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

This picture doesn´t even begin to tell the story of the cha´lla, the blessing of the automobiles, on weekends in front of the cathedral.

First-imagine a hundred vehicles, all crammed together and lined up end to end, spanning about a block and a half. At one end there are enterprising boys with buckets of soap water, offering to clean your car before it gets blessed. Along the sidewalks are stalls with women selling all manner of floral decorations, champagne, fire crackers, and plastic gee-gaws. Every car has a family surrounding it, arguing about where to put the flowers, the gew-gaws, what kind of fire crackers to buy, and whether champagne or beer is more appropriate.

Then there are the priests-with buckets of holy water. They go down the line, flicking holy water on every part of the car, the engine, the mirrors, the old ladies who happen to be standing next to the cars, and all the car owners. A quick prayer is said, and the priest moves on.

Meanwhile, the whole family shakes up some bottles of champagne, throws bags and bags of rose petals, sprays the champagne on every inch of the car that didn´t get covered with holy water, sets off fire crackers, poses for pictures with the dressed up, shiny, soaked, newly blessed car.

Finally, the vehicles somehow manage to leave the incredible gridlock that is the center of town.

Needless to say, I thought the cha´lla was pretty awesome.

The Andes are extremely high mountains.
It´s not entirely obvious when you´re on the altiplano, which looks a lot like the high deserts of the southwestern US. Those are also high. Basins around a mile high, ranges around twice that high. The altiplano isn´t very basin-and-range-ish. It´s mostly flat, and the mountains that poke up out of it are either humble rolling hills, enormous rugged teeth, or perfectly-shaped strato-volcanos.
As I´ve said, you just need to try to breath to realize you´re pretty high. But it all looks so flat that it´s hard to believe. Which is why I was so excited to experience just HOW high we´ve been by riding from the altiplano to the Pacific. Is there anywhere else in the world where you can ride from 15,350´to sea level in 189 kilometers, and on PAVEMENT no less? I kind of doubt it, but let me know if you know otherwise.
First we had to get out of Bolivia. The town of Tambo Quemado is just a customs office, a few restaurants, & a gas station at 14,100´. Volcan Sajama, which is something like 23,000´tall, dominates the stark surroundings. The south face of Sajama reminded me enough of the North face of Mt. Hood that my heart ached. The scale was about the same too. But Mt. Hood starts about 12,000´lower. Wow, y´know?
Most of the traffic from Chile is trucks carrying new automobiles. Most of the west-bound traffic is buses and empty automobile-carrying trucks. Add to this two bike tourists crawling their way up the 7-km climb to the frontier.
As we neared the top these two similar-sized white volanoes reared up to the north. They looked almost exactly like the pictures of mountains that I often drew in crayon when I was in second grade. Even more than Oregon´s Middle & South Sister do. To the south another volcano showed off it´s activity with a thin, constant jet of steam. And then we reached the border, at 15,350´. Nothing but volcanos and signs warning us in four languages to stay on the road because there´s land-mines everywhere else. Apparently there´s been some border disputes in the last century. I wonder, do the vicuñas ever set them off?
Chilean customs is 5 km further, next to one of the highest lakes in the world. Flamingos, goose-sized long-legged black ducks, and about five other entirely unfamiliar kinds of waterfowl reside in the shallows. Vicuñas abounded. The most perfect of the volcanos rules the scene like a cold, impartial, impossibly large diety. I tried to swim there but the water refused to get any deeper than my knees by the time I was far enough out for my toes started to go numb. Darn, swimming at 15,000 would have been neat!
It was, all-in-all, the most etherial place I´ve ever been. The colors were wierd. But I was a little out-of-it from breathing so hard.
Moving on, we had to camp without loosing any of our altitude. Sleeping at 15,100´. My personal record. Ouch! I´m surprised we slept at all. Thank you Ibuprofen. Good óle Vitamin I to the rescue.
That night it got down to 9 degrees. No, not centigrade. 9 degrees F. Another personal record. Double ouch!
Our food situation was rather weak too. Customs wouldn´t allow us to carry any fruits, veggies, spices, or meats into Chile and there was no town or store. Quinoa, bullion, powdered milk, & canned tuna got really old really fast, but at least we had plenty of it.
The next day we only got down to 12,000´. We went down some, then across a flat basin, then climbed again. I had the sense we were near the edge of it all, but it took awhile for the real descending to begin. Finally we dropped into a canyon and followed the icy creek for awhile as the walls grew to our sides. Then we emerged on a plateau of sorts and could just tell from the color of the sky below us that the ends of the earth lay down there. Sweet! A gorgeous alpine descent lasting 10 km reinforced the notion. But THEN we had to climb another thousand feet. No fair!
The road continued to snake across rather than down the mountainside until the next morning. Then we lost another 2,000´ before finding ouselves riding across an extremely dry desert for a couple hours. The cordillera rose like a wall behind us. We managed to buy a few vegetables at the only town on the whole road, and got 30 lbs. of water at the only creek.
We lost another thousand feet and entered an area that looks alot like southern Arizona, minus all the vegetation. Then we left the planet Earth and rode through a Martian valley. I mean, except for the blue sky it looked like Mars. ZERO vegetation. I´ve never seen a drier, more dead place. Isn´t there an ocean nearby? What gives?
The next few hours were an exercise in wearing out brake pads. The valley got drier and warmer, became a canyon, and just kept going down. We lost 5,000´in that canyon. I had two tubes fail at the valves from using too much front brake. (Yes Brett, that´s my diagnosis!) The air got soupy. The only life was the rather large Candelabra Cacti, which get their water exclusively from the fog that rises from the sea. It never rains there. Ever.
The canyon finally ended and we crossed a plateau of stark stark desert. Then a vivid memory of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina popped into my head. Wierd. Oh no, that´s why! ¨Hey, do you smell that?¨
“Is that the ocean?”
“Yeah!”
We were still over a mile above sea level though.
Soon a canyon around a mile deep opened up below us. It´s walls were entirely covered with sand. They look exactly like mile-high sand dunes. It must blow all the way in from the coast. The floor of the valley was green irrigated fields with a river snaking down the middle. The road down was a ribbon of pavement that seemed to belong in Egypt. We spent the night next to the river, still 40 km from the coast, breathing.
I love me some oxygen!
So now we´re wrapping up a few days in Arica, where we ate good food and caught some waves on our thermarests. From here we´re bussing it to Valparaiso, since we´ve gotta fly home in a couple weeks.
Pictures will be posted soon, promise!
Hasta,
-Andy

La Isla-A beautiful, magical place.

The island is about 2 hours away from Copacabana by boat, and it´s incredibly easy to arrange transportation too and from the island. There are about 2500 full-time residents, and they survive by agriculture, fishing, and these days, tourism.

There are no cars on the island. There are no roads. There are very well used and somewhat maintained trails, and burros and llamas seem to be the primary movers of goods.

We got to play in an ancient city and touch the stone that features prominently in the Inca creation myth. The sun and the moon came from the lake, you see, and the lake is called Lago Titicaca, or Titikarka, because “ti” means puma, or cat, and “karka” means rock, and the famous rock with the face of the puma is next to the face of god, which is next to the nooks where the sun and moon were found. Surely that makes total sense. It was all gorgeous.

The hike from the north end of the island to the south involved climbing over peaks as high as 13,350′, and although on a trail, was still a tough hike. I´m so very glad we left the bikes in Copacabana! As we were leaving, we saw three european bike tourists unloading their bikes on the dock at the south end of the isla.

Now, we had just run to catch our boat, and somewhat misjudged just how far above the dock we were. We ran down, and down, and down, and down, and down, and down, and down some more. My heart broke for their backs, as there was Absolutely No Way to ride anywhere until you got to the top of the island. They had to haul their bikes up an incredibly long, steep set of stairs. Long hike at least 2k, 500 feet sort of long. Bummer.

Anyway, I am so glad to have seen it, and we will post pictures as soon as we can.