The Finger Lakes of the South

Villarrica – Panguipulli – Orsono, Chile

I may have mentioned that Diana and I met in college. We went to Cornell University in Upstate New York. We met within the first week; we lived across the hall from each other in an old converted motel called Ecology House – or Eco House as it was more commonly known. 

I had applied to live in Eco House – I even wrote an essay about why I wanted to be there. Diana, on the other hand, was assigned to Eco House. You see, she had transferred in to Cornell as a sophomore, and I guess the transfers just received whatever dorm assignment was left after everyone else chose where they wanted to live. Apparently there was space left at Eco House after the choices were made . . .

When Diana found out that I had applied to live in Eco House she was appalled. 

“Why would you apply to live at such a geeky place with all these geeky people?” 

Of course, as it turned out, she ended up falling madly in love with one of these geeky people . . . I guess the joke is on her . . .

So why do I tell you all of this? Well, I guess the Eco House part doesn’t have much to do with things; I just like that story . . . But the Cornell part does. Because Cornell is located in the Finger Lakes region of New York. And the Finger Lakes in New York are very reminiscent of the lakes region of Chile. 

The Lagos in Chile are about the same size as the lakes in New York. The lakes in both regions are kind of long and skinny (My sense is that they were carved out by glaciers during the ice age – in New York they run generally north-south, like the glaciers, and in Chile they seem to run east-west because, I think, the glaciers were coming off of the Andes – to the east . . .)  And, as in New York, many of the names for the lakes in Chile have indigenous roots. But there are other similarities as well. In both cases there are quaint little vacation towns surrounding the lakes. The rolling terrain is similar. And the vegetation feels very similar. 

Of course, the Finger Lakes are not surrounded by mountains and there are no snow-flocked volcanoes around. 

If you haven’t picked up on it yet, let me just explicitly say it now. We LOVE the Lagos Region of Chile. 

Yesterday we diverted a bit from our straight and narrow – do-not-pass-go-and-head-directly-to-Patagonia – type course in order to tour the lakes. It was an amazing day of biking – with the Andes and the Villarrica Volcano pretty much always in view. It was a bit hillier than we were expecting – which led to a little longer day than we were planning and a little bit of marital bickering – but a sunny day spent circumnavigating Chile’s lakes is a well-spent day . . . 

Along the way we met another bike touring couple: Matthias and Chloe from France. They started a while back down in Ushuaia and they are heading to Santiago now. Turns out that they rode the Carretera Austral – the road that leads to the ferry in Caleta Tortel. 

They told us that they LOVED Patagonia. They enjoyed the Carretera. Sounds like they took their time; there were a number of days that they didn’t ride at all because of rain. They didn’t think we needed to switch to wider tires for the gravel section – but they have wider tires than we do (their tires are probably 45s where ours are 38s). Also, they are much younger – probably around 30 years old themselves; we’re about twice their age. My sense is that it’s probably a lot easier to deal with bumpiness and such when your body is a little more supple . . . so at this point we’re hoping to switch to fatter tires for this part of our journey . . .

We also received a nice and informative comment from blog reader Julie from St. Paul – who, with her husband David, bike toured through South America some fifteen years ago. Julie related that they took the Carretera Astral on their trip. She mentioned that they did all the gravel and everything, but Julie only remembers the trip as being incredibly beautiful. Point being, I think, that the gravel couldn’t have been that bad or it would have left more lasting scars . . . (Or maybe it’s like child birth and you just block out all the bad stuff . . .?)

Another, related, news item . . . The package with all of our camping gear is now at the Orsono post office – waiting for us to pick it up – which we’re hoping to do in the morning. 

Add all this up and we’re planning to go the Carretera Astral route starting tomorrow. (Remember, Osorno is decisión day – we either head east into Argentina, or more south onto the Carretera, from Osorno).

But only after we do about a hundred errands. Let’s see . . . We need to pick up the camping gear. We need to hit a bike shop so that we can change out the chains and replace our tires with, hopefully, a much fatter variety that are tubeless ready. That way we can ride the gravel sections with much bigger, beefier tires with much less tire pressure. That should make for a much more pleasant ride for us old people . . .

Oh, the other errands. We need to purchase more clothes. Wool socks. Sporty long underwear type stuff. Vests. Mittens. Etc. Things that we ditched like 7,000 miles ago when it was hot… I have a complicated plan for making “pogies” for our handlebars – hopefully keeping our hands warm and dry. (Diana’s hands, in particular, are Ill-suited to prolonged cold and wet. She has about zero body fat – and I’m not sure she has any blood flowing to her fingers when it’s below 50.) We need gas for the camp stove. Extra matches. Maybe some of those little wax fire starter things . . . Basically, lots of stuff to try to deal with the very real possibility of rain at 40 degrees . . .

I should mention the ride today. We started out thinking we would have a long-ish day – at about 66 miles – and then tomorrow we would bike the rest of the way to Osorno and pick up the camping gear and stuff. But the place we were planning to stay turned out to be complicated – no grocery stores or restaurants close by. After thinking about it, we were going to go to the next town – but then, that seemed dumb because it was only another 20 miles or so to Orsono and the wind was at our backs. Why not use it? In the end, we biked something like 94 miles – I think the biggest day of our trip. 

Two conclusions to draw from this . . . One, we are pretty clearly in decent biking shape. As long as there aren’t too many hills we seem capable of pounding out some serious miles right about now. Which is good – because going the Carretera Austral route we’ll have a schedule to keep so that we can make the ferry in Caleta Tortel – the town in the middle of nowhere that we will be heading toward . . . And, two, you can do anything when you have a little Mote con Huesilla in you (the awesome Chilean drink with a peach and wheat berries in it). We managed to find a place that had some late this afternoon and, in my opinion, the Mote was the secret ingredient that pushed us on to the finish line. 

When we return from our trip – someday – I’m planning to open a Mote business in America. I just need an investor to put in about a million dollars. A small price. Because, with Mote’s amazing taste and rejuvenating powers we are sure to make about a bazillion . . .

Last thing . . . We are really loving Chile. The last few days might have been the best biking we have done on the whole trip. Amazing temperatures – always with a little crisp in the air. Sunshine and blue skies. No bugs. Cool birds. Between the volcanoes, the mountains, the lakes, the rivers, and the lush vegetation (like Northern Minnesota and Wisconsin) the scenery has been incredible. If it gets better than this as we head south we are going to be exceedingly happy . . . 

We just have to avoid freezing to death along the way . . . (Keep your words of encouragement coming – they help keep us warm and happy . . .)