February 16, 2026 – Keep Calm and Pedal On

Riding Stats (Link Tom’s Strava)

Accommodations (daily living mileage, elevation, etc.)

Route Tracker (track our southbound ride on a Google Map)

New Spanish vocabulary word: ripio

The fire that Jose built in the wood burning heater in the community room was incentive enough to get out of our tent on this chilly 40 degree morning. Today would be our longest ride with the most elevation and on ripio (gravel).

These stoves/heaters are at the heart of every hostel and campground community room and common throughout Patagonian homes as well.

I made breaky in the community room while Tom took down the tent. We said our thanks and goodbyes to Jose and were on our way.

During the ride, again the mountains gave way to vast landscapes. We climbed a good bit getting to our highest elevation thus far on the trip and then bombed down some sweet descents. Tom got some good video on the GoPro today.

The ride got rough near the end. The “nice” ripio turned nasty with thick gravel and traffic increased throwing up a lot of dust and rocks. Not fun but grateful that wasn’t the whole ride.

Coyhaique is a major hub on the Carretera Austral and the capital of Chile’s Aysén Region. Almost every cyclist, hitchhiker, kayaker, and traveler eventually funnels into Coyhaique as it’s the last large city on the Carretera Austral south of Puerto Montt where the Southern Highway began. The further south we ride, the more remote it will be.

Although Coyhaique is surrounded by the most pristine wilderness areas, the city is among the highest in air pollution in Latin America due to the wood burning stoves. As such, the city has both a frontier and an urban feel to it.

It seems like it would be a good place to take a rest day but we are eager to get back on the road and save a zero day in case of bad weather. We’ve learned Patagonia with all her beauty can throw challenging weather at us at any time.

Digs for the night? We went all in at the Patagonia House. It. Was. Spectacular. And in every sense of the word.

One more tidbit. I finished listening to the audiobook entitled “A Wild Idea” by Jonathan Franklin about the life of Doug Tompkins. Spoiler alert… Tompkins did wayyy more than found The North Face.