lake district

Never thought I d wish for good old fashioned mud dirt roads!! All gravel, like riding on marbles with corrigations at the moment with really strong side winds, hard work! Met a really nice family at the campsite though that have invited us to stay at their house in Buenos Aries. The ride to the Chile border was really nice, lots of monkey puzzle trees on the mountains, like a scene from jurassic park. Border crossing took ages, but this area is stunning, lakes, snow capped mountains, waterfalls, rivers and wild flowers all over. Campsites bit more expensive over the border and its raining which we keep getting told is not normal!

Theres lots of National Parks through this area and we had a fantastic ride through one called Conguillio. Theres a snow capped volcano that errupted 2 years ago and you can see all the larva flow devistation (thats what the photos of black stuff on flickr will be incase you cant tell !) Then we rode through the forest on a cool dirt road to see the lakes.

All the houses have changed to wood cabins, some huge posh ones and some just little huts. The poverty doesnt seem as bad here as a lot of areas we ve been through, maybe as its more touristy that helps, again it has a more Eruopeon feel about it. The campsites are a bit more expensive but usually nice we stayed in a really nice one and had it all to ourselves. The field behind us had fire flys in it at night, which I did think to start with was rather a lot of one eyed cats as there was quite a few cats on the site! We actually fed a pair of wild hawks in the site too with a bit of Tims steak which he wasn t very impressed with. Must just mention the Chile and Argentinean hairstyles, mullets and rats tails are definately in!!

Changed the tyres too, not a lot of chose over here but it had to be done! Om Pirelli sahara, seem ok but not as good as the MT s.