Michael heads out of the forests as his tour of Chile continues ..... Coyhaique was wet. Galedriven curtains of rain turned its streets to water courses. The day-long leaden cloud cover opened once, dramatically: thunder rolled and a mountain appeared - conical, snow-plastered, framed within a perfect rainbow . . . and was gone. It was cold, too. Only ninety miles from the Patagonian icecap. Still, I liked this place, the first town of any size since leaving Puerto Montt. Things here went at a leisurely pace: traffic crawled, policemen plodded. Everything took time: getting money from the bank or information from the visitor centre, shopping . . . All of it was a relaxed pleasure. Needing some hoseclips to
secure the front pannier rack, I found a hardware store. Forget self-service and barcode checkouts. An assistant fetched the clips from stock then gave me two copies of a triplicate docket which I took, with payment, to a lady in her cash kiosk; she stamped one with authorisation to collect the clips from another counter where they were already wrapped and waiting.