Chile

Soggy bark. Bearded moss. Dripping wet. Silver misty droplets. Squelching mud. Soaked hair, hands, feet. And the sky, a constant drizzle, grey.

Six days of constant rain and wild camping, and my fingers and toes and skin are wrinkled, as though I live in a bath.

After a month of no rain in Argentina, the dry harsh air had traced light dusty, spider-webbed marks all over my skin. Now after 6 days in Chile I feel like I´m becoming an amphibian. Only that I have less inclination to crawl back into a cold wet tent than a toad perhaps might have.

I stop at a shop in Mañihuales. "This may be a strange question," I say "But I´m looking for the ummm... the cyclist hunter?"

"Aaah, Jorge! El cazador de ciclistas! La casa de ciclistas!" And they draw me a map to his house, and I arrive on a bicycle laden with things dripping wet and soaking.

When the door opens I don´t say anything. Jorge smiles a real smile and hugs me and tells me that I´m the first cyclist of the year. And his wife Diana and daughter Nickole come to greet me. "Come in, bring you´re bike, this is the kitchen, there´s a shower and hot water - you can wash and dry your clothes. This room´s used as a church, but not until the weekend. Help yourself to cake. Do you want a cup of tea? This is your house - you musn´t pay anything. We´re happy to have you here."

And in such warmth, in the cold wet grey of the Carretera Austral in early spring, I make myself at home in Jorge´s house, and flick through the pages of messages left by the many cyclists who have stayed there over the last three years, and begin to write my own.