Southern Exposure

Thursday, March 12

Despite our good intentions, it took us time to tear ourselves away from our comfortable hotel room. We savored our final breakfast buffet. It was a little bit like putting Humpty Dumpty back together, but soon enough the old rhythm of packing returned and the bikes were loaded. The bell hops were entertained by our packing in front of the hotel, but I think the management was happy to see us depart. No more dirty riders stomping across their nice lobby.

Getting out of Santiago was straightforward and soon we were back on Ruta 5 headed south. We had just done this road in the car the day before, and it was not an exciting road the first time around. It was a divided 4 lane toll highway, and it generally went straight south.

I was having a hard time getting mentally back into the trip, and this day’s ride did not help. Hot, straight, and boring are not a good combination. We ground out the miles, passing where we had exited to Santa Cruz and continued on south. It was interesting to see how different the scenery looked from a motorcycle rather than inside a car. I was sitting up higher, and without a roof in the way I could look around at the landscape.

We arrived in Chillán in the early evening, and looked at several hotels and hostels before settling on a hostel set back from the street run by a nice old man. You could tell he was an orderly person by how clean and well organized the hostel was kept. Our room seemed nice enough and the price was right.

We went into town to find dinner, as we had skipped lunch to make more miles. We had a hard time finding any place that looked good, and settled on a pub with outdoor seating on a pedestrian street. We ordered a vegetarian pizza and waited and waited and waited. After half hour, we received our vegetarian “pizza”. It was flat bread covered completely with a bed of corn, with slices of tomato and green beans resting on top. We were not amused. No cheese, no tomato sauce, and no dough does not make a pizza, this is a salad on a piece of bread. What took half an hour? We refused the “pizza” and went up the street to the German restaurant, which was fast and satisfying.

When we returned to the hotel room, it was clearer why it was such a good deal. The room had a strong greenhouse effect going, it was very hot and stuffy inside. We opened the window, which was really a small door to the patio, but the room instantly filled with mosquitos which prompted us to closed it back. It was a hot, uncomfortable night’s sleep.