The start of the motorbike adventure

D-Day - time to pick up the bikes and begin our adventure! After about 4 hours of learning about our bikes in Spanish, and a well-timed visit from Alvaro, we were off on our first tentative ride, in Santiago rush hour traffic, 30 degrees, and uncertain of our route. Needless to say we made it unscathed, feeling pretty stoked (and at times terrified) back to Casa Condell, in time for salami sandwiches and an episode of Bones.

The next day was our earliest start yet – up before dawn to get packed and away before the morning traffic. Packing took longer than expected with more to try and fit onto our tiny bikes than we’d have liked. Jono did an amazing job of strapping packs, dry bags, tarps, and jerry cans onto our little blue bikes and we departed Casa Condell by just after 8am. We managed to negotiate the Santiago traffic – not an easy feat as this was our first time travelling with a heavy load. It was such good foresight for Jono to order the Bluetooth head sets (despite some ridicule), as we were able to keep contact with each other constantly. There were several hurdles to overcome on this first day of riding – initially going 60km on a 120km highway, keeping my load on my bike (this needed at least 5 stops to retie, including pulling over in the middle of busy traffic in Vina del Mar with my jerry can dragging along the road!), 2 dark long tunnels, toll booths, steep windy roads, interpreting directions in Spanish.

The campground, Racho Cassanova was a stange place – almost deserted when we arrived, and possibly more dusty than Cambodia. That night we had tents all around us, with Chilean and Argentinian families cooking meat on charcoal BBQs (giving us food envy) and little children running around still at 10pm.

The next day we wandered down the long dusty drive of Rancho Cassanova and picked up a local bus heading towards Vina del Mar and Valparaiso. The bus dropped us at the far end of Valparaiso and we headed straight for coffee and WiFi. Travelling like we are now, and have in the past, is exciting, spontaneous, and lets you determine your fate at with every decision. However, it also means that you have to allow time to investigate, email, request and book on the go, so our entire morning was spent planning the next couple of stages of our trip – Ranaca to Los Vilos, Los Vilos to La Serena , then who knows? We have several times, asked the advice of Susan (Chasing Serendipity blog) and Pembo (who did this trip in reverse last year), both of whom have been so helpful.

Once done, we moved on to find some spare parts (repuestos) for our motorbikes. Good old Easy and Jumbo (similar to Bunnings and the Warehouse in NZ) came to our rescue. In the evening we swam in the cloudy pool along with a tribe of exhibitionist Latino youths, drank red wine from the Concha y Toro wine glasses we had so carefully brought with us from Santiago, and relaxed into another episode of Bones.

We had begun to really loved the early morning starts we have had in the past few days – the quiet, the peaceful rising of the sun. However, we got so little sleep the previous night due to partying, loud conversations which necessitated screaming and yelling, and a discotheque that was still pumping out a thudding bass at 6:30am when we hauled ourselves out of our tent, that the early start was bittersweet. 

Once we got going in the cooler morning air the trip was amazing. Not half as stressful as our first day of riding, partly because we were feeling more comfortable on the bikes, but also because the air temperature stayed bearable with the cool onshore breeze, and the road was not at all busy. The drive was very beautiful as we followed a coastal highway out of Renaca, stopping in Zapallar – a very beautiful beach resort town cascading down a steep hill to the ocean. 

We arrived in Los Vilos at lunchtime to be met at Hostal El Conquistador by the owner, a lovely French/Chilean man, who was very hospitable and enthusiastic to see us. Los Vilos does not seem to be a terribly common tourist spot, and I don’t think he had any other guests. On his advice, we had lunch at a quaint little seaside hut, which had amazing empanadas and cirviche. We then caught a taxi to the far end of the beach where there is part of a copper mine as well as a bird reserve and walkway, and spent over an hour walking back along the coast. In the evening we watched the sun set over the Pacific Ocean.

The highlight of the following morning (apart from the feeling of waking up after a really good sleep) was the personal account we were given over breakfast by the owner of the hostel. He started to tell us about how he’d come to be running the hostel in Los Vilos, this little copper town on the coast of Norte Chico, Chile. His father had owned the place, and Joaquin had returned here after many years in France. Joaquin had been a young student activist in the Pinochet era, until he was caught handing out leaflets that criticised the regime. He was shot in the groin, and imprisoned for 18 months. Throughout his time in prison, he was tortured for information on who else was involved in the Communist party, who sent the leaflets, who printed them, etc. At the end of his time, he was banished from Chile for seven years. Consequently, he went to France, met his partner and had two children. During this time, the Pinochet era ended and Joaquin was summonsed to give evidence to support the claim that he was a victim of human rights abuses. During the course of the trial, over 100,000 people were identified as being victims of human rights abuse but only 30,000 were recognised officially as the court required proof of their alleged torture. We began our trip later than planned due to this enthralling and disturbing account of this young political refugee.

We made the last minute decision to travel via an inland route which appeared to be a lot more interesting and varied than the Panamericano. This turned out to be a great decision, however the extra kilometres and added time (our biggest day yet travelling most of the day), meant that we were feeling exhausted by the time we arrived in La Serena.

After leaving Los Vilos we travelled up Ruta Cinquo, (the PanAm) to find the “best empanadas in Chile”, according to Joaquin. These were made at a cooperative, where a village had developed its own type of cheese. The cheese was used to fill the empanadas to the brim.

A little further up the road, we turned off on to the inland route, which would take us eventually to La Serena. It was very beautiful – rural, in parts very green, rolling countryside, with small villages dotted throughout. In one such village we stopped for fuel, only to find that my bike would not restart when we wanted to set off. An hour later, with sweat dripping down our jackets and pants, we were still sitting in the same spot, with perplexed Chileans sauntering over to see if they could assist. Finally, Jono managed to kick start the bike and we were away, tentatively, towards Ovalle.

As we had been told, the road to Ovalle was very beautiful, but at times quite steep and windy. I found this riding hard, and had to take it very slowly, but most drivers were patient enough and we finally pulled into Maria Casa 9 hours later. Maria Casa was a wonderful place to stay – the owners warm and welcoming, very helpful and extremely patient with our Spanish.

A day off biking, but not off motorcycle jobs. While it was unfortunate that we had a problem with my bike this early in the trip, we were incredibly lucky on the following accounts: the bike wouldn’t start at a petrol station with loads of helpful people around and some shade, the “rustic” bikes are able to be kick started so we could get going again, we were heading towards the major city of La Serena where mechanics and spare parts could easily be found, the hostel, Maria Casa, was literally right around the corner from the Honda dealer, we were able to get both bikes serviced for free under the warranty, my bike just needed a connection secured, so the mechanic did it for free.

After dropping the motorbikes into the mechanic in the morning, we spent an idle day looking around the town centre, drinking coffee, eating empanadas and icecream, looking through the market and perusing the shops. We walked out to the uninteresting and a little disappointing beach, and sat looking out at the Pacific Ocean in the late afternoon.

At this point we are still waiting on our padron (the final piece of Chilean paperwork). We are going to head inland to Vicuna today and the Elqui Valley where Pisco is made and there are some observatories, then over the Andes into Argentina as soon as we can.