46.6 mi / 11.6 mph / 1590 ft. climbing
Home: Bosques de Chacay BikePark

During this intense weeks-long push, we’ve done a pretty good job of getting to bed early so that we can be up early to maximize our opportunity to take advantage of favorable weather conditions (winds usually don’t pick up until the afternoon), and in general have kept ourselves more-disciplined than usual (hence this journal entry being written nearly a month after we lived it). But last night’s dinner out with Sofia kept us up much later than usual (totally worth it!), so we “slept in” until a still-too-early 6am.

But today, starting later was actually the way to take advantage of the weather conditions, because the forecast showed almost-perfect tailwinds along our route, with their push becoming stronger as the day progressed. Yesterday we had already decided to ride those winds to push us to a destination further than our rough initial plan, banking an “extra” 20 miles for a day when the weather luck didn’t come up in our favor (because the luck we’ve been having with temperatures and winds was bound to change at some point!)

Our exit south out of Concepción was a million times more-relaxed than our nightmarish entrance from the north had been. Some of that was because I carefully routed a longer-than-strictly-necessary route that took advantage of the city’s bike paths, some because those bike facilities existed on the south end of town (including across the big bridge) where they simply hadn’t on the northern approach, and some because early on Sunday morning, there were almost no vehicles out on the streets of the city.

After crossing to the south bank of the Biobio River, we made a left turn to follow it upstream, marking the end of our two weeks riding along the coast of Chile. Though one advantage of waiting until Concepción to turn inland is that the route is barely a “turn” at this point; we’re still proceeding mostly south, with just a gradual slide to the east, which is the most geometrically-efficient way for us to head toward southern Argentina. Also, the broad river and its piggybacked road provide a nearly hill-free passage to the interior.

A few miles before our destination, we stopped at a country store to get some drinks for dinner, and came out with some slices of homemade cheesecake too. It was a type of place that we haven’t really seen in South America, feeling more like it could have come from the rural US, particularly with the friendly proprietor who was curious about us and made a good effort to communicate in Spanish. Due to poor connectivity, her credit-card payment device wouldn’t work, so I paid in cash, only the fifth time I’ve needed to do that in three weeks in Chile.

It’s all nice to say “let’s just go 20 miles further than we’d planned”, but we aren’t the kind of bike tourers who have the “we’ll just find a place to pitch our tent when we get tired” gene in our DNA, so finding a place to stay between towns had been a critical requirement for changing our plans. I’d found Bosques de Chacay BikePark on Google Maps/iOverlander, with reviews saying that they offered accommodation to touring cyclists. What I knew would get Rett excited about staying there (and even to message them) was the reports of 200 goats that they keep on the property!

We had to branch a bit off the main road and then go up some gravel hills, and then let ourselves in the gate and push up the gravel drive (crossing marked mountain-bike trails, indicating we were in the right place!), where we were greeted warmly by Rocio, half-a-dozen large dogs, and several of the dozens of goats nearby!

Rocio showed us down to a hollow where we could set up camp, and then back up top they had a barn with a bathroom, shower, and kitchen area (though we just used our own stove, since the weather was good and it was more convenient to be down with all of our stuff). The goats, in addition to being funny and super-cute (at least the little ones!) are there for a serious reason: to consume the brush in the forest that would otherwise work as fuel to energize fires burning through the stands of non-native trees planted all through the area. And it appears that this is not just a theoretical concern. On the offshoot road we took to access the Bike Park, almost all of the country houses looked brand-new, presumably built with insurance money after recent fires burned down the existing buildings!

As we approach the summer solstice in the Southern Hemisphere, sunset is now nearing 9pm. We’ve been aware of the lengthening days for a while, but nothing makes that awareness settle in like camping does, with the ability to just sit outside well after dinner feeling near-magical. That feeling was also magnified by the distance from when we’ve last been able to revel in it. The last time we pitched our tent before tonight, we were far closer to the equator, in Peru, where the day-length barely varies throughout the year from the 12-hour median. Due to hemisphere-flipping, our previous two solstices then were both winter solstices (there in Peru, and Florida, USA), and while we were camping in the relatively-high latitudes of New York seven weeks after 2024’s summer solstice, we really need to go back a full two years in New Zealand to a time and place where we had the 14-to-15 hours of daylight that will shine on us for the next ~3 months.