The winds were expected to be somewhat less-friendly than they had been yesterday, so we had the alarm set for 5:30am, when the skies are just beginning to lighten. The goat-guarding dogs would go on random barking sprees through the night, and the latest one was timed just before our alarm anyway. It was 45°F, Read more…

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 Read more…

Concepción would be the largest city we’ve been to since Valparasio, and while it’s technically a port city, our inland route to get there would mostly be on major highways. So we “slept in” until 6am, expecting that there wouldn’t be much scenery to stop to look at along the way. Our more-inland route meant Read more…

We woke to our first clear day in what feels like a week, and since our continuing ability to stick near the cold Pacific should protect us from the sun’s heat, we could simply enjoy the effects of better light for the day’s improved scenery (or was the scenery improved by the higher-contrast lighting?) Our Read more…

It took three hours after our 5:30am alarm to get rolling (a bit longer than normal), partly because we had to collect and pack our laundry which we’d left hanging last night from lines in the covered garage/patio space, following yesterday’s late-in-the-day wash cycle (we’re yet to see a dryer in South America, but thankfully Read more…

We kept with our up-at-5:30, out-at-8am cadence, this time because we did have a long day ahead. And it started right off the bat with a huffer, an 800-foot climb out of the city of Constitución, the 2nd-largest city we would pass through on the coast of central Chile. That size meant that there was Read more…