Chile: An Easy Day

It’s a glorious Sunny Lazy day. We are camped next to a fast running stream with ducks and fish also enjoying the freshness. Taking it really slowly, we repack the bike and add more excess baggage to the already heavy bag on the luggage rack at the bottom. We want to get as much stuff as low down as possible ready to take back to France. We decide that today we will have an Easy Day. A short 140kms ride to Victoria, buy a Chile Sim card, find an ATM, replace the Phone battery which is playing up, and have an Easy Day.

Its 2pm by the time we leave, well rested and relaxed. Victoria is laid out fairly logically with a central plaza surrounded by a grid pattern of streets so locating the tourist info booth is easy but the girls behind the desk have no info about camping. Why camp? We have hostels, hotels, motels, but you can “camp for free at the rivers.” None of the 7 phone shops sell our particular battery, try Amazon or Ebay they suggest, but the ATM spits out some money and we get a Chile Sim, which is not much use without a phone.

On our ride from Lonquimay to Victoria we passed numerous resorts with impressive gates and beautiful wooden chalets (cabanas) displaying billboards for Thermal Spa Weekends and treatment, nestled in pine forest plantations. Very posh, very luxurious with nice lawns perfect for our tent! We also noticed plumes of creamy smoke rising up and drifting northwards. Mmmm, fire somewhere. And then there were more and more. We counted at least 10 more smoky clouds polluting the blue sky until the air became one big hazy yellow. It’s now 4pm and we head out of town towards the River, daring ourselves to do a bit of free/wild camping as the other option just didn’t want to happen in Chile. Without a phone/search engine, and a Navigator and tourist bureau that are campsite unfriendly, we are struggling. The smoke is denser near the river and with all the pine forests around we feel uneasy so we make a quick decision to hit the highway and ride as far away from Victoria and the fires as possible. National Route 5 is the way to go. It’s a double carriageway, fenced in on the sides and down the middle. We are being funnelled through 100kms of pine forests, the air behind us getting smokier with each passing minute and evidence of previous fires scarring the landscape, then 50kms of fruit plantations, then another 50 of vineyards. We fill up in Los Angeles (Chile) and check on the Navigator for a campsite, and it shows one at Saltos Del Laja, another 30kms away. Just as the sun is setting we find the turn off: a gravel road! No way, Jose! I am not going on that. I dismount and start walking, and B rides off into the setting sun. As the rear light disappears around a corner so does the sun. Oh well, better start walking. As B does not return, I assume there is a campsite at the end of the road, or he’s come a cropper. Fortunately it’s the latter and I find him, having unloaded the bike, and almost ready to return and pick me up. With head torch and starlight we park and pitch. It’s a warm evening and although the Easy Day developed into a 300kms ride, we are safe and secure.

It’s Day 24 since the crash and B is riding OK but finding it difficult to settle comfortably at night. Perhaps tomorrow will be an Easy Day. We try another tactic and punch Santiago (500kms away) into the GPS and ‘campsite along route’ option. Nothing. Oh Well, lets go Northwards and ‘worry about it later’.

National Route 5 is fast and fenced and tolled. We try a few turn offs, but the tarmac turns to gravel, so we u-turn and get back on the highway. It’s a long continuous straight 100 kms of agriculture, orchards and vines, then 100kms of pastures, wheat and corn, then 100kms of forests; a dark green never-ending tunnel with hazy skies. At a mini-city service station I look for a camping map. Nope. Only an expensive comprehensive book, of which we need the last 5 pages. No deal. We are going nowhere fast with this camping milarkey and by 5pm, 400kms later, we stop and assess the situation. Rancagua seems like a big town, big enough for a proper tourist info anyway. Leaving the bike is not an option so B pulls up on the pavement on the town square while I walk and search, finding two lovely policeman who are super-helpful. They have phones and google and quickly find a campsite for us 15kms out of town, Northwards. Yippee. With that sorted we can enjoy this marvellous town. Perhaps it is time to buy a new phone. We obviously cannot buy a battery through Amazon/Ebay and we obviously cannot be without a phone. Most city centres have a shopping mall and Rancagua is no exception. It’s large, modern and has everything we want, including a Samsung store. This time it’s my turn to guard the bike, watch the shoppers pass by, get photographed and explain ‘where we are from’ and where we are going’. It takes a long time to buy a phone in a foreign country with a British passport, but at last it’s done and of course, we are confident about camping tonight because the policeman gave us a name and directions. Except we just could not find the place. The Navigator showed a checkered destination flag, but it was at a point under the highway. We’d drawn a blank. Up and down the backroad from Rancagua to San Francisco (Chile). At sunset the lights of a Motel blinked Welcome. We are tired. We have had enough.

There are two big metal sliding gates, Entrada/Salida. We pull up in front of Entrada and it magically opens up then shuts itself behind us. There are rows of curtained parking cubicles with red/green light alongside. We find an open cubicle, green light on. We can stay here for 4 hours or12 hours or 24hours. A lady greets us at the door of the room, behind the huge PVC curtain, which I have now closed. The green light turns to red. The room is basic, the bathroom is clean, the décor is fluffy pink and charge is £40!! The concept is simple and there is a long corridor running central to all the rooms. Along this corridor, there are ‘kitchen hatch’ openings into each room with a two-way hook-and-eye system. We asked for a beer and biscuits, having not had supper. There was a knock on the inside of the hatch, we undid our latch and the little cubbyhole door opened and a hand appeared with said beer and biscuits. Latch duly clipped again, we were on our own. How weird. Next morning we are up and off, past other rows of shut curtains/red lights: Occupied. Open curtains/green light: Unoccupied. The Salida gate opens and shuts and we carry on the last 100kms to Santiago. There has go to be a campsite here, surely. Except we change our minds and go back to Rancagua to ask the Samsung people to set up the new phone properly as we have no data/signal. Also we think it’s a good place to replace the Chain which has started to clunk and is a bit pushme-pullme.

On the way back we spot the gravel track down which the campsite is, no thank you. Weird Motel was just right. Let’s have an Easy Day today. It’s a Business Day first though. First, to Samsung for the Phone, then we can google a Bike Shop, then a Tourist Info for Camping. We find secure parking underground and now can wander around together. What a lovely town and lovely people. The phone gets sorted, we have data! The Tourist staff delight us with t-shirts and a picnic satchel, but no camping information. The man at the bike shop sells us a chain and arranges for the repair man to fetch and follow to his workshop. This is Easy. We google a campsite ‘near you’ down National Route 5, and land up at an almost unattended field by a river. Just a tethered Horse, who wanders over to munch on our panniers as a friendly greeting. Whew! We had our Easy Day and found our Easy Place, 4 days and more than 1000 kms since leaving Chos Malal. B really needs to rest now.