Our cycling journey on the Carretera Austral ended where most people begin, in northern Patagonia. Riding among the glacier-topped mountains and tranquil river valleys, we were reminded of the landscape’s darker side - natural disasters that recently wreaked havoc on isolated towns. We enjoyed cozy cabins that offered refuge between rainforest camps within pristine national parks. While ferries helped us continue our journey whenever the road ended at the edge of a deep river or fjord. And along the way we crossed paths with other cyclists from around the world, gaining inspiration from their stories and dreams of future adventures.

As we sailed across the Strait of Magellan, we left Tierra del Fuego behind. But we still had a lot of Patagonia ahead of us. After a quiet Christmas in the City of Red Roofs, we cycled back onto the Patagonian pampas - encountering some of the hemisphere’s biggest birds, and fields bursting with the pinks, yellows and purples of flowers in bloom. Then three days on stormy seas among the fjords of southern Chile brought us to a tiny town in a steep-sided cove, with no regular streets or sidewalks. Instead there were five miles of boardwalks, and the main part of town lay at the top of 20 flights of wooden stairs.