Chile

[26. November 2008]

Our welcome in Chile was a difficult one. Not only did we for the first time meet unfriendly and very bored customs officers, the first hours in our first Chilean city, Copiapo, were also not how we had imagined it. We went looking for a hotel room and were shocked by the prices. We knew everything will be more expensive in Chile, but 18 Dollars for the cheapest room, a very basic room with ultrathin walls towards the snoring neighbor and a dirty shared bathroom? We had no choice; we were too tired to look for another place after this monster day.

In Argentina it was the excitement about the camp spots and the families we stayed at that made us avoid hotel rooms. In Chile it was due to the ridiculous prices. In the month since we entered Argentina up to now we only three times slept in a hotel room, one of which was an invitation by a friend of the family we visited in Conception. The rest of it we stayed at the homes of friends, at Couchsurfing places, on camp spots, in our tent behind highway rest areas or in the shelters on Paso San Francisco.

The need to find places to stay other than hotels makes travelling a little more complicated but definitely a lot more interesting. When we reached the swanky beach resort of Papudo in the north of Santiago, prices of hotel rooms were even more out of range than otherwise in northern Chile. Hotels did not even want to let us take a shower so we could later go and sleep on the beach just in our sleeping bags. We had heard of other bikers who often go to ask at the local police or firefighters for a place to stay for a night. We tried our luck and were very lucky! The voluntary firefighters welcomed us warmly in their modern building. We only asked for a place to put our sleeping pads but were offered the following: own room with two beds and cable TV, kitchen to use and a game room with table tennis and pool table… All for free, wow!

We had no idea of how Chile would be before we came here. Of many other countries we had heard so many stories and seen tons of pictures, we already knew them a bit before we traveled there. Of Chile we did not know a lot and there was a big potential for surprises. We are very positively surprised, especially by the people. Chileans are very friendly. People were friendly too in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia but here people are more active, more open-minded, a lot more appealing to us. We enjoy travelling here as we can be sure we are greeted with a smile whenever we enter a shop or ask for a place to stay for the night.

Copiapo still lies in the Atacama desert, the vast and dry north of Chile. The area here is known to be a place where bike travelers do not want to go. Endless stretches of road, just the Panamericana to ride, the main highway with a lot of truck traffic. The reasons why we came here are: riding the Paso San Francisco and visiting Santiago, the Chilean lakes and the coast. We were mentally well prepared for some days of “riding without thinking”. After the nice time in Argentina and the hundreds of impressions of the Paso San Francisco we didn’t care to spend some days on a “lower level”. If all stretches of our trip were breathtakingly beautiful we would surely not know to appreciate them enough anymore.

We needed the good mental preparation and we needed our MP3 players and the audio books on them a lot. The road was not boring, it was terribly hilly! Steep up, steep down. Always. Often the sky was covered by a nasty clouds-fog-mix and the temperatures were pretty chilly in the mornings. What helped to motivate us was the fact that the traffic was not that heavy and the truck drivers had so much fun when they saw us, many of them smiled, waved to us, sent a friendly honk. We liked that a lot. Only on day seven on the Panamericana did we run out of patience and the hill-fog-conditions. Perfect timing as on this very day we could leave the highway and take a beautiful coastal road that led us along beach resorts and little villages. The desert turned into green, there were flowers and a lots of green now besides the road.

[26. November 2008]

Center of beach activities in the north of Santiago are Viña del Mar and Valparaiso, two cities dominated by tourism and summer feeling. A good friend of Sylvain, the French guy we learned to know in the Baja California (remember, Las Gaviotas…), lives here with his Chilean girl friend and we were invited to spend some days at their place. What does a biker need after seven days of hard and rather boring riding in the desert? Good food, nice people, party! It doesn’t get any better than what Fabien and Cothe gave us during the four days we stayed with them. We visited the famous hills of Valparaiso, ate marvelous seafood at the beachfront, went to the Casino to play Black Jack (and won, of course, which resulted in many free drinks that night) and cooked Swiss food at the place of their friends. Infected by the Black Jack virus the next night we played a private tournament at home, played and played, till five in the morning. Thank you Fabien and Cothe for the wonderful time we could spend with you!

The 120 kilometers from Viña del Mar to Santiago would be doable in one day, if, if we did not go to bed at seven the day we planned to leave… We therefore took two days and spent one night on one of the marvelous truck rest areas with free hot showers and a guard for the night.

Santiago lies only some 80 km away from the sea but the climate is completely different from that in Viña del Mar. The influence of the cold sea (Humboldt stream) cannot be felt here anymore and we therefore enjoy perfectly warm summer temperatures and only need to wear a T-shirt when we go out in the evening. Summer!

We are invited by the sister of a guy who we learned to know in Mexico and her husband. Together we enjoy the nice night temperatures while sitting on one of the many squares of Santiago, eating a “Completo” (hot dog with tomatoes and avocado) and drinking a beer or two. On the evening we cooked a “Swiss” Lasagne for our hosts they introduced us into the world of the famous Chilean wines. Even we amateurs could tell that this was good stuff we were drinking there…

Having spent some days in Viña we spend a little less time now in Santiago. The beautiful south of Chile is waiting, the green and flowers, the wine and volcanoes, the lakes and many beautiful roads to ride.

[12. Dec 2008]

Making miles in Chile part two. The highway after Santiago looks exactly the same as it looks before: two lanes for cars and trucks and a great shoulder for us. Again the ride was not a nice one but again it was easier than what we’d expected from what we’ve heard. The hills were gone, only the heavy traffic for the first two days after Santiago and the nasty headwind would not have been necessary.

For six days we did not only cycle on this highway, we also spent our nights there. Twice on the nice rest areas for truck drivers – with hot showers, twice behind a restaurant and once behind a gas station. Sounds pretty bad, no? Somehow it wasn’t. In the south there was hardly any traffic anymore and the landscape turned from greenish into very nicely green. We plugged our headphones, put on some interesting audio books and flew towards the south.

In Temuco the first bed for us since weeks was waiting – at least for Pius who won the deciding rock-paper-scissors game. We stayed at the tiny house of the family of Jordan, a bike-enthusiast we learned to know trough Couchsufing. Another time we had the chance to learn to know things you can only see when you are invited to look behind the curtains: how a family with less financial power lives, how they see Chile and the world and how a mother being a member of Jehovah’s Witnesses looks at raising her children for example… Interesting!

[12. Dec 2008]

We knew the lakes district will be touristy but Pucon and Villarica are as extreme as it can get. Every second house in these small towns is a hostel, a restaurant or a tour agency. Walking through the streets you feel like this could be everywhere in the world, the mix of tourists is perfectly international.

Pucon is famous for the blue lake and the white Volcano Villarica in the background and it is the outdoor sports central of Chile. We did participate in the big tourist circus and booked a nice action program – for a sum of money that we used to travel with for weeks in Peru or Bolivia… Pius jumped out of a plane on 3000 meters above ground – sky diving over a snow covered volcano. The most beautiful part of the short trip was the flight up along the green hills and later along the impressive volcano Villarica though. Being high up in the air is something we miss more and more. Time to go home and start paragliding again!

Climbing volcano Villarica is a “must” once you are in Pucon. Together with us some 200 other people had the same idea, so it was more of a mass hike than an idyllic day. Still it was very impressive to stand on this smoking mountain (one of the most active volcanoes in the world) and see the lakes and other mountains around us. Other than the other 198 tourists we did not slide down on our asses. We had a much better way to get back down, a terrific one that we enjoyed very very much: by snowboard. It’s a long time ago since we last carved the powder in Switzerland and it was absolutely overwhelming and surprising to be back on the boards – in Chile, in summer! The good thing about volcanoes is their perfectly constant slopes. The snow was quite good and we could enjoy every curve, every turn, every second.

When we stay more than a night in a place we can not camp as we don’t want to leave all our stuff alone during the day on a campground. Pucon is not the ideal place to look for a cheap place to stay, especially not during the high season. Still we had to go to a hostel, the first one since Copiapo, only the second one in Chile. But it was worth the investment as we could fully enjoy the days and the nightlife. We met the French couple again whom we did the tour on the Salar de Uyuni with and also learned to know many other travelers from all around the world. Some days on the backpacker-groove.

Continuing from Pucon the landscape did not get a lot worse :-) We were first riding across the Andes again into Argentina. The way led us through the beautiful mountain region, crossing several rivers with crystal-clear water – something we haven’t seen for a very long time. The highlight was waiting shortly before the pass: riding along the beautiful volcano Lanin. Some people say this is the most beautiful mountain in the world. We can understand what they mean, but guys, first go to Switzerland to see the Matterhorn or maybe to Huaraz in Peru to see the Alpamayo…

In Argentina the distances between the lakes became shorter and shorter. We were traveling on the seven lakes route between San Martin de los Andes and San Carlos de Bariloche. We were riding through a beautiful landscape, but also had to realize that we now arrived in Patagonia: the wind was very strong sometimes, a hot day was followed by a freezing one and in some places the horseflies were nearly driving us crazy. Imagine riding the bike up a steep dirt road with temperatures over 30 degrees and a swarm of 3-cm-horseflies circling around you, leeching for your blood – like battleships and the air attack of Pearl Harbor above us.

[05. Jan 2009]

On our way from Bariloche to the Carretera Austral a wonderful surprise was waiting for us. The small town of Futalefu would not be special at all if there wasn’t that famous river flowing through the valley; one of the best river rafting places in the world. Of course we did not miss the chance to experience a Class 5 rafting action (on a scale of 6 – nice description of Class 6 in Wikipedia: “Successful completion of a Class 6 rapid without serious injury or death is widely considered to be a matter of luck or extreme skill”).

For Stefan it was the first time and therefore it was no surprise he liked it and was impressed. Pius rafted in Switzerland already and was not expecting much more than he knew already. He soon realized why Futalefu is not the Rhein river in Switzerland: one rapid follows the other very fast here, the beautifully clear water flows very fast and we had a lot of work do to stay in the raft... The security raft and the two security kayaks completing our group stayed without work for this day :-)

One day later we were there, we were riding on the Carretera Austral! It was a great feeling to be “on it”, on this famous piece of roadwork. But then, after some kilometers ridden, we were asking ourselves: “and now?” We were slowed down by the gravel road, the sky was full of clouds and the landscape not more than “some green hills”. Motivation was not too good and we soon realized that this had something to do with the end of our tour coming closer and closer. Our thoughts were more back in Switzerland than here in the middle of nowhere. Riding became a thing we had to do, something to finish kilometer by kilometer instead of the one thing we used to enjoy minute by minute.

At least motivation could not become a lot worse when the rain started one day later. RAIN, for one whole day! This is something we are mentally and physically totally unprepared for. Our last day of rain was in Mexico and it was the only one until now! Ok, to ride the whole Carretera Austral – one of the rainiest areas in the world – without rain too would certainly have offended some of our fellow bike companions out there who rode in the rain a lot more. Here you go guys, we suffered as well, we were soaking wet ;-)

We took an early break this day in a cozy and warm little hotel where we met Jeff from Canada who cycled all the way down to Ushuaia and now returns home to Canada – again by bike! On the Carretera Austral it’s not a rare thing anymore to meet other cyclists. There are so many of them here, we met one per day at least. Some of them have a nice plan and a nice time ahead: ride from Fireland to Alaska! What a nice idea :-)

When the rain was still there the next day we first waited for it to stop but it just didn’t want. We put on our rain gear again (we now knew again how to do) and headed out into the wild with no place to go in the evening. We hoped the rain would stop before we have to set up our tents somewhere besides the road. Some hours later we were riding down an incredibly steep pass on very bad road – still in pouring rain. We were freezing and setting up the tent did not seem to be a good option in this rain and wind. At the junction to one of the few towns some kilometers off the road we saw a little shelter, something like a bus stop. A shelter! The rain still coming in through the open door and windows, trash lying around and the smell of urine were no factors at this moment; we set up one tent inside this little hut. Our first night in the same tent on the tour!

The next morning Pius learned to his surprise that Stefan had barely been sleeping since two in the morning as a nasty eye infection was bothering him. The eye did not look good and it hurt a lot. Cycling was not possible like that. We had to take a bus to get to the next town. Even though it was still raining and the bus was wonderfully heated we did not enjoy the ride at all. Taking a bus is always a very unsatisfying feeling. On the Carretera Austral it’s even harder to see the landscape sliding by in high-speed. Even worse: we actually missed the one part of the Carretera Austral that is paved and with lots of tailwind... We had to go to Coyhaique, the only town of reasonable size around, some 170 km from where we were. In the hospital the (bacterial) eye infection was treated. It seems like the contact lenses Stefan used the day before were not really clean enough...

We liked Coyhaique, the place we expected to stay for some days to wait until the eye got better. We felt like one and a half years ago in Alaska and Canada. The same wild, explorer-adventurous mood and the greener than green landscape around us were quite similar in those latitudes. But then the eye improved faster than expected and we still had this plan for New Year’s Eve on our mind… We decided to continue cycling the next day.

Instead of staying on the Carretera Austral we chose the hard but beautiful route along the Lake Gerneral Carrera – which turned out to be a good decision. We had to take the ferry across the lake to Chile Chico and were then welcomed by a Patagonia-style headwind (that would be called storm in Switzerland) and incredibly steep hills, but the views were so breathtakingly nice, it was worth the effort. We felt like finally having arrived to the real Patagonia. It’s difficult to describe the difference between green hills and mountains that look like Patagonia and the ones that just don’t. Maybe it’s the light, maybe the air, maybe the endless dark blue sky – we don’t know why but we felt like being in a very special place.

The rest of the Carretera Austral took us into more and more remote areas. This is the place where you don’t see more than ten cars per day passing by, where you can be cycling alone for hours. We had lunch at a family’s place that doesn’t have a radio, no television, no newspapers, no electricity… Their world ends at their neighbor’s house, several kilometers away.

What makes Villa O’Higgins a special place is neither the fact that they have the only library within some hundred kilometers there nor that it is situated in a beautiful spot, surrounded by mountains. Villa O’Higgins is a big name for cyclists because the Carretera Austral ends there. When we arrived at this tiny village we were happy to have finished the Carretera Austral. Imagine that, we were riding “the most beautiful road for cycling in the world”, a “masterpiece of history and nature” and we just didn’t like it… We felt guilty. How could it come like this? Here some possible explanations: 1) We are nice weather cyclists. We need blue sky and warm temperatures to feel good. The Carretera Austral tripled our rain-day-count to three days and the other days were often cloudy and with a cold wind. 2) We are not so easy to impress anymore. Green hills and some mountains around us (like in Switzerland) are not what we consider that special. Maybe we were just expecting too much after the things we heard from other cyclists. 3) We are not the nature lover cyclists. We are not traveling by bike because we love riding in the wild nature more than anything else. We like to meet people, party, experience culture. We are cycling for traveling not for cycling only. 4) Like many other cyclists we experience the effect that the end of the tour coming closer makes us a little nervous. It’s not so easy anymore to just enjoy cycling at the moment, you always feel like you want to be there already.

[21. Jan 2009]

El Calafate in January, that’s the touristiest thing you can imagine. The town center of this rather small town more or less consists of only one main road and this road is packed with tour operators, money exchange offices and restaurants. While El Chalten was this tiny town full of Alpinists and other hikers El Calafate is big business. The average tourist here flies in directly to the (international!) airport, spends his days in a pricey lodge and the trip he books is worth several hundred Dollars.

The only reason we wrote to Couchsurfing hosts in El Calafate was because we were looking for a place to leave our bikes while we go hiking in the Patagonian national parks. Couchsurfing hosts in such touristy towns usually get hundreds (!) of requests every week and most of them therefore have their profile closed. Surprisingly José did not only agree to store our bikes but also offered us to stay at his house for some days. Wow – our bike-bonus and our many good references may have made the difference here.

The reason why El Calafate has an international airport and the highest real estate prices of whole Argentina (including Buenos Aires) is the nearby Perito Moreno Glacier and the Southern Ice Field, the biggest ice mass in the world after Antarctica and Greenland. We decided to visit these nature beauties with a boat trip that took us to some of the glaciers which calve into Lago Argentino, the biggest lake of Argentina. We paid the ridiculously high price for the trip and became a part of the tourist machinery we used to sneer at the day before… Even though the ride was beautiful, especially riding past huge blue icebergs swimming in the water, we did not feel too comfortable this day. Packed on this boat with hundreds of other tourists and all the money we had to spend still hurt in our memories. The views of the glaciers were spectacular, true, but again we have this “disadvantage” that we are from Switzerland and glaciers are not something spectacularly new for us.

After all the stories we’ve heard in the last weeks from bikers coming up from the south, we were preparing for some terrible headwinds on our way to Puerto Natales. Most of them had to take a bus or a pickup for a stretch as cycling was just not possible anymore! With (west-) winds over 100 km/h even standing and holding the bike straight is not easy anymore. Some bikers were stuck in a place for days because the wind was too strong to cycle.

What made things easier for us is that we realized we FINALLY arrived in the recumbent country. For us cycling against a strong wind is much easier than for someone cycling alone and on a normal bike. This WOULD have been an advantage IF there was any headwind… We slept in a water tube under the road the night before the “critical” day and started cycling at six in the morning already. When the wind started to blow at around ten we were startled: it came from south-east! Right before the road turned south the wind turned back to normal, west-north-west and we had it in the back again. Lucky guys!

It was interesting to do a short trip into the Argentinean pampas but then good to return into green and hillier areas back in Chile again. We were chasing rabbits, whole families of nandu’s (a kind of ostrich) and several foxes over the yellow flat grass lands – it felt like being on a safari in the African Savannah. Only one day away from green and immediately in a different world.

Puerto Natales is a lot more down-to-earth than El Calafate. This is probably due to the fact that the nearby Torres del Paine National Park is not the place you go to visit on a boat trip or by car to a viewing platform but you need to hike for days to get to the most beautiful spots. We had big plans for the hike and loaded our backpacks with food for eight days – a decision that we would regret only shortly later. Our backpacks were so heavy it was not really fun walking with them anymore. The plans were changed soon and we focused on quality before quantity during the next five days. Instead of walking the whole loop around the park we walked the paths of the famous “W” trail where several walks can be done without backpack because you have to return to the starting point in the end of the day.

In five days we walked something over 100 kilometers, a distance that we are used to absolve in one day… Our legs were hurting and told us it’s time to go back to cycling. The weather also supported our new plan: for the first two days and the visit of the famous towers we had perfect blue-sky weather. We went up to the towers lookout in middle of the night to see them in sunrise – a spectacle, a little wonder in red and gold. For two more days weather was good in the morning and we managed to get up early enough to do our hikes before rain started in the afternoon. Only on the last day did we experience a real rain day and we realized how good it was we had only to walk back to the bus in this weather. Torres del Paine in bad weather is no fun.

During the evenings on the campgrounds we had the chance to learn to know some of the hundreds of other tourists sharing the park with us – some 50 percent of which were Israelis. We found the right people with the answers to the many questions we had been asking ourselves in the time we traveled in South America and we learned to know the reasons for the sometimes problematic reputation Israeli travelers have among hostel owners and travelers of other countries. We even dared to ask why the war in Israel is going on for so long now, what the solution out of their perspective should be. This is not the place to go into further details about their answers. Generally we found out this one not too surprising thing: they are just humans, just like we!

Two more days of beautiful tailwind riding (surfing) brought us from Puerto Natales to Punta Arenas, the capital of Patagonia and the access to the Strait of Magellan. The Strait of Magellan, doesn’t this sound like pure adventure? When we saw signs along the road with this magic name on them during the last days of cycling we were reminded of what a special place we’ve arrived at.

The ferry schedule forced us to do a rest day in Punta Arenas and it turned out to be very good that way. We visited the famous Magellan Penguins, these small and funny creatures, wobbling around, squeaking and screaming – even though we did not see so many of the over 10’000 penguins of the colony it still was a nice spectacle the tiny clowns offered us. Not without difficulty we reminded ourselves to the fact that they did not find things as funny as we did, but that their only thought was: “survive and find food”!