April 15, 2016
Gone Astray: Route 74-km12 to Route 68-km100.
I'm awake in the dark early hours, snug and warm in my sleeping-bag and the hole in the tent fly-sheet I patched has prevented further ingress of rain-water. The rain is coming down, big droplets off the tree leaves overhead drumming on the tent with fine drizzle there amongst. The thought of a few hours it'll be daybreak and I'll have to leave this comfortable abode is depressing, but I don't have enough food to wait out a day here, should it continue raining, just bread and jam for breakfast.
Its a big effort to start breaking camp not long after its fully daylight and head off into steady drizzle, further along a valley on rain soaked road and foggy low cloud reducing visibility. Fortunately there is a metre wide shoulder at the side to ride upon as a steady flow of cars slosh pass, though beyond the next village, Pinto Maria, the road is empty. At which point I'm sure about what I had feared, namely I'm on the wrong road. The right road would be by now climbing over a mountain to descend to a town called Casablanca, whereat the main road between Santiago and Valparaiso passes, with only a mere forty kilometres to the later city, my destination.
The rain is easing and there's a bit of a view to the side. Grassland farming, predominately milk production, with thousands of cows, a sea of black and white, concentrated in elongated yards feeding on cut grass through slots in barriers. Then I come to a tee-junction. The left pointing sign has route 68. I pull into a bus shelter and take out my computer to check on the google map the 68 is the same road that passes Casablanca, and find that it is; such is the dearth of paper maps. In days gone by, when last here, Copec the main petrol station in Chile produced a motor atlas booklet; though, most probably, the only maps of theirs nowadays is electronic.
There's a steady flow of traffic on this road and soon I'm passing through a village which seems to have no end. I halt at a small shop inside a garden selling empanadas, having one for a second breakfast and inquire of the shop woman how far more to route 68. Not far, she replies, only five minutes cycling. Then she tells me there's a tunnel on 68 before Casablanca, but seems to think it isn't a problem cycling through the tunnel.
I set off again and a couple of kilometres further, meet route 68, riding a circling loop over it and slip-road down upon a westbound motorway carriageway, though one in which I can legally cycle on and safer, with a vehicle-wide shoulder to ride upon, than the narrow shoulder-less single-carriageway road I was on the day before. The overhead sign has Valparaiso 79km, a lot further away than I would've wished this late in the day. The kilometre marker at the side, km31, meaning only thirty-one kilometres from the centre of Santiago. I've really gone astray, taking a roundabout way to Valparaiso. I'm also foreboding the tunnel when I get as far. What if this safe traffic free strip at the side doesn't continue inside the tunnel.
Then as the road starts a gradual ascent there's a turnoff for an old road, the main route before construction of the tunnel and maintained, as there's an obligatory sign for trucks with explosive or hazardous cargos to take this route.
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The rain remains at bay as I climb up and over and descend into and through the Casablanca valley, devoted to expensive vineyards. And it dries out for a while. Then there's spots of rain afresh and the day deteriorates in the coarse of the afternoon to more rain. At one stage I make it into a roadside truckers restaurant just as the rain come down in torrents. Inside there's a dish of the day which I have, chicken and a huge plate of crisp cabbage salad for 5000 pesos (£5) with a coke. The rain has eased when I come out again, but soon fog descends combined with steady drizzle as the road climbs through wooded hills and although not far off descending to Valparaiso, it is growing late and I don't want to be riding into a city late and in awful weather. About this point there's a layby to the side I push the bike off onto and find a hole in the fence alongside, inside of which is a level gap in the forest, that makes my mind up to get off the road and camp.
Today's ride: 95 km (59 miles)
Total: 8,586 km (5,332 miles)
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