Day 4-9

A salute to Chilean farmers

Here’s a “no horse and cart” sign just before the main hiway that runs n/s in Chile

If you zoom in you can barely make out distant mountains shrouded in smoke and ash 

Visibility on the road around a mile most of the time

For beer lovers I finally found a worthy competitor for Guinness   Unfortunately turned out not to be a Chilean beer but German

So had Covid-19 from Wed to Sat but fortunately didn’t disrupt the trip much because I’ve had to wait for bike license plate which is supposed to be here today, Glad I didn’t catch it while I was on the road.

Been having fun cruising around the city on the hotel bicycle though

Yesterday went for a 300 mile ride south and was totally bummed by the smoke covering everything 

Going to look into it more but unless I find that the far south is much clearer, I’m going to alter my plans and go to North first and then hopefully 3 weeks from now I’ll be able to return down there 

Today taking bike in for first service which came with bike price

Many insane drivers here with no respect for motorcyclists 

I was cut off numerous times and turn signal usage is meh

Just as in every country, if you’re friendly to them, they’re friendly back,  people are smiling at me all the time and my Spanish practice has paid off in that I’m not having any language problems other than having to ask them to slow down when they’re speaking so that I can understand.  Guess my gringo accent though isn’t affecting them because they don’t seem to have any trouble understanding what I want.  

The main highway south is a toll road and I was dreading the cost of that until I found out that they have made the intelligent choice of not charging motorcyclists the same as cars unlike Colorado.  Most of the tolls were 900 pesos which is just over a dollar for me and about 3000 or so for cars on my trip. I had to pay 900 four times so a reasonable rate for sure.

The only reason I took the toll road was because I wanted to get the 500 km necessary before the first service in the shortest time possible yet it still took me all day.  If I had to take side roads which I plan to do after I get out of town at the start of the trip then it’d have been a lot slower going, but a lot more interesting because the toll road was hell for traffic, idiot drivers and the horrible smoky mountain scene.  It is summer here though, so I’m expecting crowding for the first couple of weeks until the kids are back in school.