Hermanos en bici: Puerto Fonck to Santiago

After a last incredible breakfast it was definitely time to say goodbye and continue our way north… Luckily, the weather meant it good with us, there were lots of clouds, but it didn’t rain and we still got a quite good view onto the surrounding volcanoes. The street was also pretty good; except for some km that were ripio we had asphalt all day long.

Beautiful Eucalyptus forest along the road...

It's flat and wet...

Well, because it's sooo wet, it's also extremely green... :-)

In the early afternoon we arrived in Entre Lagos, where I was already pretty tired, so we decided to spend the afternoon there and spent some time at the lake as the sun finally decided to show up for a while. The next morning we weren´t too motivated to get up, as we heard the rain hitting hard onto the roof of our cabin… But to our surprise the rain eventually stopped so that we left Entre Lagos with dry weather! Still we decided that we’re not too keen on spending much more time in this very wet climate with no good views onto the apparently gorgeous scenery , so instead of heading to the next of the many lakes in the region, we cycled towards the Panamericana. However, leaving Entre Lagos we first had quite a bit of ripio to ride on, but we got used to it pretty quickly again and by the early afternoon we reached Río Bueno, where we had lunch before we started to pollute our lungs while occupying the emergency lane of the highway… However, the highway let us advance a bit faster than usual, so by the end of the day we reached Los Lagos (unfortunately only after it started raining again…), where we stopped at the first hospedaje we found and where after an easy dinner we both fell asleep very quickly. The next morning we didn’t start anything new, meaning that again we got up to the music of the rain… But again the rain stopped just as we left and except for some short intervals of light rain it kept dry for quite a while! We were riding eastwards again towards another lake, it still seemed the better choice than to ride hundreds of kilometers along the highway… Shortly after our lunch break the dry weather was replaced by pouring rain, but the road got flatter and the wind stopped almost completely, so that we got to Pangipulli pretty fast, where again we stayed at the first hospedaje we found and immediately hang up our cloth in the hope they’d dry until the next morning… Eventually I could have needed a different music in the morning, but the only thing we got was the sound of heavy rain… Well, this meant that we had a long breakfast and an interesting discussion with the owner of the hospedaje, and again the waiting was worth it, as it finally stopped raining! Over some hills we rode to Lican Ray, where we had lunch at the beach and for a little while we could even enjoy the sun! From there it wasn’t far to Villarrica anymore where we spent our evening talking to a French couple we met at the hostel… And the next day something almost incredible happened: it did not rain when we woke up!! :-) And soon it was clear that it would even get sunny that day, which increased my motivation to get onto my bike a lot! It was a really nice day for cycling, in the beginning there still was a lot of mist in all the valleys and everything was sparkling in the sun, it was amazing! As the road was really good and heading slightly downhill most of the time, we advanced pretty fast and got to Temuco really easily, from where we called our WarmShowers host Juan José in order to get direction of how to get to his place, that was located about 20 km north of the city. When we finally found their place we were warmly welcomed by this young family and we spent a very nice evening with them, cooking together and exchanging our travelling experiences… We then decided to stay another day at Juan José´s and Carla´s place in order to relax a bit and to go back to Temuco in order to have lunch together with our hosts at the local Mercado and to visit the local market, called Feria Pinto, which was huge and where you find lots of good and fresh fruits and vegetables!

At Temuco's Feria Pinto: Yeah, there's a lot of chili available... ;-)

The next two days we really spent solely on the highway as we tried to get to Chillán as soon as possible, we were so sick of all the rain that we really just wanted to get as far north as possible!

That's how to pass a toll gate by bike... :-)

From Chillán we then took the train to Santiago, as we already figured that cycling through very populated areas is not too much fun due to lots of traffic that usually doesn’t respect cyclists at all… However, this wasn’t as easy as we thought it would be, as they told us we’d have to take of both wheels… But once we actually had to hand over our bikes, the wheels didn’t seem to be any problem anymore and after a 5 hours train ride and over 3000 km by bike we finally arrived in Santiago de Chile on the 9^th of May! :-)

Yippie - Everything arrived at Santiagos train station!

The beautiful view from the hostel's terrace in the center of Santiago

Our first day in Santiago we visited a few of the very local markets close to our hostel where we also had a great seafood lunch, before we got terribly lost in this huge city while looking for a well-known outdoor store, so that eventually we returned to the hostel without having been where we wanted to go… But the evening we spent with Iain, a British motorcyclist we already met in Coyhaique and who stayed at the same hostel as we did. We went to the Bellavista neighborhood, the neighborhood famous for its restaurants and bars, where we first had a good Parrillada at a restaurant and then went to another place where we enjoyed some live music… The next day we took the bus to Valparaíso, a nearby city famous for its colorful houses and the many hills it’s built into and I have to admit that it’s really a cute city, even if I’m not the biggest fan of cities…