We arrived in Santiago, Chile at 7:30am and got to work putting our bicycles together right away. Fortunately, the airport was not crowded and we were able to find a quiet corner in one of the parking lots to do our work.
We had many visitors, security guards, parking lot employees, and other passers by wanting to check out our bicycles, asking where we were headed, and particularly wanting to know about our trailers. One guy even asked if he could draw a picture.
After biking into Santiago , we got ahold of Gloria, with whom we were planning to spend the night, and she, her husband, and youngest daughter came to meet us in their pickup truck. After a short distance further to their house we were delighted to hang out in their beautiful yard.
Biking through Santiago provided a bit of a thrill. The people were incredibly friendly, honks and waves were frequent, but maps were impossible to come by. After several people telling us where we could surely find a map, we gave up and just worked our way into the completely foreign city and hoped for a successful phone call.
Gloria´s family was amazing. They welcomed us with amazing warmth and made us feel right at home. Before leaving, we did what we could to get their bikes in better working order.
We decided to bus from the Santiago metropolitan area to Los Andes, a smaller town about 100km to the north and right at the beggining of our westward road over the Andes. We got to wait several hours at the wrong terminal, before getting to the appropriate one and finally rolling into Los Andes around 10:30pm. If not for someone I´m pretty sure was an angel, we wouldn´t even have made the bus we did.
We didn´t have any plans for Los Andes, just a name of someone notoriously friendly to bikers and a desire to sleep. We spent our first night in a hospital parking lot, and met (again, through amazing fortune) Eric Savard at his veterinary hospital the next day. We headed to his beautiful home, less than 10km outside the city, and spent a wonderful night there.
As the sun rose over the intimidating Andes, it revealed a beautiful green valley. Eric has welcomed several hundred cyclists to his home over the last 25 years, and some have decided to stay for years themselves.
It´s easy to understand why someone would want to stay, given the wonderful house, company, and surroundings. Eric was an generous and trusting host, also eager to engage us, as much as we could be engaged, in interesting conversation.
Froggy´s excited to climb those mountains.
So is Jimmy.
This picture doesn´t capture the staggering height of these mountains as they shoot out of the ground behind the rolling, yet mountainous, foothills
The picture in the center is of the early morning sky. That dark streek is a shadow cast on the clouds by Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the Americas, as the sun rises behind it. Eric took the photo from his porch.
The only thing we could really find to do for him, as an expression of our gratitude, was to do a bit of cleaning around the bachelor pad. Trevor definitely led the charge, diving into the cleaning of the bathroom with a tenacity few can match.
It was not easy to tear ourselves away from the beautiful and welcoming Casa de Ciclistas, but we only had so much time before Fernando needed to get back into Santiago to fly back and take the LSAT, so off we went. Down the long dirt drive and back to the highway.
To the mountains!
Protected from the sun, of course.
Even in white shirts and hats, the heat was intense. This snowmelt stream was welcome, if intense, relief.
And on we go.
Practically every shady spot beckoned to us. "Come, lay in my cool shadow," it would say. Sometimes we accepted the invitation.
Getting closer...
The caracoles are a famous, or infamous, part of this Andes crossing. They wind up, and up, and up. This was toward the top of the first of two sets. We didn´t know there were two sets...
Fernando decided to grab onto the back of one of the slow moving trucks and got quite a bit ahead of us. Trevor and I are still happy though, thinking we´re almost done with the caracoles.
We´re almost done!
About half an hour ago (picture time), we had a couple difficult realizations. First, that there are two sets of caracoles, and second, that the second is longer and climbs higher. Night fell as Trev and I struggled on. We had to fight hard not to give into the urge to sleep on the side of the road and trust that we´d meet up with Fernando in the morning.
Utter exhaustion, intense difficulty, and then...unimagined beauty.
Legs shaking, chests aching, Trevor and I saw a bright blinking light ahead. It was Fernando, greeting us a little after the end of the caracoles. Amazingly, he´d met up with the manager of the hotel Portillo, who, with the hotel not yet being open for hte season, allowed us to camp behind it.
Good morning! So very, very good it was.
What we didn´t realize, and what Eric (a person more familiar with this crossing than almost any other person) didn´t even know, is that we were a little early in the season for stores and hotels to be open. We expected to be able to buy food and water all along the way. That did not happen. When Trevor and I rolled into the hotel, we had nothing more than one candy bar and one banana....but they were still there in the morning, uneaten...how could that be?
The night before, Fernando, in search of water, asked the hotel manager if they had any extra food they were going to throw out. He returned with a most amazing spread. Oranges, bananas, avocadoes, bread, nice lunch meat and cheese, and a loaf of sweet bread. To top it all off, he invited us for breakfast in the morning. We were blown away.
Breakfast wasn´t even until 9am, so...shucks...we had to sleep in!
James and Froggy both survived the intense heat of the Chilean Andes!
After breakfast, Fernando takes care of our daily record keeping.
And on we go!
For more climbing...
At 10,500ft there´s a tunnel that passes through the mountains. We had a decision to make. Do we catch a ride through the tunnel, or go 2,000ft up and over the old pass?
Up we go!!! Man thigh power...
Beautiful and mountainous...
rugged. Little did we know, we were still on the easy part of the climb.
Thanks to road clearing equipment like this, the road up was clear of snow. Unfortunately, it could do nothing about the massive amounts of mud created by the melting snow.
We stopped for many, many breaks during this climb.
Our tires got so caked with mud that we unhooked our brakes in an attempt to avoid drag. Fernando could do nothing about his rear fender though, which filled with mud and gave him an extra challenge. I´m sure this was to make up for his truck riding of the previous day.
Jimmy´s breath is taken away by the mountains. Granted, it´s easier up at 11,500ft, but impressive no less
I´d never seen snow like this before, but I was intimately acquainted with it by the time we got back down to the highway.
Froggie hangs on as strong winds attempt to blow him into Argentina.
Our bikes, hunkered together in the shelter of a wind-barrier.
The hard part is over!
Fernando, don´t go too fast on the way down!
The statue of Christ the Redeemer, which we suffered to meet. Little did we know, after having met it, we were going to suffer even more than we had before.
Fernando´s homeland!
Here we go! Remember, not too fast, wouldn´t want to wreck...
Hey guys, something´s different about this road...
Road? Where´d it go?
Do you see the road?
We´re trying to get there, it doesn´t look too far.
We only ever seem to feel this way before our adventures.
Hmm...that´s an interesting snow field, I´d hate to have to go down something like that...
...
We pushed our bikes through the deep snow...
...scraping our shins and straining our backs...
...we did our best to harness gravity, but sometimes it got the better of us....
Hey, I think we´re at the bottom!
Let´s get ready to do some riding!
What a sense of accomplishment!
... The pushing was nowhere near over.
It doesn´t look that far down, and yet...how the heck do we get there? What about that route?
Hmm...
Trev pushes ahead to do some spotting
Will and Fer follow reluctantly
There was no easy path, no fun route, no relaxing descent. Oh, and speed was the least of our worries.
This is the last picture we took on our way down. We did eventually get to a clear part of the road, and hoped to ride our bikes the short distance into town. Only, when we were finally together again, we discovered that 8 of our 9 tires were flat. We´d run over some particularly nasty ground cover and it had put dozens of holes in our tires. Just getting the thorns out our tires took most of the rest of the daylight, let alone actually patching the tubes.
So, as the air got cold, the wind blew, and our hands grew numb and useless, we left our bikes where they were and set out in search of another miracle of hospitality. I should not forget to mention that we had almost run out of food and water.
After being kicked out of one potentially nice place by some soldiers (it wasn´t as bad as it sounds), we found our way to an open hostel willing to feed some ravenous travelers at a little after midnight. The young man who ran the hostel even helped us find our bicycles the next morning.
With strength renewed, we returned to patching tires. When we began to appreciate the full scope of the problem (i.e. just how many holes there were in our tubes) we decided to hitch a ride to the next place we´d be able to purchase tubes
So, we put flat tires back on the bikes and pushed them to the highway (which we couldn´t do the night before because we lost the road in a washed out section and couldn´t find it again).
A very nice trucker took us all the way into Mendoza, where we got our bikes fixed up. The owner of the bike shop was incredibly nice to us and let us store our trailers there while going around town and finding a place to stay for the night.
50 pesos got us four beds, a leaky roof, and a warm shower. We had no complaints.
The night before, on the way to the hostel, I hit something in the dark. I hit it so hard, it irreparably bent and cracked both my rims. Amazingly enough, the tubes did not go flat. We speculated that perhaps there were two patches that reinforced the tube at the point of impact. It´s quite possibly the truth.
We left the hostile for a slow ride to pick up our trailers, and figure out what to do.
With the extra time given us by the trucker, Fer decided to accompany Trevor and myself to Tucuman
I had actually intended not to share this photo, but forgot to delete it as I uploaded them. Rather than delete it now and generate even more speculation, I shall explain. It looks like an impressive amount of blood, no? No, my thumb didn't rupture, and it isn't even blood from Trevor passing his kidney stone. It's blood from a "minor" nosebleed, something Trevor experiences with regularity.
Fernando introduced us to his city, we celebrated his birthday a little, and he loaded up on maté to take back home...
...while Trev and I suited up to take Grandma Clarita to church
Bye Fer! We will miss you a lot.
Grandma says¨, "No more pictures," and we´re off to church.
