Hi all!
Greetings from Santiago, Chile. We’ve done some bike riding to get here, but most of the ground was covered by bus. Tomorrow we’re taking a bus to Buenos Aires, Argentina. It’ll get us there six days before we fly home, but there’s a rather impressive mountain range just to the east of us called the Andes, and the pass we need to cross was closed by snow just a few days ago. It’s open now, but we gotta get over the cordillera while we can.
It’s a bit of a shame. I like Santiago already. But on the plus side the bus will only be 23 hours long!
The bus down here from Arica was over 30 hours long. They served us food, which was good. But it was five consecutive “meals” of cookies, cake, and sugary “juice”. We ended up rather hungry. The countryside was amazing though. Not all that pretty, but for the first thousand kilometers or so, absurdly dry. On one side, the ocean. On the other side, lifeless desert. Sand, rock, dust. Even the valleys were brown and bone dry. Who knew?
We got off just to the north of Valparaiso, the hilly city on the sea. It reminded me alot of San Francisco. Steep hills with a heavy cultural emphasis on artsiness, angst-ridden-youthfullness, creativity, and grafitti. Oh man, there’s grafitti almost everywhere. I’m generally not much of a fan of graffiti art, but in Valpo (as they call it) it’s more, shall we say, community supported. Lots of stuff that’s clearly not done in the dead of night by kids with ego issues. Some of it’s big murals, but much of it’s tiny details in corners and such. People also paint their homes very colorfully. And they’ve got these conveyances called ascensors, which are like an elevator that takes you up the many hills. Kinda like a gondola on the ground. All in all a fascinating, beautiful city. Easy to fall for Valpo. Easy to fall down the steps in Valpo too!
So after a couple days there, which wasn’t enough but cities cost lots of money, we rode out towards Santiago. Two long days on the road led us through the heart of Chilean wine country. We passed a few vineyards we recognized, for Chilean wine is quite a bargain in our tax bracket. This was to be our last actual bike touring of the trip, unless we mosey around Buenos Aires a bit. Seems unlikely. So choosing our last campsite was rather special. It didn’t end up being all that spectacular- just a flat spot in amongst scrubby trees on some property used primarily by cattle - but it was safe, secluded, and perfectly private. Slealth-camping at it’s best. We stayed up looking at the southern constelations that’ve been our night-time companions for these last four months, knowing we won’t see much of them from the big capital cities where we’ll spend the rest of our time. I’ll miss them. But I do kinda miss the Big Dipper and Scorpio and the rest of the Polaris gang too.
We’ll be camping plenty in the coming months anyways!
Santiago sits at the foot of the Andes just south of Cerro Aconcagua (the highest point in the Americas). It’s got awesome bicycle and pedestrian facilities. An Oregonian bicycle safety teacher like me might occasionally have it up to here with Amsterdam this and Amsterdam that, like there’s nobody else in the world putting in creative, effective bike paths. When it comes to bicycle transportation, South America in general seems to get it. These countries ain’t rich like some in the E.U. or the States, but there’s tons of folks getting around by bike and transporting goods by cargo bike. It reminds me just how world-wide bicycle use is. As you might imagine, it makes me happy!
Well, that’s about that up until now. We really like Chile. We’ll be happy to get back to Argentina too. Definately plan to post more pictures when we get there, but for tonight….
Buenos Noches!
-Andy