Dear Family and Friends,
Here it is, the promised blog entry.
Hope you enjoy the pictures!
Alex and Ping
(slightly cold in Santiago...)
We WERE freezing in Santiago - five days ago...it's only taken me (Ping) that long to find another computer to finish this off...Alex is doing the next blog.
Wait for it...you won't be disappointed...
(ha!!)Well here we are...
First blog of our trip.
2nd blog post from the CyclingChile (CC) team.
Deciding we were ready to start travelling, we left Santiago behind, heading for the Pacific coast and the cultural capital of Chile, the town of Valparaiso.
This post tells the story up to the day we left Valparaiso.Leaving the very down-to-earth Santiago (a bizarre introduction to Chile indeed)...
In this episode:
- Demystifying global cuisine
- Jumping sea lions
- Not taking "no" for an answer
- Stealth camping in posh coastal resorts
- Getting told off about our carefee lifestyle
- Daring the Pacific ocean waves
- Sand riding
We are sitting on the ground in the midday shade of a palm tree. My girl gets up and walks back to the road to get something from the bikes.I watch her every step as in a slow motion sepia film. The light angle is ideal. The wind is still. There is no sound. Her every step feels heavy, intent, deliberate. A small puff of dust every time her boots lift up from the soil. There is something elemental in that dust. It's plain and it's honest. It's a sign that a human being has been there.
Leaving Huasco, we left behind the first hotel we stayed in so far this trip...it is so lovely to sleep on a bed, and not have to do contortionist acts just to get dressed in the morning.
What did we get up to during the first two weeks of waiting in San Pedro de Atacama for a tiny valve (for the stove)?San Pedro, the most touristy place we´ve been so far. We show up from the mountains, having cycled 300 km in four days and climbed over a 3400m pass, so we´re not quite prepared for the surreal "quaintness" of the place. Even the bank has its logo engraved in a wooden sign.
Exuberant to close off the San Pedro de Atacama chapter. We can finally move on.
Here´s what´s been happening.
We shall be silent for a few weeks, but we can promise a juicy next installment!
All the best,
Cyclingchile team(Part deux of the San Pedro de Atacama installment - big one since we spent one full month there)
Leaving San Pedro we battle with the elements to get to Bolivia. Then we had to contend with the Lagoon Route to get to the Salar de Uyuni, the largest salt flat in the world.
Despite nature´s attempts at sabotaging our trip, we survive to tell the tale...
The end of our episode in Bolivia.
The final few days, reaching the salar - a very surreal place. Harsh and unforgiving, I am not sure I can survive there for long. I think it´s even worse than the desert.
Hastily making our way down the country with whatever means available to us, we bump along for 1000km on buses. The trip continues on the island of Chiloe, seemingly a different world to the Chile we have seen so far...What have they done to the earth?
What have they done to our fair sister?
Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and bit her
Stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn
And tied her with fences and dragged her down
("When the music´s over" - The Doors)
Finally we arrive in Patagonia. We start to go further south on the famous Carretera Austral. We meet many, many cycle tourers. We branch out into hiking as a sub-specialist interest. Returning to the bikes we find some muscles we'd not known that we had before...Finally we have arrived in Patagonia! Only 10 hours later than advertised. Luckily sunset nowadays is well after 9pm, and we have nearly two hours to find somewhere to stay. We disembark the ferry in a flurry of great excitement. We and the bikes fly off the ramp with great aplomb, into...another sleepy village.
Leaving the tarmac behind us we enter the maze of sensations that Carretera Austral is. There is no need for a compass. South is the way to go.Leaving Cerro Castillo behind we enter the unpaved part of the Carretera Austral. 700km further South lies the end of the road, Villa O'Higgins. We have no idea what we'll do once we get there, but we have silently agreed to ride the length of the Carretera Austral.
Leaving Cochrane, we carry on south on the Carretera Austral. We reach the end of the road (Villa O'Higgins) and then get ready to carry on by boat & foot on our onward journey to the extreme south via Argentina.After recuperating in Cochrane's lovely central campsite, we continue South on the Carretera Austral. There is no question the rest of the way will be unpaved - the only question is how bad the road surface will be and how we will handle it.
Crossing from Chile to Argentina with style. An episode of pain, companionship and lots and lots of pushing.So here we are, in Villa O'Higgins, the end of the Carretera Austral. All this vibration has made a number of screws from our panniers and racks to loosen up. Some of them we don't notice in time and therefore lose. The end result is that we have depleted our stock of spare screws and are asking around Villa O'Higgins for anywhere we might be able to buy some.
Six months after our return from South America, the tale is continued - yes, we really are that behind in our blog posts.
In this episode we cycle through the Argentinian Pampa, in the Argentinian Patagonia, knowing that we are now near the end of our journey.Where has the time gone? We sadly no longer have the time to savour each day as we did during our travels and suddenly weeks and months fly by as we rush around our busy daily lives.
With only four days left to catch the plane back to Europe, we venture onto Tierra del Fuego - the Land of Fire - to visit a king penguin colony. We move in a pack of 6, enjoying the feeling of travelling in a group of seasoned cyclists. A better end to our journey could not be hoped for.Welcome to Tierra del Fuego!
