I started off like a fierce warrior, doning an imaginary cape and tapping into an abundance of energy I didn´t even know I had and ended like a mosquito plastered on the windshield of a semi doing 70 mph. The kind that leaves a gooey trail of blood. I hit the wall and passed my 30th birthday in a sedated, hallucinatory, dream-reality slumber on the banks of a river in Tortel, Chile.
Dreams were more lucid than my febrile reality. I spent the afternoon tucked into my sleeping bag cacoon basking in the sun on an old wooden stage on the banks of a river overlooking dramatic, black mounded fjords carved and rounded by crashing waterfalls. Ideal, besides the fact that I was suffering a fever induced cold sweat.
Chaltén to Villa O´Higgins: Waiting for fair skies or an apocalypse. We were stuck in Chaltén for days waiting for rains to stop and floodwaters to subside. There were stories along the way of chest deep floods, closed roads, cut-off supplies and a volcanic eruption to the north closing down the northern stretch of the Carretera Austral. Restless as we are, we couldn´t sit still any longer and set off to Lago del Desierto one rainy morning, this would be the journey that would take us from the Argentinian Route 40 to the Chilean Carretera Austral (Southern Highway). 
We biked our first green forest stretch, threw our bikes on a ferry boat and crossed the mis-named glacier lake, Desert Lake (no desert in site) to no-man´s land where we were stamped out of Argentina and would wait nearly another 48 hours before we were stamped into Chile. An adventure I´ll never forget awaited us!
No man´s land We had ordered a horse (which was a no-show, no-go which multiplied the task before us) to meet us at the Argentinian passport control knowing from word of mouth that the crossing to Lago O´Higgins was nothing more than a narrow steep hikers path that would take 8-10 hours to complete with various river crossings, we´re talking a few logs of wood thrown over flooded creeks demanding nothing less than acrobatic tricks from the common biker to get bike, panniers and self across safely but never dryly. Slippery when wet!
My bike on a downhill was like an oversized energy-pumped puppy that just takes off dragging its helpless owner behind like the cans that drag and jingle on the back of a newlyweds´ car. Due to recent floods the whole area was like a marshland on an extremely inclining slope of muddyness. In the middle of the forest we cross the border, no road in site, just our muddy path with a "Bienvenidos a Argentina" sign on one side and 100 meters away a "Bienvenidos a Chile" sign. 
Great, but where do we get our passports stamped? More than an hour later and racing against a clock, we´ve got a ferry to catch, we still haven´t found passport control and we´re secondguessing whether or not we´ve maybe already passed it (could it have been in a tree house? was it the old beat up farmhouse where the cats lazed about?) we come across a bridge crossing a river that cuts off in mid-air! In mid-air. 
I´m feeling really off track and my hunger is about to explode with my patience. To our dismay we never found the newly built bridge down the way that we later heard about and today would have rather never known about, so desperate as we were we had to dismantle bags from bikes for the ump-teenth time and cross that river by foot, in cold, knee-deep, glacier waters . Brrrrrrrrrrrr! It took days to recover and thoroughly warm up from that one. As the 60 something French couple forwarned about the path in an earlier crossing with fellow bikers "wet! wet! wet!" and it was slippery when wet.
The first miracle. We made that damn ferry boat and we did the hike/bike ride in under 6 hours. We hiked, we biked and we were paid off in the end by biking on top of the world (more precisely, the bottom), a panarama of Andes, emerald lakes, forests, wild animals, pure beauty if you could concentrate your glance over the constant shaking and jiggling that the loose gravel roads cause. We actually had to walk the bikes down hill some of the way because it never feels good to be going uncontrollably fast as you come around a corner with a steep cliff drop off and nowhere to stop yourself and only loose earth under those wheels in stealthy motion. We triumphantly rolled into the humble Chilean passport control, a modest trailer on a mountain side with a killer view,
greeted first by stallions, dogs and cats and then by border control. The moment merited a hug! Mission accomplished. At the end of the day my legs were the color of a overly-ripened plum. Like the fur of a jaguar, my bruises were my purple spots.
The second miracle. The stereotypically optimistic (and for good reason) Brazilian pilot who blew over the same crossing with his motorbike. He started his trip a year ago, suffered an accident, had to travel back to Brazil and is now picking up where he left off to complete the tour. This man crossed the same lake with his moto, blows in like a tornado, has the charismatic power to sweep anyone off their feet at least for a moment. He grins ear to ear and looks like a young Antonio Banderas, blows into our hut at the tip of Lago del Desierto the night before we set off, unloads his panniers full of McGuiver gadgets and tells of his plans to take on the trail with his moto "I need a horse and a man" he proclaims. The passport control officials who have been nothing but cold to us, bow down to him, they bring him a hot dinner; his wish is their command. Ryan and I look at eachother not even needing to exchange a word, this guy is nuts and his horse is never coming. We´ve waited our time for the horse and now we´ve no time to spare, we´re off tomorrow and early, sorry Mr. Brazil, but we can´t help you. Next day, after our long hard ride, we were waiting for the ferry that was running late talking about him with a group of Israelis and an Australian friend when: vroom, vroom, speak of the devil, we hear his moto first and there he is smile on his face, fate has landed him some excellent luck and he´s going to get that moto on that ferry. He made it! His horse had come for him!
We all throw bikes, motos, overpacked Israeli hiker backpacks onto a boat with sheep and civilians and embark on rough waters to Villa O´Higgins, a long ride to a land of nothing.
We arrive frozen and famished on a one-track mind: FOOD! We leave the hostal staff no other option: with 4 famished cyclists you feed us or we revolt and raid your kitchen, we´ll wait quietly at the dinner table, spoons in hand (nearly gnawing on them) for you to prepare us a warm dinner. Lights out. Zzzzzz.
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