Leaving Cunco
Woke at 8.00 to a cool damp morning and left at 9.30. Stopped in Cunco to visit the Tourist Information and picked up a couple of leaflets with some decent maps of the area. John put these at the top of his bar bag to navigate with. The faces of the local people had changed completely since Valpairaso and we saw a lot of very impressive traditional Mapuche dress and women wearing silver platework on their chests. There is a local campaign to recover land belonging to Mapuche people which has been occupied by neighbouring landowners. On the way out of town we followed a steep unpaved road to the lake (past a vicious dog that gave chase) to a lake where we hoped to take a road marked on it's northern shore. Unfortunately, this road did not exist...... which meant retracing our steps uphill past the mad dog. We filled our pockets with stones and got the 'dog dazer' ready to try and scare it off. We watched it chase a car up the hill ahead and braced ourselves. When we approached at low speed with the smell of fear flowing freely in his direction he hid behind his boundary fence and watched us pass without a murmur! It looks like some dogs just like the thrill of a chase. After 12 bumpy km we were back to the junction which, on the tourist map showed a dead end, but was actually the road we needed. When cross checking, with our recently purchased COPEC map, we discovered the tourist map was totally inaccurate. Lesson learnt! The road was now a dirt track all the way to Villarrica and it would be the first test of proper off road riding for our bike racks and panniers. The views and landscape were absolutely beautiful...it now reminded us of New Zealand with green meadows, lots of floweres and steep wooded hills. There was a lot of washboard corrugations which were difficult to escape and often involved cycling on the wrong side of the road but, as there was only a couple of cars every hour, this was not a problem. The hills were a lot steeper now and the descents bone shaking. We knew we had aonother 58km to get used to it. and fix 2 punctures. After 52km we stopped for a picnic on a fallen Eucalyptus and spent an hour eating! Our appetites are now huge and I'm craving fat and carbohydrates like never before. It was a very hard days cycling so it was a welcome bonus to encounter a new paved road 12km from the end. Our speed doubled and the landscape opened up with broad views for the first time in about 30km. At 85km we arrived in town and stopped at the first place we saw to book a room. Later that evening we had an interesting meal in a restaurant where we were the only customers and the chef enthusiastically waved us in! Always a bad sign! The service was excellent but the entertainement was not. There was a TV above our heads which played music videos from the mid 80's the whole evening! The Bangles, Duran Duran, Flashdance...etc. There were a few power cuts during which we relished the peace and quiet and could hear each others conversation without shouting or lip reading. The food however was excellent...so it was worth enduring the incessant noise. We felt sorry for the Chef as he was obviously very good but had no one to impress. We made sure we thanked him personally.
Our first dirt road. The wrong road!!
Views from the wrong road!
First puncture.
Final section of dirt.
Feeling the strain!
