Chung Wah
When I was a child, there was a Chinese takeaway shop just up the road from us. It was a real hole-in-the-wall type of place, a high counter opening to the street, where you placed your order. Run by Cantonese people, it sold both European and Chinese takeaway food. The Chinese food was probably that version that seems to get sold to Westerners, but not within China, but that's by the by.
On a Friday night, we would frequently cook some steak on the BBQ, and get some chips to go with it. All well and good, but I could never understand the quality of the chips that Chung Wah produced. By all appearances, this was a very successful business, and operated there for many years. But the chips were horrible nasty greasy things, soggy and disgusting. I am aware of certain guidelines on how to produce quality potato chips, involving things like temperatures, oil, time, etc., and I'm pretty sure that Chung Wah didn't follow any of them. But people kept going back. After some time I managed to convince the family to frequent Adriatic Fisheries instead, which produced decent chips. I should also note that Chung Wah has now been replaced by "Great Wall Takeaways," which produces a similar line, but in a nicer shop, and they do know how to make good quality chips. A special tip: When ordering chips there, use "Jackson" as the pick-up name for an extra large serving.
Now the reason I bring this up is because by and large, the potato chips (or French fries, or papas fritas) are appalling. Even Chung Wah would be embarrassed by some of them. Chilean food is pretty poor generally - even some Argentinians were complaining to me about it the other day - and chips are fairly prevalent. But they seem to have no idea what decent chips look like. Until here. I'm not sure what it is, probably something to do with the far more mixed heritage of Punta Arenas, but I have either eaten or seen, at at least 6 different establishments, potato chips worthy of the name. True, they aren't "Mr Chips chips, mister," but they are pretty good. If only I could get them to consistently bring me the Aussie Gravy when I do order chips, I would be sorted. My Spanish is sufficient for most restaurant/bar situations though, so it's no big deal.
The ferry from here to Porvenir, Tierra del Fuego, doesn't run on Mondays. So I have had four days off here, not doing a huge amount. Had a broken bolt on the bike, found a bike shop, the helpful owner took me up the road to a engineering shop. No problems, we can sort that. So I pick up the bike an hour later, and as I'm putting the rack back together, I snap another bolt. So I'm back at the machine shop in half an hour, with a wry grin the engineer takes the bike from me again. This time it was a bit trickier, the blowtorch was required, as there was Loc-Tite on the bolt, making it almost impossible to remove without heat. Going to have to get some touch-up paint on that. But it's now sorted, and hopefully that will be the last broken bolt for this trip.
Tomorrow I'll head to Porvenir, weather permitting. A 2.5 hour ferry ride, then a couple of days of gravel road riding, then a few days of tarmac to get to Ushuaia. Almost the end...will have a look at the wind, and decide if Ushuaia will be the end of riding in South America, or if there might just be a bit more. The engineer was telling me about 200km/h winds just a bit further up the coast...
A few photos from around Punta Arenas, taken with the new camera:
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Indoors
In a real bed! With a TV! And central heating, no less (excellent for drying clothes). Sheer luxury I tell you, here in Punta Arenas.
Not bad, since I woke up that morning in a gravel pit, by the side of the road, only 3 degrees in the tent. Took a crap in view of northbound trucks (luckily not that many at that time of day). Then rode most of the day in crosswinds, apart from when it started hailing. Rain I can handle, since I was wearing all my rain gear as protection against the wind. But hail stinging a main in the face does wear you down.
Captain Stokes, the first captain of the Beagle killed himself not far from here, writing beforehand:
"In the south...a man's soul dies within him."
Now it didn't all work out badly in the end, because he was replaced by
Robert Fitzroy, who would choose a young Charles Darwin to accompany him on his next voyage. And I am certainly not in the same situation as Captain Stokes. But I tell you...if I had to spend years sailing around here, dealing with day after day after day of gales, sleet, hail, snow, rain, well...I could understand his choice of exit.
This Thing of Darkness is an outstanding book about the Beagle, I highly recommend it.
I rode down from Puerto Natales in a couple of days, with the winds being more manageable in this direction. I met an American couple who had been on the road five days, and now had 35km (out of 245) left to go. Here's some free advice for would-be bike tourists in Patagonia:
- Do some research into the wind! Do not ride north or west, unless you have an astonishingly good reason to.
- Get some decent wet weather gear. Yes cold is a problem, but rain is a constant too.
- Do not, under any circumstances, take your girlfriend on her first bike tour to Patagonia. Take her to France, or South East Asia, or Switzerland. Nice, easy, non relationship-breaking. I have met several couples where she has given up on the bike, and gone onto the bus. If this is their first experience of bike touring, why would they come back?
- Get a decent bike, and test your gear out first. I've seen plenty of bikes broken by the ripio. Mine too, but so far only minor.
So since I'm staying in a nice place, and it's a reasonable town, I've decided to stay a few days. Riding in Patagonia has taken a lot out of me (or maybe I didn't put enough in?) and I need the rest. 3 days off would have been enough, but due to ferry timetables, I will have to take 4 days off. Plenty of shopping around here, and I needed to get a replacement camera. I could get a new GPS - same model as before, or a shiny new touchscreen one - but the prices are too high. Even at the duty free area, the prices for cameras were a little high. Annoyingly, they're also refurbished ones, although you don't find that out until later. Oh well. It's still better than the one I had.
I've also been eyeing up a netbook, as there are so many for sale here. Around $400-$500USD for a reasonable little notebook computer, it's very tempting. But given the weather, the roads, and my propensity to get stuff stolen, I think I'll hold off on that. It can wait until the next trip, when the iPad has taken over the world.
A final note: Google is removing the FTP publishing feature I use for this site, to publish content to northlandboy.com/blog. They want to further assimilate me, and host the blog at blog.northlandboy.com. It's something I could really have done without, especially since they've not given us much notice, and these things are always a pain to sort out on the road. So I'm going to have to look at my options, possibly move to Wordpress. The timing is bad - if it was a month later, I could get it all sorted when I get home, but instead I may have to migrate, then shift again later. Argh. You get what you pay for. Anyways, there will be some changes over the next few weeks - if it all goes well, you shouldn't notice too much difference, although RSS feeds will probably need updating. Will let you know.
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