Castro

After staying in Ancud I moved on to Castro, the capital of the island.  It’s a bigger town and it’s obvious there’s a bit more money flowing here.  The plaza is new and nicely landscaped.  There’s a bit more hustle and bustle.  But something left me rather cold, and I did not find the place as endearing as Ancud.

I’m beginning to realize that corrugated metal is a major building material for the island.  Even important buildings are clad in metal, sometimes with designs pressed into it.  But in an environment where it rains most of the time, metal begins to look a little worn and tatty.  Case in point: the cathedral in Castro.  It looks horrible (granted it’s not getting much help by the colour scheme of the paint job).

Inside, however, it’s got a beautiful varnished wood interior.  If I ignore the crazy bleeding crucifixes it’s quite peaceful.

Mar Brava

While in Ancud I hopped on the bike and followed a route the hostel recommended to check out the rugged west coast of the island.  The destination was a beach called Mar Brava.  The trip was about 35 km, and it just about killed me.  It became painfully clear that I was really out of shape.

About half the distance was on unpaved road.  Unpaved roads down here are nothing like the gravel roads of Southern Ontario.  Instead of being covered in gravel they are covered in rocks that range in size between golf balls and baseballs.  This type of surface really likes to shift around under bicycle tires.  It sort of feels like you´re riding on a bunch of large marbles.

Oh, and to add to my lack of fitness and the challenging road conditions, I forgot to bring any money with me.  I departed with about 500 ml of water and a package of cookies.  That was all the nourishment for the day.  I think I was a little delerious by the end.

But there was a payoff for all this hard work.  Mar Brava was absolutely stunning. 

First there was the beautiful rolling farmland that I had to travel through to get to the coast.

 

Milk jugs were all along the side of the road waiting to be picked up.

I eventually crested a hill and saw before me a wide sandy beach with Pacific waves rolling in.

When I got to the bottom of the hill there was a narrow road which ran to the right, hugging the coast.

And then, around the corner, a rocky point that you could scamper onto to get close to the waves crashing in.  There was also another beach further along, but I was wearing Birkenstock sandals and the loose pebble surface was too difficult to walk too far on.

And the best thing: after spending over an hour exploring about 3 km of coastline I met only four people.  Most of the time I had the whole place to myself.

Lesson Learned #1956

A diet consisting solely of shellfish does not provide the body with enough fibre.

Ancud

Ancud is on the north coast of Chiloe. It´s one of the two major cities on the island (Castro´s the other – we´ll get there later). About 27,000 people live here. Buildings are clad either in traditional wooden shingles (sometimes painted bright colours) or sheets of corrugated metal (often painted as well). Rain is usually a constant feature of life here (except this year, there´s a drought) and this seems to wear considerably on the exteriors. Copious amounts of rusting sheet metal sometimes made me feel like I was in a shanty town.

That being said, the place really grows on you. Especially when you´ve got a nice place to lay your head at the end of the day. The Hostal Mundo Nuevo is a really nice hostel with a beautiful view of the ocean.  I spent a few days here doing not much of anything.

Being an island in the Pacific, fish and shellfish are ubiquitous. Veggies, not so much (except for the potato, which some scholars believe originated here). It was a struggle to find any vegetables on a menu, and when I visited the many supermarkets and produce stands, the quality of what was on offer was horrible. It was not uncommon to see produce on display that was mouldy or rotten. A fellow traveller at the hostel who works in agriculture in Germany thought it was because they probably did not have any refrigerated transportation for the crops. Either way, I have no idea how Chilotes get their vitamins.

And El Trauco? Well, I only found him rocking out on the flyer for a local metal show.

 

I love the totally amateur presentation. And Leprosy is one of the best names for a metal band ever.  I also think it´s pretty funny that a band named themselves after Homer´s favourite brew.

Lesson Learned #1342

Do not try to ride a bicycle (or anything mildly strenuous, for that matter) when you feel a migraine coming on.  Unless you want to puke and feel like shit.

I’ve got a backload of posts waiting, so there’ll be more activity on the blog in the coming days.

Cheers.

Shakedown Breakdown

Here I am on a 3 month long bike tour, on the other side of the world, and it doesn’t take long for me to realize the effects of breaking one of the cardinal rules of bike touring – I have not done any sort of shakedown tour.

Basically, a shakedown tour is a short trip prior to a long tour that allows you to test out all your gear under actual conditions.  If something’s not working right, or the way you’ve got things set up is wrong, it’s better that it happen on a short journey than an epic one.

So no shakedown tour.  And did I mention that I’ll be riding a brand new bike…with brand new luggage and racks?  And this bike is not your typical touring bike, but what some might consider a circus bike – it’s a folder with BMX sized wheels.  Oh, and I haven’t been on a bike (or physically active, for that matter) in at least three months.  This is going to be fun.

So I get to Santiago, unpack everything and start to load the bike up.  Well, it doesn’t take long for me to realize that something’s got to give, and it better be me and my plans.  One of the main bags I’m planning to use doesn’t attach to the racks in a sufficiently solid way and thus shimmies and shakes like an out of control bowl of jello.  Not good when riding carefully on a short distance of smooth pavement; downright dangerous when half of your planned route consists of rough dirt road.  It´s got to go.  OK, that’s about 30% of my carrying capacity eliminated, and my luggage was already bursting.  So, 30% of my gear has to get cut as well.  It can’t be clothing because I only brought the bare minimum, so out goes the camping gear.  Oh, and that part of my tour that consists of rough dirt road, that represents about half of my planned trip, absolutely needs camping gear.  All of a sudden half of why I came down here has been eliminated.  I was numb, in shock.  I wandered the streets of Santiago for a while trying to wrap my head around it and in the end couldn’t.  I went to sleep not knowing what to do.

The ability to adapt is an important skill to have in life, and it definitely comes in handy when you´re on the road.  The only thing that´s guaranteed is the fact that your plans won´t go exactly as planned.  So it was with this mindset that I awoke the next day and realized there was no way around it, my plans just had to change.  The other half of my original planned trip was to visit the island of Chiloe, off the north coast of Chilean Patagonia.  I think I would still be able to bicycle around the island without needing camping gear – distances between towns were far more manageable.

So it´s off to Chiloe – land of constant rain, potatoes, and mythological figures like El Trauco, a supremely ugly dwarf who has incredible strength, carries a tiny stone hatchet with which he can chop down trees with a single blow, and possesses such sublime lovemaking abilities that young virgins find him irresistible.  I´m not making any of this up.

Where did the last month go?

So, a month into the journey and I’m finally getting around to setting up this blog.  Let me sum up my experiences of the past few weeks and get you all up to date: got sick; arrived in Santiago; got sicker; coughed a lot; slept a lot; got some antibiotics; slept some more; sweat a lot – it’s damn hot here!; and after three weeks finally got out of Santiago and onto the road.  Things have started rather slowly.

Here are some random initial thoughts about Chile.  Instead of cans of pop they still have glass bottles.  Very cool.  I’ve seen a couple of Ladas!  I didn’t think those were still on the road (Put it in H!, as Crazy Vlaclav would say).  My Spanish absolutely sucks.  And the Chilean accent is damn thick.  As a result I have no idea what people are saying to me and I’ve been doing a lot of smiling and nodding.  Luckily that hasn’t gotten me into any trouble so far.  We’ll see how long that lasts.

This is just the beginning.  There will be more to come.