Shower Caps to the Rescue

La Casona – Chili Chico, Chili

Diana predicted it, and sure enough, it happened.

Rain. Juvia. It started late last night and it’s been raining/drizzling all day. 

I mean, it’s rained on us before. But there’s a big difference between the tropical variety and precipitation at 50 degrees. When it’s 80 you get wet. Here in the Antarctic region, a cold rain can be terrible. Bone chilling. 

And it’s not like there are coffee shops around every corner to warm up in. We had, I think, 19 miles to cover this morning. The sum total of services of any kind along that road? Nada. No bank. No gas station. No convenience store. No repair shop. Nothing. There were a few sheep, three or four goats, and some cows and chickens. 

But I don’t want to overdramatize all this . . . Makes it sound like it was terrible.

It was actually a great morning. 

Because we were prepared. 

Let’s start at the top. Shower caps (we purchased them over a week ago in Puerto Montt after Diana saw rain coming in the forecast). They fit nicely over our helmets. Heads – warm and dry. 

Rain gear. Check.

Hands. I’m still working on pop bottle protection, but the plastic bags that came with the “impermeables” that we bought from Marta back in Colombia are pretty handy, actually. 

Feet. We wrapped Diana’s very airy bike shoes with duct tape. This worked well enough, but we did learn that the duct tape stops sticking to the shoes once the shoes get wet. Solution – wrap the duct tape around the back of the shoes next time so that the duct tape doesn’t have to stick to the shoes. We’ll see . . .

And there you go. The makings for a very good ride – even if it was, as my Mom would say, a day that only a duck could be happy in. 

Quack, quack.

And there were some positives. 

With no sun there was no Popo’s Driveway Effect. Exactly zero wardrobe changes on our whole ride. Quite a difference from our recent rides, considering that in Patagonia we have been averaging about 17.4 wardrobe changes per mile – which would equate to 330.6 stops over our nineteen mile course. 

Also, before today we hadn’t experienced many Mists of Avalon type scenery. Turns out that the big granite chunks around here look great in the rain and clouds. Evocative of Duluth and the North Shore. 

The ride ended in Puerto Ibanez, where we caught a ferry across Lagos General Carerra / Buenos Aires (the lake has two different names – depending upon whether you are in the Chilean or the Argentinian portion of the lake) to Chili Chico. The ferry ride was 2 ½ hours and pretty nice – so with the short, mostly downhill, ride this morning it almost felt like a day off. 

Chili Chico is a nice little town on Lagos General Carrera. We’re staying in a funny little place – basically a little room off of this family’s main driveway type space (most houses have their own gated compound type area). Nice for us, and nice for them. 

There’s a little wood stove in the room and we fired it up to get all of our clothes to dry. Kind of fun. They kept coming to the door wanting to help start the fire. I guess they figured a couple of gringos weren’t going to be able to handle it. I don’t want to brag or anything, but I have something like 137 merit badges from the Smoky the Bear School of Firestarting . . . So maybe these folks need to learn some respect for this gringo’s pyrotechnics . . .

I mention all this because it relates to a theme I was harping on a few weeks ago. Zoning and stuff. Clearly in Latin America people basically do whatever they want. Build a motel next to your house . . . Go for it. Raise come cows and sheep in your yard. Great. 

And I think all of that is good. In my opinion, we are way too prescriptive in the U.S. – especially in the more liberal cities. The net result is way higher housing costs and a much more economically and racially segregated society. Bad. 

But there are some things that maybe do need some regulation. The wood stove provides a good example. Walk outside in Chili Chico and you’ll know why. Air quality is terrible. Everyone is burning wood. Burn wood for your cook stove. Burn wood to heat the house. Burn wood for the barbecue. And none of these wood burning devices are modern high-tech clean and efficient type devices. Nope. Just old stoves that spew particles and smoke into the air for everyone to breathe. 

And that, I think, should be the test. 

Is your activity bad for everyone? Or is it just kind of annoying? 

Spew smoke into the air – bad for everyone. Add a motel room onto your house. The neighbor might not like losing their parking space once in a while – but, really, it’s none of their business what you do with your house . . .

Alright, that’s enough soap box. Sorry about that . . . I guess it’s just that the comparisons are right there in front of us . . . Hard not to think about them. 

One other thing about Chili Chico. We are now at about Moose Lake, Minnesota in terms of latitude. And that makes sense – because, just yesterday – when we were, I guess, biking through Hinckley type latitude – we started getting to peak fall colors. (We’re essentially in the equivalent to Minnesota late-September in South America now – just when Hinckley would be hitting its colors . . .) 

Sadly, no Tobies and no caramel rolls – but a guy can always dream . . .

Tomorrow we start on the real ripio. A little over 200 miles – and not a hint of pavement the whole time. Not many services either. We just bought groceries for the next few days, and we expect that we’ll be camping tomorrow and the day after. 

Probably not a lot of cellular service so it might be a few days before you hear from us again. 

We are getting excited. The ferry to Puerto Natales leaves next Saturday night from Caleta Tortel. Provided we make it that far by then we’ll just have one final phase of our journey to Ushuaia. Will be cold. But we’re starting to feel like it might actually happen.