november 21 - november 26

with no money in our pockets and rain creeping over the mountains, we headed of direction trevellin quite early. cycling through nationbal park "los alceres" was really beautiful, but hard to drive. the wet gravel roads had only one advantage, no dust if a car is passing, but the backwheels were sinking in, like driving with flats.
after a couple of hard kilometers, eva decided to stop a pickup for a ride to the next atm, cos our map shows more hills on bad roads. we got a nice ride to esquel, with a very nice argentinean guy.

next day eva had a cunning idea: why not take the bus to puerto natales in chile, to go to the famous torres del paine from here right now. we bought the tickets, long thermo-underwear and some stuff for the trip down south. in esquel-centre we met two guys from germany and had a nice supper together, with of course steak and too much of the excellent argentinean red wine.

the 30 hours- busride with "don otto semi cama" started on 23rd of november at 9:00 p.m.. the bustrip was very long and there was no way to escape from painful loud music or d-movies from dvd (funky monkey and herbie, what a junk!).

finally we arrived at puerto natales in chile and we were lucky, that we decided to avoid a biketrip down here. between nothing and the pampa, i would chose the nothing, cos its almost the same, except the pampa has lots of wind. if you see a tree, you are not wondering, why its growing from south to north, and not upright from the soil.



anyways, we ended up in a backpacker-hostel called "erratic rock", which was recommended in a backpackers magazine. the place was run by two crazy americans, bill and rustyn, who offered a friendly atmosphere, a real breakfast and two very bad bathrooms for about 25 guests. that meant, do your things in time!
one bathroom was always flooded, so you could only enter the tub by stepping through a mess of soggy towels, lying on the ground. the other shower had only boiling hot water for two minutes or icecold water for the rest of the hour.
totally exhausted from the busride, i unfortunately took the hot two minutes and got a bad shot on my private parts. that woke me up and after a pot of real coffee, no nes, we went downtown puerto natales.

we were looking for trekking-backpacks, cos renting them was not as cheap as considered. so eva got a nice "mammut" and i bought an "outdoor doite".

andrea from switzerland arrived at the same day and we were happy to be reunited, nevertheless without our bikes.