It was always going to happen.
After years and thousands of kilometres as a pillion, much to the disappointment of pretty much everyone around me, the time has come for me to go it alone on my own two wheels… under the very stressed and watchful eye of Dean, protected by Roger the dog from my Mum and guided by Mighty Boosh from my sister Natalie.
We made the break a couple of days ago from from Santiago, after spending 5 days hanging out at a hostel that attracts bikers from all over the world who are Ushuaia bound. Suddenly what we were about to do, was not that out of the ordinary anymore. It’s nice to be around other travellers again.
I was a little apprehensive to take my new bike for a first ride and had some difficulties with the positioning of the gear lever with my big stiff tech 3 boots, but dean managed to alter the gear lever so I’m not finding myself in neural in the middle of a busy intersection.
Riding on the ‘wrong’ side of the road takes a little time to get your head around however what makes things harder is one way streets that change direction at certain times of the day.
Upon leaving Santiago Dean checked he had the correct route and we knew the direction we were heading, taking into account the one way streets. ‘so, two blocks and we turn left?’ I confirmed with Dean in the intercom. ‘yes babe, we turn left and then right’. So off we go…me wobbling out of the driveway, too focused to wave goodbye to the guys seeing us off, and fighting with the gears to get from first to second. We get to the one way road to turn left and we see a car going the wrong way. ‘what an idiot’ Dean’s says as he makes a left turn, ‘as if he’s going to wrong way down a one way road!’ I then make the left turn and notice another car coming towards us…and then realise 3 lanes of traffic are coming towards us. It was the time of the day where all the traffic went in the opposite direction to all the signs. Perfect. Not a great start.
After spending a night in Curico, we got off the highway and found ourselves in wine country, or at least there were some vines. With the Andes as a back drop it was really pretty. We made our way to Altos de Lircay National park with the vague thought that we may find a cheap place to stay and go on one of the hikes.
It was starting to look like we may be out of luck finding a cheap place so we stopped for a coffee and empanada to work out our next move. Luckily for us the lady running the cafe had a cabin available for around $35 USD. It had a fire, a kitchen and our own bathroom. Perfect!
We spent the next two days hiking in the national park which took us to some amazing view points of the Andes. Yesterday we walked 12 kms and today we walked around 30 and up to over 2000 metres. We kept our record of never being overtaken and did it in record time. Poor Dean. We are shagged.
It’s cold and we are sitting by the fire. It’s still light outside which feels a bit odd but I guess we will get used to this as we head further south. We are on to our 20th round of cards and listening to Dire Straits for the second time (no wifi and only limited albums downloaded). We will sleep very well tonight.
