Taking the Easy Road

Back in the Americas!  Felt a bit surreal coming back to the Western hemisphere and being in an ‘America’.  After a few hiccups getting well out of the Santiago area, we were cruising down the Ruta 5 getting in many productive days.  And by productive days I mean at least 140km, something we haven’t done since Australia.  New Zealand wanted us to take it slow. 

Chile has far exceeded my expectations.  It didn’t start off great though as coming out of Santiago cyclists are not allowed on the main highway, which has a nice, wide shoulder.  Instead we had to take secondary roads with little or no shoulder which effectively was much less safe in my opinion.  I saw one too many crosses on the sides of the road for my liking.  These secondary roads would end for us after a couple hundred kilometers as we were finally allowed on the highway.  Once on that Ruta 5, everything became in our favour and was easy.  We had a few days of tailwind, the road was pretty much flat and the shoulder super wide.  And it was good tarmac, sort of like how Thailand’s roads are where you can easily go fast.  So Chile, good on you. 

The food situation was okay as well.  They have decent sized supermarkets and the prices were alright.  Chile is one of the most expensive South American countries so I hope things will only get better.  I was excited to see dulce de leche on the shelves which is pretty much a caramel spread.  Quite yummy.  I think though the Argentines do it better.  So I’ll continue sampling when we are in Argentina. 

Trevor has been battling a cold these past few days so I have been distancing myself from him.  So far on this trip if one of us gets sick, the other would soon follow.  He is getting better and I haven’t felt anything coming down so I think I may have escaped this one.  Yay for me. 

We are closing in on Argentina and will enter the country tomorrow after climbing up the Andes.  

Welcome to Santiago de Chile!  I had to get some maintenance done on my bike before hitting the road.  Basically my front wheel was wobbling due to worn out bearings and I needed a new cable and housing.  I was worried going into the city that I wouldn’t get decent stuff.  Well, I was wrong.  We found a bike mechanic and I explained my ordeal to him thinking he would sell me a new front wheel.  But nope, he fixed my front wheel by I guess replacing the bearings.  Now it rides fine.  Funny how developed nations would look at my wheel and say I need to buy a whole new wheel as fixing it wouldn’t be economically practical and the developing nations will fix the thing for pretty much nothing and on the spot.  I rode out of there with a fixed front wheel, new housing and a new cable for less than $6USD.  My bike is riding quite smoothly now and it is pretty sweet.  So if you are a cyclist and need some work done in Santiago, I suggest Adrian Cardenas at Fox Racing Shox. 

Tarantula time!  I remember trying hard not to run them over in Mexico and now they have returned, except the ones in Mexico we saw were black and this one was fully brown as you can see.  Anyway, this was the only sighting and Trevor was a little annoyed at me because he said I saved this one from being squashed.  As I approached closer to it to take its picture, the oncoming semi-trucks veered to the center of the road thus missing flattening this guy like a pancake.  So you are very welcome tarantula.

Trevor who is all business, you have just hit the 2^nd antipodal point on this trip and thus completing going around the world on your bicycle!  Congratulations!  Would it hurt to smile?  All kidding aside, this spot, which is just some spot on the side of the road about 150km southwest of Santiago is the exact opposite point on planet Earth to some point we cycled by exiting Xian, China .  So if I dug a hole from here straight down for many, many, many miles, I would end up in the spot we cycled by just outside of Xian.  This would also fulfill my childhood dream of digging a hole to China.  I tried very hard and thought I had made good progress but never did get to China that way.  Many years later I found out about airplanes and decided that would be a more efficient way.  Then many years after that I thought why not just cycle there.    

Ruta 5 may have been good to us but it actually can be a bit dangerous.  We passed by two pretty bad accidents back to back one day.  This one shown held up a long line of vehicles waiting for hours for this accident to get cleared up.  There were maybe 3 or 4 vehicles involved in this crash.  We rode by and then had the whole highway to ourselves until we were stopped a few kilometers down the road where workers were lifting up a big smashed up truck that drove off a bridge.  These two incidents had both of us quite concerned about taking the highway.  But as we proceeded south it kept getting better and less busy.

Here is the second accident… not pretty. 

Another freebie fruit find!  This time delicious purple grapes.  I love grapes, especially when they are free, so I was very pleased with this find.  We picked a few bags of grapes from vines along the roadside.  True they were next to an orchard which looked to be for wine making but these were alongside the road so they were fair game.  I looked at all the grapes being grown and thought to myself what a waste.  All of them will go towards making wine.  I am probably an odd one out here but grapes are so much better just as grapes, not wine. 

Saying farewell to Ruta 5 to head inland for the Lakes District.  Look at that flat, smooth road but more importantly the nice, wide shoulder.  Countries who do not have hard shoulders, take note.

Today we took most of the day off in Pucon as I wanted to climb Villarrica Volcano, an active, cone shaped stratovolcano standing at 2847m in the Andes that spews hot lava from time to time.  I get excited just writing about it.  I couldn’t sell Trevor on joining as he has been put off by mountain climbing since our summit of Cotopaxi in Ecuador last year.  We had horrible weather conditions going up that mountain and it was by far the toughest climb we have both ever done.  Not for the novice I would say and Trevor was a novice.  So he gave this one a miss even though I assured him it would be better and it was about half the height so he wouldn’t get super cold and altitude sickness.  But he decided to pass and rest up since he was still battling a cold.  Fair enough.  Although I guess good for me since given our track record on climbing mountains together, Cotopaxi being pretty much the only one, the weather has been crap.  Usually when I climb solo, I get good weather.  So he may be bad luck for me, who knows.  Anyway, the day was superb, weather spectacular.  Trevor, if and when you ever read this, you missed out.  Look at that view.  Look at it!  I could see Argentina in the distance and could map out where we would be cycling later in the day and even the next day.  Who needs your GPS when I have an aerial view?  Psfft.      

And check out the crater!  So <insert expletive>ing cool.  Steam coming out from below and the glaciers all around.  Pretty sweet.    

All smiles on top.  Great climb and descent which included some glacier traversing and glissading.  Good times.  It wasn’t very demanding and the clear, sunny weather made a world of a difference.