Northbound

Our last full day in Santiago. We have recovered a bit, but are still tired, and it may take a few days more of semi-normalcy in the US to feel energetic. I keep meaning to write more on here about the trip, especially the crazy change we made for the last week of it, but finding time and energy has been difficult.

We had planned to spend our last few days, including Christmas, hiking in Cerro Castillo National Park. When the forecast went from bad (cold & rainy) to worse (cold & rainy & windy & snowy), we changed our tickets to head north that same day. Suddenly we had to rush, having only a few hours to toss our bags on the bike and ride the 55km to the airport. A sidewall blew out on our rear tire just minutes into the race, but we did a full-on NASCAR pit crew move and had the tire and tube replaced in under 10 minutes. A wicked strong tailwind actually let us arrive over an hour earlier than we needed to, amazing how it pushed us along.

Our change in plans left us in the Santiago airport after dark, so we had two options: riding off on busy highways and roads in the dark, hoping to find somewhere to stay or camp, or getting transport to a hotel or something. To make a long, painful story short, our plan to get dropped in a small town a few minutes (hypothetically) north of the airport and find a place there went terribly wrong, as the van driver first got lost (for hours) and then wouldn´t drop us in the town, claiming it wasn´t safe, and finally leaving us at an expensive hotel in Santiago, which is exactly what we had wanted to avoid in the first place. Things went better the next day, and we had a good time riding north along the coast, eating seafood and enjoying the ocean views and warm, sunny weather.

Now, off to pack the bags, strategizing how to distribute the weight to avoid extra fees.