Heading south

Of course, it is obvious to everyone that we were heading south. Everyone would go! Chilean coastline there looks on the map as if Chile is like Norway but located in South America. We did not have any route, but in Chile it is not needed: you can go either south or north, and any interesting things were meant to be heard from the locals and go on their advice. It always works: your roads will lead you where you need to be.

It was difficult in the beginning. First, the question of money was a constant challenge: how many kilometers we can ride today? What will we eat? Where to pitch up a tent for free? I used to think that the country of the fences is Russia. But no. Chileans are really crazy about building fences. Ocean coastline is behind the fence. Forest behind the fence. Whether a stream or a lake it is also behind the fence or even two. On one of the first days, we tried to get to the river for a long time, where we thought it would be nice to stay for a couple of nights to relax or to work. The road was existing on a map but at some sandy and muddy places it was too difficult to ride for me – and there Tim was helping me. So, on this entire road, we opened and closed an incredible amount of gates, until we finally reached such a coveted river and saw… another fence! And the pumping station. Cool rest with the buzz of man-made processes. In the morning we had breakfast and decided to ride out the other way through the vineyards. In 700 meters before we reached the main road… oh yes, here is a place for a lyrical digression.

My surgeon would probably be very displeased with me if he found out what is our ride about. Before the operation, I knew exactly what to do with the shoulder in case of its dislocation, but now it has suddenly become a problem: what if I crash or fall even a little? I felt excited. My nerves were becoming weaker and weaker after difficult ascents or descents, the pain was coming again and I had to give up at several moments. Tim was riding my bike instead of me at the places I felt too unsafe. In a word, we didn’t want to ride the same way back, and in 700 meters before the main road, we were in front of the fence – again. This time the gate was locked with three locks, and behind the gate, there was an intersection with three more gates to each direction. I have never seen anything like that! Luckily, there was a house in 200 meters away, so I went there and explained: dos motocicletas, turisto russo, we want to get to the main road, how to win the gate? The answer they gave to me was to ride left to their yard, after that around the house through the garden and soon we will find ourselves on the other side of the fence. Crazy!

We rode to Pichilemu, the town of surfers. I was not even thinking about to surf again with my just operated shoulder, so we just went to the coast and had a beautiful view there – with surfers, of course. I miss surfing, but… someday I will be back on the wave! But this time we left Pichilemu after one hour or even less. In search of wild camping options we had sometimes to spend an hour, or even two, and three, and this despite the fact that we were already riding with enough water with us because finding a place for camping with a water source seemed completely impossible. We had camped on the edge of the forest road, on the ocean beaches… we used all the possibilities. Sometimes it was really difficult, but just in the beginning. At some point, my back became very painful and we spent the last money to book a room through Airbnb. We spent three nights there until I was able to move again. Town called Talca… a seemingly normal place, right? No!!! The temperature was never below thirty degrees. It was like burning in the hell! Having restored some strength there, we moved further towards the town of Cauquenes, where Christian from Couchsurfing was already waiting for us. Before that, we stayed at the lake of Tutuven, where we spent two or three days in the company of stray dogs and excellent wine bought on the way.

Do you know how it happens? It was a whole region full of vineyards. You can see wineries along the road quite often. Wine is sold in five-liter cans, and I was incredibly upset about that size because we didn’t have enough money even for food! But I still had to ask about the price. Wjeehaa! Yup, you can have five liters of great wine for just five dollars. And sometimes it was possible to eat apples and plums from the trees along the road. Not bad!

While traveling in austerity mode, we ate just rice and lentils. For breakfast, we had rice with boiled condensed milk, and dinner was usually with lentils, canned fish and mayonnaise. We had also bread but in Chile, you cannot find rye bread and have to be happy with wheat. We were also missing buckwheat and we miss it still all the time having even hallucinations while looking for something along the shelves in a supermarket. Avocados were also a good option to have during the ride and cooked eggs as well: quick and cheap. Everything is possible with a desire!

We stayed in Cauquenes until we got our salaries. At that moment we already had a problem with leaking fork on Tim’s bike; actually, we made the maintenance for both forks before leaving Saint Petersburg, but it seems like people who had been putting Tim’s bike into the container made it somehow wrong: the fork was pinched all the time during our motorcycles transportation, and we noticed it’s leaking already in San Antonio but then it was just a small leakage. Now it had become worse. So we were heading to Concepción, the second capital of Chile. The city itself is located very close to the ocean, but the heat was still hellish. Thirty kilometers from the city there is a farm we were heading to; Pablo from Couchsurfing promised to help us with Tim’s bike and to host us there for a couple of nights. When we had almost reached the place, we managed to quarrel about something stupid and absolutely not important because the heat makes both of us crazy and nervous… I left the roadside parking where we had a break because I just wanted to have a small ride alone, but when I returned, Tim wasn’t there anymore. I kept waiting for Pablo there and when he came I followed his car to the farm. Tim arrived a bit later as well. Everything had been resolved by itself, so we just needed to take a break and to calm down. A small solo ride is always a good option!

Pablo is a motorcyclist, too. He traveled a lot on foot and hitchhiking and just a bit on his bike. Besides us, there was also his girlfriend Rachel from Ireland and two of her brothers on the farm. We had a good time together making barbeque, cooking borsch (the red Russian soup yeeees, delicious!), drinking wine and vodka and working.

The farm belongs to Pablo’s parents, and they rent it out for all kinds of events, i.e. this is not a place where they cultivate cereals and raise cattle, but rather a glamorous haven for glamorous parties. There are peacocks, rabbits… It’s really kind of nice and atmospheric place. One day we were also visiting Pablo’s friend who lives just some kilometers away from the farm. We made pizza there all together and also checked out the host’s music studio. A whole separate room only for music… a dream!

Tim’s fork was repaired in some kind of moto service, but the result wasn’t that good. The brake caliper began to cling to the brake disc making it hot, so the next day we had to go to the same place back again. They fixed the mistake and we were now able to continue the ride! Leaving the farm, we headed to the peninsula, where we pitched a tent on the ocean. The road was so beautiful there! Good asphalt, proper curves, nice views… and there was no connection at all. At night, after some wine, we went for a walk along the coast. The moon was huge… While we were sleeping, I woke up several times and thought that we were going to be washed away by the tide – but no, the water had not reached us and stopped approximately twenty meters away. Later we were doing as smart people do: we began to google the maximum tides just in case. It would not be very cool to be swallowed up by the ocean with our bikes and tent!

Leaving this lovely peninsula a dirt road, Tim heard some rumble coming from his fork. It turned out that the people from the garage in Conce did not tense the bolts properly, and one of them had already gone. Everything was hanging very loose and the fork had small leakage again. The issue with the bolt was resolved at the nearest gas station. While we were checking the bolts remained in the fork, some lady came up to us and handed us a bottle of cold juice – apparently, we had a very miserable and exhausted look. After that, we had a small ride along the coastline and stayed on the beach for two or three nights to spend some time working. We were charging laptops from the bikes with a voltage converter. Not a perfect option, but it works.

From the coast, we headed to Temuco, where the southernmost KTM dealer of “normal Chile” is located. We bought engine oil, cooling liquids (we have different… stupidly), oil for my leaking hydraulic clutch, rear brake pads for Tim’s bike… One hundred dollars just for one pair of pads!!! Crazy ? Oils were also very expensive, but we had no options. The owners wished us all the best, and we continued to Conguillio – a national park, Pablo’s friends told us about.

For the first time during our trip it started to rain. The real rain! We even had a small stop to put our rain suits on. It was already late and dark, but we had just a little more than one hundred kilometers left to the place we were going to. At midnight, the asphalt road turned to the gravel, and after twenty kilometers more we finally arrived at the parking lot marked on iOverlander as good place to stay for a night before entering the national park. We had a quick dinner there – with little wine, of course, and fell asleep. In the morning there was an opulent landscape waiting for us! First, it suddenly turned out that we could stand there longer and work because we found one place where our Chilean mobile internet was working. Secondly, there was a mountain river with pure water coming from the mountains. And thirdly, there was plenty of firewood around to collect. The real paradise! We even had such luxury as clean hair: the water in the river was very cold, but still not freezing cold, so it was possible to have a good shower there without worries that our brains will be frozen.

A few days later we arrived at the national park itself, paid for the entry, reached Llaima volcano and started to hike up there. The volcano is active and erupts regularly, sometimes even severely. At some moment we felt we are not that interested in a too easy hike and went back down. The road leading through the national park was really good! Everything you need, if you love offroad 🙂 And a lot of araucaria trees. Actually, the region is called Araucania precisely because of them 🙂

Next, we were planning to go to moto camping and check out the lake district of Chile. At that moment Tim had already found… a generator. On the internet. Charging our laptops from the bikes wasn’t that good idea, because the bikes were becoming too hot all the time and we thought it is not a purpose KTM motors are made for, so we did need another energy source. Well, we rode back to Temuco and purchased our new friend which has the normal four-stroke engine working on gasoline producing eight hundred watts. Also, it has just eight kilograms of weight and we paid only three hundred dollars or even less for it. Perfect acquisition! His short name is Gena 🙂

We arrived at moto camping around midnight, pitched a tent, cooked dinner, and the next day was for the laundry. Also, it was necessary to clean and tighten the chains. And it started… On my motorcycle, the adjusting bolts could not be unscrewed from the swingarm. The short fifteen-minute procedure took at least two hours and had much more things to do than just turning the bolts: we had to take my rear wheel off, to unscrew the chain adjusting bolts, to clean and to lubricate them and so on. Well, I don’t know the story of my KTM, but it seems that before it was not that beloved. Moto camping turned out to be a normal place, but too glamorous and for glamorous motorcyclists. For travelers like us, it is not the right place. But we had a good shower there! The owner warned us about “very hot water with dangerous pressure”, but for us, it was the first place where the shower worked properly as we have at home! In Chile, hot water is not offered to people by the city. Every house has to have a boiler or any other device to heat water, and everywhere they are buggy: they can suddenly drench you with cold water, or there is no pressure, or hot water ends in three minutes… so having a hot and well-working shower in Chile is really a big pleasure. The owner of that campsite is also a motorcyclist who had been traveling around the world for five years. After that he came back home and managed to put his profession and his passion together: he is an architect. At the campsite, he designed everything himself, everything looks really cool, but for us, it was still too much. The right word is “glamorous” – by our standards. Some people may like it but not us.

Then there was a region called Los Lagos with a road called Seven Lakes. There we were just riding from the lake to the lake and admired the views that almost all local people recommended us. Cool, beautiful. Wild blackberries. Volcano Villarica. Clear and warm water in the lakes. But somehow it was… not that amazing or something. Nice and beautiful lake region, but we have the same and even better landscapes at home! So one day we moved back to the coastline, this time to Valdivia, an old and small town. What a pleasure!

It was finally possible to wear a dress for one evening. Yup! I’m a girl, and I have a few dresses and heeled shoes traveling with me… to make it possible for me to put all that stuff on just one time in three months or even more rarely 😀

Good beer, raw meat, ceviche salad with cilantro, lemon, fish, and paprika, the brewery… Oh, dear civilization! And finally sleeping on the bed. After two weeks spent in a tent, it was very nice. From Valdivia, we still thought to pass through another national park, but the road going there turned out to be just very loose gravel road with a lot of hairpins, and it was impossible to ride faster than forty kilometers per hour – at least for me. So we turned around and thought: okay! Today we are going on the Chiloe archipelago: there are only 250 kilometers of the highway to ride and enough time before the ferry will leave!