Speechless: of a soar throat and not so discrete camping.

May 2, 2011

Having just gotten over a bout of diarrhea, a new ailment was to afflict me, a soar throat. Yesterday I's feeling more thirsty than usual and by nightfall my throat felt like sandpaper. This morning it was feeling worse and it was awkward when I tried asking for a coffee in a service-station cafeteria. It's hard enough sometimes making yourself understood, but even something easy to form in the mouth like "cafe cortado doble" (double espresso) was impossible this morning. All I could do was croak and it wasn't until the third attempt that the lady behind the counter somehow got what I wanted.

I had camped in the space between the road and the private owned fenced off land. Is hidden from passing traffic by the road being elevated and a tree which further provided a degree of camouflage for my yellow tent. As it is usually quite frosty here of a morning I usually wait until the sun begins to break it's long horizontal rays before stirring from the sleeping bag. This morning however I heard voices and on peeping out see a couple walk pass with wicker baskets. Flowers grew in the field that I'd camped next to and they'd come to pick flowers for I suppose a flower-stall, many of which I'd seen along the Pan Americana.

Central Chile is so densely populated that most of my wild campsites here have been in view of people, but I think as long as it's not on private land people don't care too much.

In the morning Is riding towards Santiago on Route 5 (Pan Am) for a stretch before turning off onto Route 60, called an international road as it leads to "Paso de Liberadores" and Argentina. The road is tree-lined and meanders through wine country with vineyards even terraced on the steep lower slopes of the hills on either side of the valley. Again it is densely populated with one village following the next and luckily there is a shared use pathway through most of the urban stretches as the road had too many vans and delivery trucks which were driven fast and furiously.

I reach the large town of Los Andes in time for lunch and here in a cafe it was hard ordering but I think the man understood by my croaking that I'd a cold. So far the road had been through the flat of the valley but in the afternoon there were a number of short steep rises and then as the sun began to sink the long climb begins in earnest.

While watching out for a place to camp, I press on until nightfall and reach, not quite a village, more a conurbation of buildings by a bridge over the swift stream in the narrow gorge the road presently steadily climbed along which included a petrol-station, truck-stop, a shop and numerous other houses. Here on the hillside side of the road I found a lane-way which ran parallel and above the road with clumps of low bushes to further hide a tent but as I follow it which with the road turned a bend beyond which I discover it leads to a house and so perhaps isn't such an ideal campsite. At that moment the dogs start-up coming out towards me barking and I quickly chase them off with a hail of gravel. Back where the lane turned down to access the road was the end of a railway line continuing at the same level above and parallel to the road in the opposite direction and with enough space at the start by the buffers for a tent. It was too dark to find an alternative now and I didn't use a head-torch as I wasn't hidden from the road where there were people passing. Furthermore, across the road was what looked to be a hotel but in the morning I found out it was actually an army training school which was evident by hundreds of men in grey tracksuits jogging pass. The dogs that barked at me the preceding evening also came barking at my tent early but were soon chased off and later I saw them cheerfully tail-wagging doing a morning run too, the last in the long line of solders.

In the morning the sun is directly ahead.

The sun breaks over an avalanche shed and trucks exit on the haul up the Andes.

There was no change in my soar throat and croaking attempt at speech not that I met anyone this day as there were no longer any villages nor any habitation. All that remained now were sparse grasses and rocks as the road reached higher altitude. The road climbed most of the morning in cool shade because of almost vertical slopes which closed in on either side. I felt weak and exhausted as I ground along in the biggest sprocket and granny ring with 05-06 only showing on the computer. I rode the same road in 2007 when I covered energetically in two hours what today took me almost four.

The view up at some of the switchbacks I've to climb from where I stopped for lunch.

Feeling almost finished, I stop at a place in the sun for lunch vowing to take a good rest. I had only covered 16km but had reached the bottom of a great screed slope in which the road ahead zig-zags it's way up. To and fro the trucks could be seen moving slowly across the terrace-like road either going up or coming down. From the side the road looked somewhat like a stairs up the mountain.

I sit for two hours engrossed in my book and when I start off again feel much better. The afternoon was a different day than the morning because as I'd expected or perhaps remembered from the last time, the gradient on the switchbacks are gentle. Actually they are steep in the curves but then are almost flat between so it was like a rest between curves; which was so unlike the morning where the road was steep all the way for 16km.

I make good progress and stop in good time before the sun sinks too much and it gets cold. I camp a few hundred metres from a resort hotel with ski-chairs dangling off to the side. This evening though, no-one can see me.

Today's ride: 114 km (71 miles)
Total: 13,730 km (8,526 miles)

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