31.4 mi / 7.9 mph / 2522 ft. climbing
Home: Umawtu Bed & Wine

When I searched for bike tourers who have passed through Valparaiso, it seemed like most of them actually rode through Santiago, and took a bus (without their bikes) back and forth to sight-see for a day or two. While that was a nice affirmation of our enjoyment of the city, it was also an implicit indictment: only the craziest of cyclists would willingly ride into (and worse, out of) the hills of Valparaiso!

Even though our difficult-to-reach AirBNB was actually only 180 feet up Valparaiso’s steep guarding mountainside (which we would eventually need to climb to 1600 feet to pass to the other side), I figured it was better to hold on to each one of those 180 feet and take Highway 60, rather than giving them back in order to cross the sea-level part of the city and take Highway 68. In either direction there would have been stairs, but we chose to climb the 60 stairs upward, on a route I had scouted yesterday, that brought us most-directly to a street where we could start riding (ok, no, the first part of the street was at least a 20% grade, so we started with pushing). Once things eased up, we continued on the route I had explored yesterday while bedding-in new brake pads on Rett’s bike, where the grades maxed out at 12%.

The traffic and lack-of-recent-practice meant Rett walked several of the steeper sections, but for me it was all rideable, and easier than I expected. I must still be holding on to some of the red blood cells I acquired at high altitudes. That southwesterly path brought us to nearly 500 feet in less than a mile, at which point we turned northwest on a winding road that stays relatively-flat, essentially a real-world version of the 500-foot contour line that would be drawn on a topographic map. After a few miles through surprisingly-dense neighborhoods clinging to the steep slopes above and below, the road began climbing again (more-gradually this time), and curved around to reverse direction and finally head in the broadly-southeast direction toward Casablanca.

A section of road near the top became shoulderless with a 6% grade. Chilean drivers are patient, but apparently not that patient, so for safety we crossed over to walk up a sidewalk on the other side. It disappeared shortly and forced us back into the road, but thankfully that was near the point where the grade eased. We turned onto an on-ramp to enter Highway 60, near its origin, so there was initially little traffic. I had read that bicycles are generally allowed (in practice, though maybe not officially) on limited-access highways in Chile, and the bus ride from Arica had been a nice opportunity to learn that that Internet-advice was true: we saw multiple Chilean cyclists out for rides on highways much bigger than this one that we were starting on.

We were happy to exit the highway after 5.5 miles and grab onto a minor road at the town of Placilla. This one roughly paralleled the more-major Highway 68 (the direct route from Valparaiso to Santiago), so very few vehicles used the far-slower road. Even though I knew that Highway 68 had far wider shoulders than 60, and would be an easy (if loud) ride, when we met the point where I planned to get on, we decided to remain on the frontage road a bit longer for the peace. It required us to pay an extra 100 feet in climbing compared to the highway right next to it on the last hill before Casablanca, but that was probably a fair price.

We finally joined Highway 68 at a cloverleaf interchange, but rather than looping around to get to the on-ramp going in the correct direction, we simply cut directly down a sidewalk leading to a bus-stop on the highway shoulder and popped in right there. No limited-access highways in the US would allow such easy pedestrian/bike entry, but of course the idea of sending people to the highway to board a bus (rather than inefficiently sending the bus off and back on the highway to pick up the people) is an idea that would also not occur to US transportation planners.

There was an extreme heat warning, but luckily it didn’t get too bad where we were, probably topping out at 80°F. It certainly felt hotter in the sun, and we stopped for cold drinks and 2nd-breakfast at a reasonably US-style convenience store (where we could pay with a credit card!). Later, lunch in the shade of some roadside pine trees was comfortable with the increasing breeze. That breeze was technically a headwind, but it never really organized itself enough to become a burden, though some crosswind gusts were a bit troublesome when they tried to push us into passing trucks on Highway 68.

The day’s 80 feet-per-mile of climbing was the densest we’ve done since our ride into Cusco six weeks ago, so while we’ve left the high Peruvian Andes behind, Chile has still found ways to make us climb!

We arrived to Casablanca and our AirBNB just before 3pm as we’d targeted. Oh, sorry, not an AirBNB, one of three rooms in a home (with a shared kitchen, though we were the only guests) found on booking.com. Where we would need to pay our host in cash, but the listing was priced in USD, and the posted rate on a cute little sign was in Chilean Pesos and significantly higher than the rate we’d booked. So what do we pay? It turns out that it’s the booking.com rate, and then she just converts that to CLP. Easy and fair!

It was warm enough in town that I put on shorts after showering, something I never did once in five months in Peru (I had been starting to wonder why I was even carrying two pairs of shorts!) We walked to the center of town in the glowing evening light and got some good rare-in-Peru food for dinner (fajitas! That was really more of a burrito, but still…), celebrating a pretty successful first day of moving on our own in Chile!