The last few weeks to Santiago

I have neglected this blog for a while and am going to have to blame it on having a lack of free time. Obviously that is going to be questioned instantly by people who spend their time doing actual jobs, but it is true. I have always had an abundance of time until this trip and I have no idea where it all went.

Anyway, we have arrived in Santiago, where, due to a terrible allocation of personal space, almost half the population of Chile live. Using the very precise finger-thumb distance estimation technique we are approximately a third of the way through our trip having now clocked a little over 4000 kilometres.

Having abandoned these updates for over 3 weeks, and in the hope of not boring myself and the 12 people who read this I will have to try to give a brief account of our travels, rather than the detailed and illuminating portrayals of previous posts.



We spent another week in Argentina, meeting up with Dallas again and making repeatedly unsuccessful attempts at fishing. I learned new meanings for the words floaters and sinkers, tried using premium steak as bait and repeatedly fell into rivers; all to no avail. We were of course predominantly cycling rather than fishing, making our way through the 'Siete lagos' region, which, oddly enough has 7 very nice lakes in it.

Soon enough we had our wheels pointed back towards Chile. The elements seemed to be conspiring to keep us in Argentina as the wind battered us head on and the road reduced from asphalt to sand. We spent a cold night on the border and, with the expected steep climbs not materializing the following day enjoyed an incredible 70 kilometers of downhill all the way to Pucon. While the Argentina we had left behind us was essentially a desert, within 5 minutes of Chile we were amid lush fields lined with blackberry bushes and in half a day as wet as two beavers.

We were hosted, just out of town by Anna's friend Lauren in a kayak hostel. The following day we traded our bikes for kayaks and had possibly the most fun anyone ever had - get ready for mattandannapaddletheamazon2015.

With a deadline to get to the capital we had to map a more direct course North and get through some less excited kilometers on the Pan American highway heading straight up the backbone of Chile. The first 2 days were uneventful, the view mainly consisting of cars, trucks and a vast assortment of road kill. It was the start of a week in which we have seen more dead animals than a butcher.

The third day on the highway began a catalogue of errors which were, almost entirely, my fault.
First the lock obstinately refused to open one morning and we had to go in search of a power tool. Then, as we were leaving the service station I had the bright idea of inflating our tyres to much higher, and it turns out, not recommended levels. 200metres down the road Anna's front tyre dramatically exploded. Amid all this excitement I forgot to drink any water and spent the next 2 days vomiting in bushes and cowering in the shade at every opportunity. Oh yeah, and a few days prior to all this our camera broke due to an excess amount of dew penetrating through the walls of our tent and saturating our camera bag.

Despite these minor setbacks we continued on, heading away from the highway and towards the ocean. We arrived in the sea town of Cobquecura two days later and after heading to the beach to see some sealions were feeling happy and excited about the prospects of the next few days cycling up the coast. 2 hours later, after having snapped the valve off Anna's inner tube, and without any spares left, I was sitting on the ground and sulking with no prospect of going anywhere at all.

Unable to buy a new innertube anywhere we resigned ourselves to staying in town and spent the following day travelling (by bus) 100 kilometers back the way we had come to Chillan, a city I had decided not to bother going to because we didn't need to buy anything. We found tubes and had a surprisingly positive day eating our way through the city.

 We continued up the coast for two more days before heading back inland making tracks towards the big city. We were soon back on the main highway, and as we approached Santiago, the road kill got to such levels it felt like we were cycling through a very busy abattoir. The final morning into the city was generally a melee of screaming, at buses and cars, but mainly at each other. But we survived to meet up with Mateus and Camilla our amazing couchsurfing hosts for the next few nights.

We have a few days getting things sorted before we head towards the next Andes pass, a terrifyingly high 3800metres.