38.2 mi / 9.8 mph / 2412 ft. climbing
Home: Hostal Norte Mar

Our fourth consecutive ride out from Valparaiso was our fourth consecutive day with a pedaling time near four hours, which is at the higher end of what we would prefer to average. Thus, it led to a planned rest-day, with the expectation that it would be an opportunity to assess the challenges that this new riding environment (the hilly coast of central Chile) was handing to us. But we’re pushing harder than normal with the dual goal of reaching our Christmas AirBNB booking in Puerto Montt (potentially reserving enough time for a detour into Argentina), and building up our strength to ride the challenging Carretera Austral in the New Year. So off-days will be unusually rare.

The entire ride was on relatively-minor highways, so probably our least traffic-stressed day in Chile so far. But as we got closer to the beach-vacation town of Pichilemu, volumes increased, and it seemed like drivers became increasingly-unwilling to move over when they passed us as we rode in the generally-nonexistent shoulder. At first I attributed it to them not wanting to bump over the the raised reflectors placed annoyingly on the road’s centerline, but later when those became less-frequent, but the close-passes did not, I wondered if it could be an influx of more-aggressive urban drivers from Santiago, coming out to the coast on Thursday afternoon for a long weekend?

The blazing 1800 foot descent to town took us from bright blue skies to dense coastal fog in the blink of an eye. The hills weren’t finished though, as a block-long 14% climb greeted us right in the center of town. Our AirBNB for two nights was really more of a small motel, where we could walk outside one room down to a shared kitchen, use a washing machine a bit further down, and hang our clothes on one of the lines strung right in front of our room. Especially with the kitchen, it felt remarkably like a New Zealand holiday park.

After the New Zealand-similarities of previous days made me realize how “close” we are here in the southern hemisphere to the island nation across the Pacific where we spent so much time, I’d been tracking when we would reach the point south enough that a sail straight westward would bump us into New Zealand’s North Island. Well, our motel (and the specific room we were put in) couldn’t have been more-perfect for that nerdery: from my pillow, a westward sail would land us right on New Zealand’s northermost rock, but from our bathroom, we would drift past it and wouldn’t hit land until Australia!

Our friendly young host spoke good English, and said that he had spent time in the US visiting his grandmother. Where? San Francisco. Seems like an unfortunate waste, since there is no area in the US less-different from his home of Pichilemu than San Francisco!