The Daylong
Challenge

South through Brazil

While they had cycled long-distance tours before, including the 1,500 km journey across the UK in winter, this would be the biggest cycling challenge that they had set for themselves. They deliberately chose a route taking them through the central regions of the southern states, avoiding the state capitals and the associated traffic. But the amount of hill climbing that this led to meant that it was no easy trade-off…

In cycling across South America we embarked on what was one of our most memorable journeys. Not just for the spectacular landscape, but for the people we met along the way. In many of the places we passed through, we stayed at the houses of people we met through Warm Showers and Couch Surfing – people who were kind enough to host us for one and sometimes even two nights and show us around the places where they live. So many fond memories though it is sad knowing that it may be difficult to see the friends we made again. The days in Jaguariaiva with Oswaldinho and his family were amazing, and then Matheus as we went further south, and so many others…

And yes, it was a challenge! For me, the hardest part was going through Brazil – and not, to many people’s surprise, the Andes. Brazil was a constant up-and-down with many consecutive days of 1,500m or more of cumulative climbing. Then there were the temperatures, which ranged between 35C and 40C (almost 100F), and the intense sun, which was cruel especially on the days where we had to ride through the midday hours in order to reach our planned destination.

It was always good reaching the state boundaries as we went further south… first Parana, then Santa Catarina and finally Rio Grande do Sul before the border with Uruguay. Ticking off the states and seeing the distances we were making – it always felt like good progress was made, and it was interesting seeing how the country changed as we went further and further away from São Paulo.

We also had some of the more terrific storms we had seen while cycling. Getting further south, in a small town near Santa Maria… we could see the clouds closing in but nothing really prepared us for the deluge that followed. We were forced to seek shelter in the town, and in a lull we managed to get to a service station, where we stayed the next couple of hours before eventually finding a place to stay. It was best to call it a day!

Across Uruguay and then Argentina

The journey through Uruguay and then Argentina to Mendoza at the edge of the Andes took around 15 days in total and included one of the toughest days of the entire journey…

One of the hardest but most rewarding days was in Uruguay, however. We needed to get to Colonia del Sacramento in order to get the ferry to Buenos Aires by a specific day due to an event organised by our sponsors. On the preceding day we had only managed to make it as far as a place called Durazno as spokes on my rear wheel had broken and were very hard to change, because of the gear hub. We tried stopping in a small village where a couple of elderly gentlemen tried to help us even though we didn’t have the tools or the experience in taking the hub off to change the spoke… needless to say, matters were made worse, and we just about limped to Durazno by the end of the day…

Durazno was more than 200km away from Colonia… but we had to do it! So off we left, 4am, around 0C; the terrain changed from previous flats to very hilly, and the temperatures reached up to 35C during the midday hours. But we made it – exhausted – just in time to get the last boat over. It was difficult to stop smiling as we got on the boat.

As we went directly west through Argentina after a couple of days in Buenos Aires, the terrain was flat and pretty monotonous. Ruta 7, the main route from BA to Mendoza was long and straight, with just the occasional set of curves as it went past the different towns. We were a little lucky – while we did have a couple of bad weather days, areas that we had cycled through only one or two days beforehand experienced flooding because of the rain. We were fortunate to miss this for sure, though it was sad thinking about spectacular towns like Lujan that we had been through getting flooded.

It stayed flat for a good 700km or so until we started to approach Mendoza, but from there we could see the Andes gradually fading into view – it wasn’t like they slowly appeared above the horizon; rather, they just faded through the haze in the distance and we could gradually see the outlines of the mountains becoming stronger and stronger, and the snow-capped peaks gradually started to shine as we saw the final boundary between us and Chile.

The final hurdle: up and over

The hop from Mendoza to Santiago, crossing the Andes. While this was the shortest leg of the journey, climbing up to 3,200 m for the pass was still tiring – though the spectacular views of the Andean peaks above it were worth every effort we had put in to get so far.

Seeing the Andes fading into view ahead of us as we cycled into Mendoza was wonderful, beautiful, exciting and intimidating at the same time, especially as the thought that “we have to cycle over them??” was top of both of our minds. For want of another phrase, they did literally tower over us.

We had a day’s rest in Mendoza, and we did use it to the maximum: relaxing as much as possible. Unfortunately we weren’t really inclined to go to any of the vineyards as we knew we had a tough day climbing the following day. It was sad though, when we did leave, seeing all the vineyards and their restaurants by the side of the highway; wishing we could maybe just try a little. Ah well.

The climb up into the mountains was not, however, too hard. It was just a gradual ascent and not too steep – it was just constant. Brazil seemed much harder as there we would have so many steep climbs in one day. It took us about four days or so, and the day getting into Chile saw us spend a good two hours or so at immigration and customs making sure that we didn’t have any illegal foods with us (pretty much anything, it felt like!). But after that it was… all downhill! Down through Las Curvas – a road that had goodness-knows how many hairpin turns. It was so steep and the corners were so tight, it was impossible to go fast, and hands were kept firmly on the brakes.

When we got to Los Andes – the final town before Santiago – we saw that Natalia’s front wheel had suffered irreparable damage and it wasn’t certain for how long it would last. The only solution was to minimise weight on it. Fortunately, we had a great friend in Santiago, William, who was able to come over in the morning to meet us and take some of our non-essential baggage with him, to reduce the weight on the wheels. Our saviour! Was great to finally make it in Santiago that evening and relax with Will over a beer. We had done it!