Is there any cash here? (This is not even a joke)

Yes we have a lot, really a lot.

We connect to their Wi-Fi, download the Western Union app, register, go through the two-factor authentification which is a total pain in the ass, transfer myself 1000 AUD, show the girl behind the counter the code and get the cash. F*** yeah. Mission accomplished.

It’s not Cuba but still… I now have significantly more stuff in my jacket pockets. AUD 1000 is 10 bills. The Argentinian equivalent is a wad 2 in thick! Geez.

With that, we rode another 100 km to the final destination for the day, filled with fuel and decided to go another 100 km to a town higher up by a lake, it was only 4:00 p.m. so this seemed reasonable..

30 km into this section we turn into a small dirt road and a storm comes to meet us. Balls.

This was a terrible idea

Cue sheltering in a border post for a few minutes to get our wets on and off we went.

Apart from the rain and cold at 4°, it was a spectacular ride that took us through high mountain Forest with weird shaped pine trees, rivers and long valleys in succession.

Most significantly though it was incident free!

Sal had found an apartment that was hugely discounted for off season, so we avoided the riding around and looking endlessly for a place to stay, went straight to a supermarket to buy dinner and wine, and settled into a warm clean room, put on some music, cooked some dinner and defragged.

That takes me to yesterday…. Time dilation… So hard to believe yesterday was only yesterday and last week was only last week, so much has happened.

Got to run now, bikes are getting their first oil change to maintain the warranty which will be finished in a bit so I have to go

Xoxo

And off we go!

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It was always going to happen.

After years and thousands of kilometres as a pillion, much to the disappointment of pretty much everyone around me, the time has come for me to go it alone on my own two wheels… under the very stressed and watchful eye of Dean, protected by Roger the dog from my Mum and guided by Mighty Boosh from my sister Natalie.

We made the break a couple of days ago from from Santiago, after spending 5 days hanging out at a hostel that attracts bikers from all over the world who are Ushuaia bound. Suddenly what we were about to do, was not that out of the ordinary anymore. It’s nice to be around other travellers again.

I was a little apprehensive to take my new bike for a first ride and had some difficulties with the positioning of the gear lever with my big stiff tech 3 boots, but dean managed to alter the gear lever so I’m not finding myself in neural in the middle of a busy intersection.

Riding on the ‘wrong’ side of the road takes a little time to get your head around however what makes things harder is one way streets that change direction at certain times of the day. 

Upon leaving Santiago Dean checked he had the correct route and we knew the direction we were heading, taking into account the one way streets. ‘so, two blocks and we turn left?’ I confirmed with Dean in the intercom. ‘yes babe, we turn left and then right’. So off we go…me wobbling out of the driveway, too focused to wave goodbye to the guys seeing us off, and fighting with the gears to get from first to second. We get to the one way road to turn left and we see a car going the wrong way. ‘what an idiot’ Dean’s says as he makes a left turn, ‘as if he’s going to wrong way down a one way road!’ I then make the left turn and notice another car coming towards us…and then realise 3 lanes of traffic are coming towards us. It was the time of the day where all the traffic went in the opposite direction to all the signs. Perfect. Not a great start.

After spending a night in Curico, we got off the highway and found ourselves in wine country, or at least there were some vines. With the Andes as a back drop it was really pretty. We made our way to Altos de Lircay National park with the vague thought that we may find a cheap place to stay and go on one of the hikes.

It was starting to look like we may be out of luck finding a cheap place so we stopped for a coffee and empanada to work out our next move. Luckily for us the lady running the cafe had a cabin available for around $35 USD. It had a fire, a kitchen and our own bathroom. Perfect!

We spent the next two days hiking in the national park which took us to some amazing view points of the Andes. Yesterday we walked 12 kms and today we walked around 30 and up to over 2000 metres.  We kept our record of never being overtaken and did it in record time. Poor Dean. We are shagged.

It’s cold and we are sitting by the fire. It’s still light outside which feels a bit odd but I guess we will get used to this as we head further south.  We are on to our 20th round of cards and listening to Dire Straits for the second time (no wifi and only limited albums downloaded). We will sleep very well tonight.

Leaving is…

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always conflicting, looking forward to new experiences but back at home, family and friends we’ll miss. It’s a weird sort of inbetween trip we’re on this time though, not long enough to feel really away, but it’s not a two week holiday either.

Here’s what leaving for a few months on a bike trip looks like…

(Not sure how much of this I’m going to write, typing on a phone screen is one of my least favourite things so this could be brief.)

Sitting on the plane as I wrote this and feeling nostalgic, the morning went without a hiccup, and we had the most gorgeous sunrise coming over the hills to see us off.

The last time we flew to South America we were on a mission to smuggle Betsy out of Peru and then somehow ride home. It’s a shame we weren’t blogging back then because some of the most crazy shit we’ve been involved in went down in those following weeks.

I still remember the conversation I had with Keith (who I barely knew at the time) about our ‘plan’.

“so you’re going to just get to a border and try to cross illegally? Is that really your plan?”

“umm… yes pretty much”

“hmmm”

I was still limping from the broken leg then. Geez.

Anyhow, that was all 14 years ago and so much has changed in the world, but some things are the same too, the Andes are still there, so is Pisco, can’t wait to see them again!

Mmmm Sausage burrito for breakfast…

“oh yuk, I’m gonna see if they have something vegetarian”

Thanks to everyone who came to see us off this past few days, we’ll miss you all.

Busy few days ahead, get over the jet lag, consume Pisco sours, pick up/work on bikes and get everything ready for the trip south, wish us luck!

xxoo