My hand isn't 100% so I took the day off today. The hour of riding after the accident was OK, and I'm sure I could ride today if I really had to: but I've got a spare day in the schedule and letting it heal seems like the best idea. If my hand doesn't work, I can't ride and the trip is over...

So I’m in Temuco for the day. It’s is the capital city of the Temuco province: and it's been under a state of emergency since 2022, due to conflict with the Mapuche, who are demanding the return of their ancestral lands. The Chilean engineers that I met were from Temuco and recommended staying in the city because the rural areas are where the conflicts happen.

Nevertheless, this information will appear when you go looking for travel advice for Chile. And it must mean tourists avoid the province. The prices are substantially cheaper here, which has got to be a consequence. The hostel I'm staying at is 24000 CLP which is the cheapest place I've stayed, by far: I expect to pay 40k-50k per night. It is cheap but it's well-run. The furniture and bedclothes are in good condition, no damage, everything works. (Except the hot water, sadly. The only time the shower has been hot was when I arrived.) I wouldn't be surprised to pay over 40k if it were in another city. Even with the water problems.

My hand hurts. Nothing major: I dropped the bike and it must have been knocked on something. It's my left hand, and I went down on the right, and have a matching set of scrapes on that side: knee, hand, shoulder. All of those are fine, my left hand is the only one that still has complaints. Nothing seems broken, presumably it's muscular. I don't know what could have damaged it, but I suppose there was a lot going on...

What happened is that I slipped on some fine gravel on the roadside. This all happened after ten kilometers of respectable gravel road which I navigated with not even a nervous moment. I was back on asphalt, but there was a bad patch on the other side of the road ahead: some cars were crossing over to my lane to avoid it. There were cars behind me as well so I thought I should get off the road completely for safety. The surface looked good at first glance - but it was actually fine gravel the exact same color as the asphalt, treacherous and camouflaged. So I innocently put the bike onto it, realized it was bad, and then the front wheel went sideways and I'm sliding along the gravel. Ooof.

I unhook the cellphone from the bike, untangle my legs, and pick myself up. A lady who saw it winds down her car window to ask if I'm OK: nothing seems broken so I think I'm good. I've got the presence of mind to get a photo this time.

It’s a proper day off, which means it’s laundry day. I'd actually had a look for laundry places yesterday, since I was back early. There's quite a few in town, but all of the ones that are open on Saturday were closed on Sunday. No good. But one was closed on Saturday and open on Sunday, which sounds great; except that when there’s only one outfit being different it looks a bit dubious. But it's well reviewed and it's the best option there is so I went over to take a look.

They looked pretty good and were confident it'd be done by 4 so I asked to borrow their bathroom to get changed, and added my casual outfit. Slightly weird but I don't think it's the first time that's happened! I'm going to spend the day in a shirt and cycling outer shorts. I'm still decent, but may be refused entry to restaurants. Especially classy ones.

There's a volcano quite close to Pucón, and there's guided tours to the top! Who could say no? Probably me, but I didn't try very hard.

Pickup at 0600, which is a necessary evil: the whole excursion will be about ten hours. At 0700 we're at the mountain where the road ends, which is about 1000m above sea level at a ski resort. It's closed for summer: the ski lifts have even had their chairs taken off, there's just the cable.

There's three of us on the walk plus the guide. Hiking boots are provided, plus we get backpacks which have helmets inside, trousers and jacket, extra gloves, and a plastic thing the shape of a dinner plate. For my lunch I brought empanadas: we can pretend that I'm ironing out my trust issues with them, but also there wasn't anything else available when I went looking yesterday afternoon.

We're already close to the snowline and the environment is near-frozen. The ground underfoot sometimes breaks like it's brittle. There's a bit of unappetizing grey snow hiding in shadowed spots. We're on the ski resort now, passing the stationary skilifts, and from the shape of the ground you can guess where the ski runs are.

The sun is up but very low, and casts very long shadows from us as we walk up the ridgeline which is pretty cool. We're not the only people here; I can see two other people on another ridge. They're a long way away but seem to be carrying ... skis?

Back on the road. Montaña Mágica was quite nice, not exceptional. A lot of indulgent decisions which make it unique. For instance, every edge in the room being picked out with wooden branches is pretty neat, but it must not have been cheap, and sensible hotels don't do things like that. Hence: unique. Also useful - I found coathangers and could use the twigs to hang up my cycling clothes to dry.

The hotel description also said water flows down the outside of the conical building, but I couldn't see it. I asked about it: apparently the water then flows through a glass-covered trench in the floor which runs past the front desk to the other building, Hotel Nothofagus, where it runs down an inclined glass plate which looks a bit like a waterfall. Which is pretty cool, and unique, but didn't really answer the question about why I couldn't see water running down the building.

Anyway, today I'm riding to Pucón. It's a slightly longer ride; 120km with an 8 hour estimate. That's slow, probably because there's a lot of climbing. The most important thing about the ride is of course breakfast, and Montaña Mágica provides a buffet that ticks all the boxes I need and some others too. Eggs, bacon, pancake/pikelets; fruit, yoghurt, cereal, bread and jams. There's some pastry options, but they seem to be part of a dessert section. I'm not kidding: it has cheesecake, chocolate brownie, small chocolate mouthfuls, small muffins and so on. Getting a croissant from there does bring some mixed feelings: firstly this is a relatively healthy options, but secondly what am I doing? I didn't get guilt get in the way of a solid five-plate breakfast spanning all the food groups, with three coffees along the way.

I signed up for some rafting today. Apparently the rivers are high this time of year: it's been a wet spring, and maybe the melting snow contributes. So the rafting will be unusually exciting today.

I'm supposed to bring swimming gear: my only options are casual or cycling clothes so it's going to be my cycling outfit. It could probably do with a deeper wash anyway.

There's four safety kayakers with us today, but I rather think they came along more for the river than for us. They're all in short kayaks with waterproof skirts, you could drop a dumptruck of water on them and they wouldn't even slow down. Which is the right choice today because the river is looking wild.

A short day's ride today to Hotel Montaña Mágica ("Magic Mountain"). Hotels don't usually get me interested, but this one did because it can only be accessed by rope bridge. It's got a slick webpage in English and Spanish and prices to match. But for a night, it looks like a great idea! Did I say one night? I meant two.

It's deep in the mountains so there's a bit of climbing needed to get there. But the way the trip from Valdivia broke down means yesterday was heavier and today is lighter: quite light in fact, 4.5h for 60km. That's quite a generous amount of hours for the distance, probably more than a bit of climbing will be needed to get there.

But first, we've processed yesterday's regret and today we're getting an empanada. Today's empanada comes from a pasteleria, and was one of the few savoury things available. I was a little tempted to get something else as well - but have visions of it getting crumbed or flattened along the way, which would be a waste. If the empanada survives I'll try it.

Shortish day today: 6.5h, 105km, going east towards the Andes: more up than down. It's mostly following a river valley which means good views, but also climbs: the road never follows the contours as well as I'd like.

Since it's a shortish day I did have a bit of a slow start. After breakfast I went to the nearby Pasteleria to find something for lunch: the empanadas look tempting but I'm a bit worried it'd turn into crumbs in my pannier. Also the last time I ate an empanada it broke a tooth so I'm going to need more time to rebuild trust here. So I went for a mediocre, small and soft sandwich.

They also had coffee! Well, a coffee machine. Specifically a Nescafe thing with a button for each type of coffee. Basically a vending machine. I know I'll regret getting one.

I got one: the drink was hot and tasted slightly sweet and not like coffee but I only mostly regret getting it.

Another rest day! But it's Monday and the repair shop is open so I took the bike in. There's the squeaky back wheel, a broken spoke, and I also asked for a quick look over the rest of the bike in case some other problem is developing that I haven't noticed yet. We sorted things out over Whatsapp, pickup time is 8 tonight.

After that I had the day mostly free. There's a museum I would like to look at but it's closed on Monday. But there is a nice botanical garden out west, over the bridge, attached to the university. Since it said botanical garden I was expecting flowers and small plants, it was very big trees, nothing shorter than a house. It was a sunny and a bit warm, so the talls trees meant there was a lot of shade. Some of them had QR codes on them for more information. eg: This is a Sequoia, it's from North America, the species is somewhat endangered.

Took a tour of a retired Chilean submarine today. It's "Oberon" class, made by the UK in the 1960s and retired in the 1990s. 27 were built: 13 for the UK Royal Navy, and Chile, Australia, Brazil and Canada ordered the others. They have diesel engines which charge lead-acid batteries, which power the electric motors. The diesel engines need air so they can only be used at periscope depth - so the batteries did a lot of work. And were carefully contained; if there was an acid leak that reached the hull it would be a very bad day at the office!

Onboard it's full of sharp edges, low ceilings, narrow corridors, tiny rooms - no spare space anywhere. It had a crew of 75, who worked and slept and rested in three shifts so 25 would be asleep at any one time. There weren't much more than 25 bunks, presumably they're in continuous use. Even the captain's cabin didn't have a visible bed: it looked like a couch was repurposed.

Submarines are not for tall people: I had a hardhat on and knocked it against the ceiling even when trying to stay low. The main corridor passed through hatches in watertight bulkheads which needed to be climbed through. It'd be clear who was new on the crew by how much slower they got around...

Just a short 5 hour ride today, taking the back roads to Valdivia. When I got going there was light rain. The forecast said it'd dry up midmorning and this time it was accurate! There were a few more light showers but I didn't need to put my raincoat back on for the rest of the day.

The first part of the ride is crossing the Ruta 5, which is the main north-south highway. It's a Saturday morning and fairly quiet. If cars are coming the other way at the same time they can't easily go around me: when that starts to happen I prefer to get off the road and onto the shoulder - even if it's rough. Two cars and a bike side-by-side doesn't leave much space, and I don't want to try fitting us all onto the road with two below-average drivers, I don't trust them.

The surgeon advised me to take at least one day of rest so that's today. I'm actually feeling OK, like I could ride today if I needed to. But pushing too hard runs the risk of getting sick, which I don't have time for. So I'm taking the day.

As always there's a few chores. I need to get salt for mouthwashing, more drinks, soft snack food, and visit an ATM. And get my laundry done. I also want to take a thank-you card to the pair of dental clinics who helped me yesterday: they were very patient with me and my Google Translated questions, and meant I could get everything done very promptly so I really appreciate it. Also cake! It's a rest day after all.

The B&B I'm staying at is nice, but it's 15 minutes walk from the town. Rain was forecast so I packed my backpack with a raincoat, then accidentally left it all behind. After I got into town the rain started. Just a drizzle, then stronger: I was in my fleece getting steadily wetter because I didn't want to take the 30-40 minute roundtrip back to the B&B.

The only interesting part is that thank-you cards aren't a thing in Chile. I found this out the hard way, of course: tried three bookstores and two mercardos and the closest I could find was a gift card. In desperation I tried a pharmacy (in hindsight, I must have been very desperate) and ended up having a chat to the lady running the shop, who explained that thank-you cards aren't a thing in Chile. She did have some A4 card and envelopes though, which I gratefully bought. Please don't ask me to explain what Chilean pharmacies have in stock, I have no idea what the rules are.

I rode the bike for a bit today, but let’s talk about the dental drama instead!

After a less-than-conclusive email exchange with the dentist in Amsterdam, I thought it'd be wise to get a dental X-ray. Not being able to use one side of my mouth is a sign that something is wrong, so I'd like to send it over to them to get it diagnosed. So before leaving Puerto Octay I found a couple of good dentists in Rio Bueno, set up a brief writeup in Spanish asking for an appointment for tomorrow, and sent it to their contact email or WhatsApp numbers.

Checked the phone a few times during the ride, no response. So once I'd arrived and got civilized I thought I should head into town and visit the places in person. First on the list is Clínica Alcudia, which is not just top-rated but also closest. They’re open, looks like a good place, so I head in. Google Translate did a lot of heavy lifting, but we got things figured out: they arranged an appointment for me, in half an hour at 1700. But I needed to go to the other branch which is a 20 minute walk. (Tactfully mentioning that I contacted them earlier and got no response is too delicate a subject for Google Translate.)

I get called into the dentist's room, he has a poke around in my mouth and I'm happy to say there were no misunderstandings with my improvised hand signals for pain. Bit more Google Translate (I owe that team drinks, seriously) to say my molar is cracked in two.

Two options: save or remove? Saving takes three-four weeks. Removing takes one session and I'd be back on the road in a day or two.

Yesterday I bit an olive stone in an empanada. By bad luck the tooth that crunched it was already a bit sensitive, my dentist previously mentioned there was a crack here ... and it felt like I'd broken part of my tooth off. The empanada got forgotten for quite a long time while I tried to figure out how bad the damage was - I could feel some jagged corners that weren't there before, and there's a tooth that's not actually painful but was definitely reserving the right to light up some excruciating pain.

The question that matters is, can I still eat? Feels like I can, so long as absolutely nothing strays to the left side. That's going to make things complicated, but manageable.

I mailed my dentist in Amsterdam with a few more details; they weren't excited and asked for photos of my teeth. This is not an easy thing to arrange when you're alone. I managed a selfie with a duck face the other day, but that needed quite a bit of time and concentration. Getting a well-lit photo of one's own teeth is next level. I ended up facing the sun, yawning, with my phone within biting distance: it's not possible to see the screen because of glare and view angles so there's a bit of guesswork involved. I got some pictures but I'm not going to post any here because this is a family show.

Just a short ride today. I'm not completely sure why I decided to spend a night in Puerto Varas: it'd been recommended as a nice place to be. Also the weather was looking awful so a short day would be good. And I had some chores to do.

The weather was pretty bad, the traffic was also pretty bad so a short day was definitely the right choice. The route started with a very steep climb through the suburbs of Puerto Montt, more of those 10% gradients the Chilean road engineers like.

Then onto the B-route to the north. Ruta 5 is the main highway north from here: it's a dual carriageway, no place for bikes. I was hoping that most traffic used it leaving the B roads clear. Unfortunately the road was quite busy the whole time. And it was not built with space for bikes. There was sometimes a shoulder, which I would ride on whenever it was available, to stay apart from the cars. It was a bit rough: potholes and puddles; so all the gear cleaning yesterday was sadly undone.

The big task for today is to figure out the rest of the route to Santiago. Since I'm doing this trip at tourist speed I'm finding all the interesting things I can, then setting up a route that visits as many as possible. A park with life-size dinosaur statues. A yellow railway bridge. A town that declared independence from Chile for two days. An erupting volcano. A waterfall hotel that can only be entered by rope bridge. 70,000 empty coke bottles arranged in the shape of a Coca Cola logo.

Unfortunately some of these are north of Santiago, or so far inland I can't get to them. But the rest: I'm going to do my best. So my route looks a little wild. For more than a few things, I could get there ... but it'd cost a day. I mostly took the hit. I didn't stick around in the south, for reasons I may have shared, and I do have a few spare days now.

The rest of the day is other biking chores. My gear is coated in fine roadgrit, after the long wet rural day yesterday. Showers are the best way to get things clean. Panniers, rack bag, shoes, outer layer, cycling gloves, not sure about the woolly gloves. There's even a heater on the wall which gets both sets of gloves dry overnight.

I also go out to find the zero kilometer sign for the Careterra Austral. It's several kilometers away, at the top of a steep hill, accessible only by a busy road, with no bicycle path, in a carpark that looks like a great place to buy hard drugs.

Lunch today is uncertain. Today there’s a ferry, and just before the ferry is a town and I figured I might be able to get lunch there. It’s a risky move, it hasn't worked so far this trip, but I'm feeling optimistic. Also, I had a look around in a mercardo last night after dinner and couldn't find anything that'd make a respectable lunch, but maybe I'm not looking with the right kind of eyes.

The forecast said mild rain, a few mm, and wind so ferocious I took a screenshot. (See below: 44km/h, gusting to 77.) The rain prediction has already lost my trust; I'd been listening to rain on the roof since I woke up. Might just be an acoustically sensitive roof but it sounds like a lot of rain. And there's lightning too, flashes so powerful and bright the ancient Aztec priests wouldn't have problems with unbelievers for weeks.

Maybe I should stay in Hornopirén another day? The weather forecast for tomorrow is about the same, and every day of the ten-day forecast has rain. So if the weather today is too bad to ride, that sort of thinking might leave me stranded here for the foreseeable future... and Hornopirén doesn't have enough charm to make that a good idea.

Today is a complicated day, the route to Hornopirén includes two ferries. The first one leaves at 1230, but the departure point is 55km up the road from Chaitén.

Komoot thinks it'll take 4h45m to get there so I plan to leave at 0700, that allows for 45 minutes of delay. Still a bit of a gamble: if the gravel is too rugged or the headwind too strong, I'm going to miss the ferry. There's a second one is at 2000, but that means a long day’s wait, and it gets in to Hornopirén close to midnight.

And then there's the second ferry. The first one is a short 45min jaunt across the water to Fiordo Largo, then 10km more gravel to Leptepu, where the next ferry departs from. 10km of gravel usually takes most of an hour. The ferry timing is planned for cars: looks like there's 45 minutes to get from one to the other. If I'm late, I'm sure the ferry won't wait. So it's a bit of a stretch, with no room for error. Or time for photos.

The rain showed up at sunrise, a serious deluge with some severe wind to go with it. I'm very, very glad I'm taking two days off not one: the next section is 50km of gravel to Caleta Gonzalo where the ferry departs at 1230. If I'd had to ride there this morning I'd have heavy rain and a strong headwind, on a gravel road with a hard deadline.

The weather forecast for tomorrow is much more welcoming, fortunately - it should be only the gravel road and the hard deadline! Hope it's accurate.

Since the weather was miserable today I didn't go out much. It's also All Saints' Day (possibly "The Day of the Dead") and it's a serious holiday in this town: no cafes or bakeries open, and the mercardos are on strange reduced hours. I got bread rolls from one, and cheese and salami from another: that's lunch for today and tomorrow.

So a quiet one! There's more to tell, but it's late and I have an early start.

My lodging didn't provide breakfast, mostly because I'm the only person staying there. So I went out for a look around a bit before 9 - specifically, looking for somewhere I could find some breakfast. There's two cafes: both shut. Three bakeries: only one looked legit, and it was shut. Supermarkets/shops: there were a handful and they were all closed.

Chaitén is a quiet small town, but it's a Thursday and this seems unusually quiet. And the reason is that today is a holiday: the "National Day of the Evangelical and Protestant Churches", but most people say "halloween". Tomorrow is "All Saints' Day", but the day is also known as "Day of the Dead".

So my breakfast search didn't work out.