| Patagonia |
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Patagonia, an extremely vast and diverse region, with
scenery ranging from dramatic mountain formations to
flat barren pampas and expansive ice fields. As you
enter Patagonia you'll find a green mountain area with
forests and a range of lakes of exceptional beauty. Its
waters are transparent and distinct tones that
differentiate from blue to emerald green.
You can experience city life in
San Carlos de Bariloche,
famous for its chocolate, and
El Bolsón with its
hippies and handicrafts markets. You'll cross for the
first time into Chile at
Futaleufú along the ice-blue river of the same
name which beckons rafters to test their dangerous
skills. The Trail continues over the seldom-visited
Carretera Austral
which links widely separated towns and hamlets along its
length as it passes through a wonderland of snow clad
mountains, lakes, rainforests, glaciers, rivers,
waterfalls and fjords. No matter where you look,
fantastic scenery.
Back in Argentina on the Ruta 40 again you probably have
to fight the strong Western wind, which makes it
together with the road condition one of the hardest
sections of the tour. In
El Calafate you'll have time to recover and visit
one of the world's largest continental glaciers, the
Perito Moreno.
House size chunks of ice break off this advancing
glacier regularly accompanied by thundering sounds. A
few days biking and a second border crossing from
Argentina to Chile brings you to the
Torres del Paine.
It's one of Chile's most spectacular national parks with
craggy, granite peaks covered with snow, glacier-fed
lakes, pampas, thick Magellanic forests and meadows.
Your last day of rest in
Punta Arenas gives you the opportunity to visit
one of the nearby penguin colonies. A ferry gives you
access to Tierra del Fuego,
the Land of Fire. You are pushed by a fierce tailwind on
this last bit of civilization on the South American
continent.
You cross the Andes for the last time to get to the
final destination of the Trail :
Ushuaia. Located on
the Beagle Channel with an impressive array of the sea,
forests, lakes, and mountains. Ushuaia is the
southernmost city in the world, it is the entrance gate
to Antarctica and it is nicknamed Fin-del-Mundo.
The End-of-the-World. The perfect spot to finish this
extreme and challenging bike journey which starts at the
equator and brings you over a distance of 11.000
kilometres along, through and over the longest mountain
range in the world. |
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Rest day in Coyhaique |
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Border crossing Chile - Argentina |
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