Wednesday, October 3, 2012

The Daily Grind (and photos through the rest of Chile)

Daily Grind a.k.a The Daily Pedal, or everything you ever wanted to know about an average day and more!

I start my day whenever I naturally wake up, which is usually around 8:30 or 9:00. Those of you who know me well (or even slightly for that matter) know that I am not a morning person and my feeling is that anything before 9am should be illegal! So if I wake up earlier than 8:30 I usually roll over and go back to sleep.  The luxury of getting up whenever I feel like it is one of my most favorite things about time off from work. Unfortunately, in warmer territory I was waking up much earlier but it did mean getting on the road around 9am which was good.
If I have spent the night in my tent sometimes the sun hasn’t even poked up over the mountains by the time I get up so it can be pretty cold. One  night it was 18˚F (-8 ˚C) in my tent when I got up to go pee at 5am!  By the time I woke up and decided to start my day it was still cold at only 45˚F  (7 ˚C). This temp does not make me super motivated to get out of my awesome sleeping bag rated at -30 ˚F (-34 ˚C).
I usually have my breakfast in bed, err, sleeping bag. I keep my food pannier in the tent so when I wake up I have myself a breakfast picnic. I have a square of tent material that I use to sit on in super dirty places so I use it to cover my sleeping bag to keep the crumbs off. Breakfast consists of a bowl of granola with water instead of milk and usually two bread rolls with honey or marmalade. I love cereal and learned to eat granola with water instead of milk out of necessity. I try to never run out of granola, although it was impossible to find in Bolivia except in Santa Cruz. If the box says it has 10 servings and I eat the whole box in 3 sittings, is that false advertising?
Eating and packing up always seems to take about an hour and a half to two hours. I don’t know where the time goes but it is pretty consistent even if I don’t have a tent to take down. Other cyclists tell me the same.  I load my bike the same way each time so it seems like I should be pretty fast at it, but noooooooooooo! Of course, this time includes eating, putting on sunscreen, deodorant, brushing teeth, putting air in tires if needed, stuff like that. If I actually get up at 8:30 and leave by 10:30 I am pretty happy. More often I think I average an 11:00-12:00 departure.                                                                                                                                
I usually plan to eat again about two to three hours after I have started but it seems sometimes that makes it close to dinner time so I just wait until I am done riding and then settle into a place and have dinner. When eating out was expensive like in Chile and Argentina I would eat salami for lunch or tuna and if I was lucky either of those items was accompanied by avocado and tomato. If peanut butter was available (only in big cities usually) then I could also have peanut butter and honey sandwiches as an option. Since Bolivia and now Peru are cheaper countries I can stop and eat a lunch or dinner at a restaurant for usually less than two dollars (as long as there are towns where I am riding)!
The length of my ride each day can depend on a lot of things; wind/weather, availability of places to camp or towns to find a guest house (aka residencial, alojamiento or hospedaje in Spanish), terrain, road conditions, and/or distances between resupply places. Sometimes I stop riding just because I am racing the sun and daylight to make it to a place to camp and eat before it gets dark and cold. In the mountains I can be robbed of an hour or more of daylight (because the sun sets behind the mountain instead of on the horizon). I sometimes find myself coaxing the sun like an unresponsive CPR patient; “Come on stay with me just a little bit longer, you can do it, there you go, hang in there.”
If I am not near a town and it is getting close to when I feel like I want to stop riding then I start to look at getting some water before scoping out a place to camp. On the Carratera Austral there was water everywhere! Sometimes it was hard to find a place to pee because every direction I looked from along the road was close to a water source! On the Carratera it was easy to find drinking water, but outside of the Carratera it has been a little more challenging.  I have a two liter Platypus bag and a six liter Dromedary bag (a regular Noah’s ark of water carriers) as well as two ¾ liter cycling bottles. If I think it will be a long time between water sources I will fill up either or both of those water bags ahead of time. If I have full water my load is pretty heavy so I don’t like to carry too much water but I also don’t like to have my lack of water dictate where I can stop for the night.
What I look for in a camping spot varies but I usually prioritize finding a spot where no one can see I am there; a.k.a. “stealth camping” or “wild camping.” Sometimes like in Southern Patagonia I was simply looking for a place somewhere/anywhere to get out of the wind.  When I have the luxury, I want it to be pretty. Lately I have been noticing whether the sun will shine on the spot longer in the evening or not and where it will be in the morning. Other times if I am getting cold or the sun is setting fast I just need to find a place where I can hide from the traffic and I don’t care about much else.
Once I scope out a place that fits my needs I set up my tent and start to cook my dinner. I HATE cooking so I deserve some kudos here from those that know me and my cooking history. At one point I hadn’t eaten a meal out for two months.  That means a lot of cooking on a one burner camp stove with only one pot for someone who hates cooking AND who isn’t very good at it. This time of day causes me some anxiety as I have to decide whether to eat pasta, pasta, or pasta.  Life on the road is so tough! I usually set aside the water I have poured off of the pasta and use it for the preliminary rinse of the dirty pot I just cooked in. Sometimes water is scarce and I just wipe the pan out with grass or leaves after that. My plate, if I use one usually just gets licked clean so if I happen to stop by your house on my way north stop me from doing that if I try!
When I camp near a river or lake it is not always convenient to get far away from the site to go pee so I have a portable system. I am going to take the time now to plug a product. My friend Brenda’s sister found this product called “Go Girl” which is similar to what the New Zealanders call “She Pee.”  It is kind of like a funnel shaped for a woman’s body which allows her to pee without taking off all her bottoms. I like the product’s slogan “Don’t Take Life Sitting Down” but I don’t use it for its intended purpose to stand up and pee.  I use it so that I can make sure I make it in my Nalgene pee bottle. I trust this product so much that I actually use it in my ten and it hasn’t let me down yet!  The Go Girl and Nalgene pee bottle combination affords me the luxury of a bathroom of sorts in my tent which is super convenient if I am camping in someone’s yard, in a campground where the bathroom is far away, in the wild close to a river or lake or other water source where it isn’t cool to pee next to, or in a place where it is just damn cold in the middle of the night or morning. 
Going number two is a little more complex depending on where I am. I don’t do that in my tent.  I have what I call a “poo shovel” but I guess it is more traditionally known as a “cat hole digger.”  I can only hope those callings don’t occur inconveniently and I sure wish I could power my bike on some of the methane gas I produce! You probably don’t want to know any more than that.  This topic reminds me of a joke that I love;
Why did Tigger have his head in the toilet? 
Because he was looking for Pooh! :)

And on that note I will post some photos (not of anything in the above topic, don't worry) leaving off from the last posting with crossing the Atacama Desert.
I didn't even think for a moment to trade in Tankita, honest!
Camping at the Copec station again. This just north of La Serena. I asked 3 different truckers about the road ahead and each of them said to get a ride because the road was dangerous.

This is the road that was ahead as seen from Jacob's truck (he was the trucker who actually pulled me over while I was on the road heading north). As the fourth trucker to advise me to take a ride, I finally did. NO shoulder and lots of truck traffic is the dangerous part.
Yikes, I was happy to be in a truck instead of next to that white line!

Tankita in the back of Jacob's truck at our lunch stop.

This shoulder was more like it but why would I want to ride through this??
Antofagasta, Chile
Antofagasta, near the waterfront. That is a painting made to look like an archway through the building.
I couldn't believe it when I saw Taco Bell in the mall food court! Woohoo! Wasn't like the real Taco Bell though.
Chile was kind of expensive compared to other South American countries but still cheap compared to the US, this meal cost the equivalent to about $6 US dollars.
Constant trash was an eyesore and it was everywhere in spite of the signs stating not to litter like this one.
The train was like my intermittent companion as there wasn't much else in the way of movement in some areas of the desert.
Nasca lines wanna be?
I just had to have another shadow photo here.
This large piece of equipment being pulled by a truck took up both lanes of the highway, all cars going the other direction had to pull over and let it go by and cars behind it just had to go slow.  I deduce it is equipment for one of the many mines in the area.

The Atacama Desert-supposedly the driest desert in the world (even though Ice people are told Antarctica is the driest desert in the world-who knows). Apparently there are places within the Atacama Desert where no precipitation has been recorded for more than 100 years.
Mining
Massive work going on in the mines constantly.
This "town" which is as much as you see here was actually shown on my map.


I camped on the edge of this canyon, this is the view looking one direction and the next is the view looking the other direction.
Looking up the canyon the other way.
The winds were pretty strong on the edge of the canyon, notice my hair sticking straight up!
I found a little gully to put my tent in which made it less windy.
You can barely see the top of my bike and my tent in the gully, pretty good hiding place.
I hate when this happens! Paved to semi-paved...
...to not paved at all. Actually this road was hard packed so not so bad.

Camping inside the cemetery. At least there was no wind here. Winds were pretty strong through the desert but nothing compared to Patagonia. I would think about the wind on a particular day and remember Patagonia and think, "Hah, I scoff at you wind, you know nothing of strong winds like Patagonia!"
View in front of my "campsite" in the cemetery.

My attempt at making a sail when I finally had a tailwind!
Guanacos-a relative to the Llama

I found these ruins and took advantage of the wind block and hiding spot they offered.

Starting to get pretty buff lifting these volcanic rocks! Notice how great my tan looks next to the color dayglow green! Like in most deserts it was hot during the day but when the sun went down, yowza! This was winter in the desert!
The colors on the mountains were beautiful.

Work being done at the Ascotan salt flat. How would you like to work moving salt all day long?
"Campsite" in a divot alongside the Ascotan salt flat.

Scenery at Ascotan salt flats.
More guanaco-they were pretty cool.


My first flamingos ever in the wild! I have a lot of photos of these guys but they were so pretty reflecting in the water.
I parked my bike and hung out here for quite awhile trudging through mud to get closer to the guanaco and the flamingos.
The water in the small puddles was frozen mid day here.
Guanaco prints



Flamingo prints


I ran up to one of them and plucked some feathers off for souvenirs! LOL, I did pluck them off a flamingo, but it was dead.

Laguna de Flamencos the sign accurately states. I wanted to camp here but the area was too squishy with water. Tankita is looking pretty dirty.
I found these ruins alongside another lake where there were flamingos and guanaco, so I camped here and checked out the wildlife at sunset and sunrise (or close to it) the next morning.
View of the lake from a hole inside the ruin wall.
Comfy room inside the ruins.

Guanaco poo. They seem to all poo in the same place, a cat box of sorts for guanaco I guess. This is the result of lots of pooing, mysterious.









White sand road, pretty but tricky to ride on with my thin tires. I hate riding on sand!
Active volcano

Ollague, Chile, my last stop before the border with Bolivia. This was really like a one horse wild west town.



Sad face while saying goodbye to Chile at the border holding the Chilean flag that was given to me as a gift from the folks who threw me that barbeque in Rancagua.
That's all for now folks, you will have to wait for the Bolivia photos until next blog!

If you would like to read more about the area I went through on the Carretera Austral in Chile, and the problems that occurred while I was there then read my friend Susan's article in this link:
 http://www.fastcoexist.com/1679852/in-chile-a-conflict-between-clean-energy-and-pristine-wilderness#1
Susan was the friend I worked with in Antarctica who also hiked with me in Torres del Paine National Park and she recently published this online.