April 14, 2011
Pan Am.
During the two wet days I spent in the hostel "Torre Suiza" in Villarrica, there were but a trickle of guests. There was the young English backpacker that spent most of the day reading a very thick paperback that in a moments pause sighed saying "oh I hate when the main character does something really stupid like sacrificing his principals for a woman." There was also a young couple that arrived at breakfast-time with a western Canada Washington State ascent, not sure which. Tired after a night on the bus, they asked the host about out-door shops where they could buy warm cloths as they'd mistakenly thought as I did once had that tee-shirts and shorts were the only cloths needed in South America.
The breakfast is big with muesli and good bread and combined with it not getting bright of a morning till 8am and the cold of the present season this far South making me lethargic of late, and so it was a late 10am start. The road was still damp after all the rain but the sun is drying things out fast and the day looks optimistic.
The road is tree-lined on either side of which are small pasture fields and an occasional ploughed or field of stubble beyond which are wooded hills. To me it isn't very inspiring coupled to the cold and regular rain. I crave getting North of Santiago were it's arid with open vistas.
By early afternoon, I'd rejoined the Pan Americana or Pan Am as it's called for short. This would be the road I'll cycle for the next week just to get as far North as the Santiago area which according to the kilometre board at the side shortly after riding down the slip-road is 700km North because the 700 begins it's count in the capital. It was an uneventful day just making up as mush distance as possible. And there was only one human interaction all day since leaving the hostel. It was when I'd stopped for a coffee at a Copec service-station that a group of pensioners pulled up in an expensive car. "I saw you on Monday" said Federico in perfect English, a grey-haired man that appeared to have spent his life in a white-collar job . His name I picked up as I heard his wife calling out to him repeatedly. He told about his pilgrimage walk in Northern Spain last year to Santiago del Compostello. I told him Is continuing North on Pan Am as far as Santiago. "Oh it's flat and boring" he said with a broad smile, and don't I know it.
Finding a place to wild-camp in the evening came before I'd began to look. I slowed and my head turned as I past an open gate with a "To let" sign. Beyond which I found a small point of land between the road and the railway line which passed underneath the road just before the gate. It was hidden from view on the road side by a high hedge; and the other side of the acute triangle had rows of fur-trees growing on the steep bank down to the railway. It wasn't agricultural land as the surface had been churned up and grew weeds. I put the tent behind some of the taller weeds so even if a car stopped in the gateway they wouldn't see the tent not that that seemed likely and it would soon be dark in anycase. That night it was a wonder I slept with the constant roar of trucks passing nearby and the couple of times a train rattled by.
Today's ride: 105 km (65 miles)
Total: 12,730 km (7,905 miles)
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