Paradise Valley
Día 35-36: when two become three, a palace bombing and snowfall incoming (187km)
Chapter 5 Shooting for Santiago
Día 35 Paradise Valley
Quintero to Panquehue (GPX 117km)
Espera un poco, un poquito más
Para llevarte, mi felicidad
Espera un poco, un poquito más
Me moriría si te vas’
Macha y el Bloque Depresivo, La Nave del Olvido
I’ll wait a little, just a little more
So you can take my happiness
I’ll wait a little, just a little more
I will die if you go
During the previous month it had been difficult to ascertain what could possibly have made this trip better. I did have a hunch though, and now it’s come true: add a friend of 10 years to our intrepid duo and evolve into a set of tres musketeers.
Nicole has arrived and she’s brought a van along for the ride. Like the summer of 22’ Arsenal team adding an inverted Zinchenko at left back, our travelling versatility just went up a notch.
We start out on the Chilean coast in Valparaíso (Paradise Valley), eating tapas on a rooftop high in the hills, watching the sun tickle rainbow graffiti on the sandy streets below.
It’s easy to tell why the poets and sailors call this place home. The mazy neighbourhoods have far more bohemian nuance than the grey concrete forest of the capital. That, and Santiago is landlocked, so the sailors would be about as useful as The Right ’Honourable’ Matt Hancock in a game of ‘let’s all keep our hands to ourselves’.
Despite the positive energy of Valparaíso, it’s clear that Chile still bears the scars of a crushing 17-year dictatorship from 1973 to 1991. There had been huge optimism around the 1970 triumph of Salvador Allende, the world’s first democratically elected Marxist.
He made great strides forward in what was an extremely wealth stratified nation, but a few years into his term, there were problems. Although admittedly not problems that merited a military coup and a bombing of the national palace by General Pinochet’s forces.
Allende was found dead in his office next to a gun. His final words broadcast to the nation from inside those doomed walls,
“I will pay for loyalty to the people with my life. And I say to them that I am certain that the seeds which we have planted in the good conscience of thousands and thousands of Chileans will not be shriveled forever.
They have force and will be able to dominate us, but social processes can be arrested by neither crime nor force. History is ours, and people make history.”
The outstanding Museum of Memory and Human Rights explains the cause, actions and consequences of that difficult time in Chile’s past.
One chilling exhibit tells of Law 2568, passed by the new regime, which eliminated the indigenous development institute and established the division of lands and the liquidation of indigenous communities.
Books were burned, papers and radio stations banned, people were disappeared, and communities were destroyed. The torture section brought tears to my eyes.
I end the day sitting on the steps outside the palace where Allende was found dead. Imagining the airforce flying low across downtown rooftops. Contemplating the horror of that day and all that came after it.
To me, life seems grey without the coloured story of the past. Its essential to understanding out present.
Maybe I’m just overly nostalgic.
24 hours later we set off from Valparaíso for a van drive to Quintero to set up camp.
We awake to powerful waves crashing into cliffs above Pirate’s Cave. They move with pace, flinging themselves onwards without doubt of their destiny, which is a tidy metaphor for our how we feel with newly streamlined bicycles.
A rather wonderful consequence of Nicole’s daft punky van is that we can lob our kit in and ride with day provisions only, plotting a rendezvous at dusk.
After a breezy morning 25km, an ambitious target is set over eggs in Concón: a lovely looking river campsite a further 91km east. As the day spins on we realise we overestimated our pace and end up sensing our way through the dark for the last 45 minutes, legs tiring rapidly.
Our saving grace is the other marvelous consequence of van life; our evening meal options have improved beyond all recognition. A sensational pumpkin and chickpea curry awaits us.
Much respect to the new chef on the block.
✅30,000m elevation
Scroll down for Día 36.
Día 36 Aconcagua looms
Panquehue to Río Blanco (GPX 70km)
It is not definitively known why the worlds longest mountain chain takes the ‘Andes’ name, although most historians agree that it derives from the Quechuan language spoken by the Inca.
We do know that it stretches some 5,000 miles down the West coast of this enchanting continent. We also know that the average peak soars to c4000m. That’s three Ben Nevises (the UK’s loftiest contender) stacked upon each other. Englands tallest, Scafell Pike (978m), is a tottering toddler to these growth spurted adolescents.
The awe-inducing Himalaya and their Hindu Kush cousins are the only higher ranges that exist in our planet’s extended mountain family.
The Andes centerpiece is the biblically tall and powerfully named Aconcagua in Argentina, just shy of 7,000m and nicknamed the ‘roof of the Americas’. Last night, it was a Blade Runner sandstorm-red as we skimmed the cracked tarmac of the valley floor.
Today, we’re heading all the way up to Paso Los Libertadores.
An unexpected consequence of our extended pedal time is our increasing respect for this nation’s road builders. The most impressive rutas defy physics, and this one certainly has to be seen to believed. A road famous for looking like a zigzagging line of ketchup along a veggie hot dog. Well, probably a meat one actually.
We can’t wait to ride it. But before we reach the photogenic zenith, the small matter of a few thousand meters of elevation still to go.
Disaster strikes at lunch. We learn from Twitter, latterly known as X, that the first snows have fallen and the pass has been closed preemptively. Thank god for Musk and his informative ways.
We decide to continue up as far as possible tonight and hope a break in the weather allows us to sneak through tomorrow before winter locks in for good. All that stands between us and Argentina is the weather forecast. A dish served at -10C with a garnish of 100kmh winds. At this stage we can only pray it’s inaccurate.
We bed down for the night with a friendly perro who, after making light work of my bread (without consent), decides to trade back some protection. He curls up next to my head on the other side of the canvas. A night guardian I inadvertently paid for in dough.
He guards until cold rain begins pattering in the early hours.
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