03/12/23

Didn’t get going till 1130 today because I was going on what I thought was going to be a short ride because it was only supposed to be an hour and a half each way however I wasn’t able to account for the fact that,first there was a rally of bicycles, hundreds and hundreds of them mostly going up when I got there and a lot coming down too and I didn’t account for the fact that it was Sunday and saw every guy and his brother who had a car was headed up that road as well so with the cars and the bicycles you can imagine how fast I was going, like walking speed at times but gave me lots of time to look around

So I went halfway up, and I had already done 14 hairpin turns which, unlike the ones going up to Argentina turned out to be completely off camber meaning tilted the wrong way, so that when I was going up around the corner, it was really hard to keep within my lane and with all the bicycles coming down, I was pretty scared of either hitting one or getting hit by one so I was a holding my breath a lot and then I went a few more miles past all those hair pins and then I looked at my map and I see God I’m not even halfway and this is like after two hours so I thought if I go the rest of the way, it’ll be four hours and then four hours back it’ll be dark by the time I get back and then what really convinced me was when I talked to some bicyclist who’d stopped for a rest and asked him if there is a restaurant at the end he said nope you have to go back to that little town where the road divided. I remembered going past that little towns so OK I’ll just turn around and go back eat and then I should be back at a reasonable time so I go back to the little town you guessed it nothings open no restaurant so I had to come all the way back to Santiago before I could eat and that was like at 3:30 or something and I was starving to death. So glad that I didn’t go any further and glad that I didn’t eat it on any of those curves, they were way worse than the ones going up to Argentina because the one on the main highway are flat there are no off-cambers. Whatever. It was a great ride and lotta cool scenery with the another river and rivers coming down to meet that river not as big as the one on the way to Argentina, but still quite impressive to see all that water when everything surrounding it was desert, no vineyards or orchards on the trip, though, because the canyon with the river was quite narrow compared to the Argentinian one, no big wine valley, or anything like that.

One of the rivers leading down to the one at the bottom of the canyon

And extremely elaborate and I’m sure very expensive dedication to a 30 year old who died in an accident on this corner and I guess he was a Buddhist from looking at the pictures and the turbans and the Buddha statues are in the whole thing. There’s more pictures below this one but as you can see, I still haven’t gotten around to figuring out how to put them in order yet

This is a sign saying this is a special species of fox’s habitat and don’t give them food because human food harms them

Switchback 14

Looking down on a couple of switchbacks

The main river at the bottom of the canyon, but before it gets a lot bigger

Some of the bikes coming down, and they were going way faster than me, must’ve had nerves of steel

Don’t know if this guy who is dressed like a real cowboy Chilean style along with his two pack horses and dog were giving tours rides or he was out doing some surveying or something maybe investigating fox habitat I don’t know, but he sure looked the part. I asked him if I could take a picture and he said sure no problem so of course I did

Somebody or somebodies actually built a little church on top of a hill with no road to get to it. If you look at the light brown patch in the middle, you can see there’s just a walking trail up to it so you got to be a dedicated parishioner to be going to church on Sunday in this one

Another part of that dedication to the deceased guy

Three Chinese car dealers, including the one that I thought might’ve been a model rather than a company, but sure enough it is a company

You can see the off camber, which was not too bad going down. I didn’t go over the center line at all but coming up I went over a lot of times, I just couldn’t make the corner without falling over if I took it that sharply.