Audrey and Tristin try bikepacking

January 22, 2026 (wrote this yesterday)

Quick recap of our first leg of this great adventure; figured we should write something. It’s been a challenge getting into the groove of biking each day and feeling ~inspired~ to write afterwards, as we make whatever food we can find in our bag, set up camp, chat about what sucked or what was great about the day and head to rest. Maybe we’ll get better at it…

It is hard to believe that we left on this trip 17 days ago. We have fallen in to the rhythm of bike touring: Wake up, eat, slowly sip our coffee, pack up camp, ride, eat, ride, eat (repeat 3 more times), set up camp, eat, go to sleep.

After we finally made it to Bariloche, we met up with our friends, Hayden and Olivia, from back home, (who somehow are doing the same trip as us) and got to spend a couple days together putzing around before we started biking. On our last day in Bariloche, we camped at a large campground on Lago Gutierrez. We tossed the frisbee in the wind and sipped beers in the sand with Hayden and Olivia. Perfect way to chill before we get to sit on bike saddles every day. Turns out Audrey can drink Corona, even though she’s gluten free. (They don’t sell cider or seltzers here we came to find out. But wine is VERY cheap). The next day, we decided it was time to start officially riding. We made our way north, riding alongside a busy road with a gravel shoulder. We got caught in the rain and sheltered under a tree in front of a gas station, while two street dogs tried stealing our newly bought grocery store ham. We decided to just bike in the rain, making our way out of the the town into the new terrain ahead. We camped alongside Rio Limay, exhausted from our first full day of riding.

The next day, we rode the shoulder along a highway until we joined a gravel road that would take us over Paso del Cordoba. Before we started up the gravel road that would take us further and further away from humans, we stopped at a campground next to the river for a quick swim. We quickly met a couple who must’ve felt bad for us after seeing what we were eating, and gave us a burger, sprite, some oranges, and bread. Audrey kept saying that the landscape reminded her of Idaho, then Wyoming, then California, then Utah, then Oregon, then Colorado. Tristin thought it all just looks like Idaho. The further we went along the gravel road, the more beautiful the landscape became. The sun was setting on the green hills, and there were huge rock formations dotted along the hillsides. The sun was down and it finally cooled off. As we climbed up the pass, covered in dust and sweat and pushing our fully laden bikes, we began to realize how brutal this multi-month bikepacking trip would be. We slept on the side of the road at the top of the pass.

A few days of biking on dusty roads, getting passed by construction trucks, and dipping into rivers to cool down later, we made the descent into San Martin de los Andes, a quaint little tourist town at the end of Lago Lacar. Audrey said “looks like San Torini!” We stayed at our first Airbnb since biking and rested up. It was lovely to sleep in a bed and take showers. Our hands were so dry from from the dust, and our lips were endlessly chapped. The summer sun was relentless! The next day brought a rough ride against the wind in the beating sun on an endlessly brake-bumped gravel road over the Hua Hum pass. We kept saying “HOO-A HUMMM” and a local gave us a laugh for such bad pronunciaion. We went up and down so many times that day, it was a bit of a beating on our morale. That evening, Olivia and Hayden caught us, having just rode what we had in the past five days, in two. We were amazed, and surprised, to see that they caught up to us. Happy to see our friends, we laughed and chatted about how the journey had been for each of us so far.

The next morning, we rode with them across the border into Chile, where, after so many terrible gravel roads, we were struck by the smooth Chilean bike lane on the side of the paved road. Things were looking up. We took the hours long ferry from Pirihueco to Puerto Fuy. The next day we rode around Lago Riñihue on an epic, in-construction road that traversed the side of the steep terrain that rises from the lake. Once the lake ends, we get into area that seems like the country. We finally get to camp, several hours after Hayden and Olivia, despite them stopping for a few hours to fix Olivia’s flat. Seeing that we could not keep up with their break-neck pace, we watched them leave us the next morning, unsure if we would see them again on this trip. That day we rode through the Chilean countryside, and made it to Rio Bueno. This was our longest day of riding, 49 miles, as well as our 8th day of riding in a row. Audrey started feeling nauseous at dinner, and ended up throwing up that evening. She didn’t feel any better the next day so we stayed another night and rested. We checked out and grabbed some breakfast in town, and went to the park, where we waited to see if Audrey felt good enough to ride. After a puke in the park, we found another Airbnb in town to rest. The second place we stayed was managed by an elderly woman that lived on the property. She couldn’t quite grasp that we had no idea what she was saying, so every time she saw us she would trap us in another one sided conversation, with both of us laughing at the end, and us awkwardly walking away.

The following day, yesterday, Audrey was ready to ride, and we finally got out of Rio Bueno. We biked 35 miles to Entre Lagos, which welcomed us with views of two volcanoes that we saw from the plane weeks ago. It seemed like the place where the locals of Rio Bueno come to escape the heat. We sat by the lake and ate soft serve, Tristin ate an empanada, and Audrey tried eating salchipapas (French fries with a hotdog on top!) but could only get down the fries. We decided to bike another 10 miles to camp on the beach of Lago Rupanco. Animal sounds in the bushes kept us awake late into the night. We decided the next day it was a fox, as we saw it running along the beach into the bushes. We got a late start today and made it to Las Cascadas, a very small town on the north side of Lago Llanquihue, the second biggest lake in Chile. We are camped in the trees right by the beach. The wind is ripping and the lake swell is about two feet.

We’ve been on the go so much these last two weeks, and are hoping our pace slows down a bit and we can relax, as we begin the Carreterra Austral. There are so many details and stories we are excited to share eventually - for now I hope the pictures do some justice to fill in the blanks!

-Tristin and Audrey