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we blaze town of looks northern France than anything dreamt up by conqu i stadores ..... Puerto Octay, which more like Bavaria or into the lakeside Ii: a: S " '" o o (J :I: (J " z ..: a: IE a: '" w ~ o '" o ~ IE District, along the celebrated Futaleufu River and a jaunt on the legendary Carretera Austral. Finally we will return to Puerto Montt via Chiloe Island, the cultural heart of Chile. The route is a boxy loop of 600 miles with Puerto Montt at 10 o'clock on the clock face. "Two weeks!" protests a burly middle- aged Californian cyclist upon hearing our itine rary. He's been biking these roads for at least five months. Most travelers who make it this far south are on something of a walkabout, and the five· month crowd considers our pace manic. The Pan-American Highway begins in Alaska and nearly runs the north-south length of the globe with only a small break at Panama's Darien Gap. Riding the PanAm north out of town serves up none of the mystique of a legendary roadway, just a steady flow of heavy trucks which belch smoke as they rumble past. But we ditch the heavy road just 20 miles north of town and begin our eastward tack toward Argentina, only two days away. Winding along enormous Lake Llanquihue, we are aswim in rolling, sun-drenched green pastures with the odd farmhouse. EI Boliviano catches our first glimpse of the majestic Osorno Volcano, a picture-perfect, child's sketch of a peak, complete with jagged snowcap, and insists we try to ride up it. I pretend not to hear him, an old technique. A tiny yellow speck appears and catches the eye of EI Boliviano. He makes out the word Kuchen on a sign in front of a little shack. This is one of the modern remains of Chi le's European-descent colonos. Communities of German, Swiss and Belgian origin were actively encouraged by the young Chilean nation in the 1850S to emigrate and settle in the Lakes District. Chi le hoped that these Western Europeans would bolster the caucasian community and buttress industry at a time when the Araucanian Indians still resisted Chilean sovereignty. What's left today is a handful of seemingly displaced European communities, many of which still actively speak German several generations later. Through the shack window, Sigfried greets us in German, and hawks us slices of his kuchen, a dense German apple cake. He is delighted by EI Boliviano's ability to choke out some German and pays me no mind. On a divine downhill, as we blaze into the lakeside town of Puerto Octay, which looks more like Bavaria or northern France than anything dreamt up by conquistadores, I come to a Zen-like understanding of these Chilean roads. Lake District towns sit on lakes. Roads link towns. Where roads approach towns, they plunge down to the waterside. And when they again leave towns on lakes, they climb, climb, climb. Glorious downhills carry the burden of the knowledge that we will pay dearly in climbing for every meter we collect on the roll . In Puerto Octay, we beg help on how to get to what locals ca ll the "international highway," the one that will lead us to Argentina, and become acquainted with a Patagonian irony. In a place with so very few roads in total, navigation is harder than ever. And locals, who know the routes instinctively rather than by name, offer little coherent help. I ask one pug- faced man for help reaching the next town. "You're going to go out this way," he says. "Wait, this way?" I press. " ... and then ..... "Wait, which way?" "Uh-huh. And you're going to go for nine kilometers and then turn right and then there's a church." "Take a right where?" "Well, after nine kilometers and going toward Lago Rupanco." "Rupanco. Is there a sign?" "Well, I think there's a sign for Paullin." "Paullin? And is that toward the highway?" "You should go toward Rupanco." "And Paullin?" "No, Rupanco." "Hmmm." Two hours later, lost in the dark, we roll into a lakeside nook to camp. The next day, we'll cl imb 15 miles of relentless Chilean pavement and, if all goes well, will enter the Republic of Argentina by early afternoon. The climb begins immediately after passing through Chilean customs, a 31

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