I don’t usually wake up at 3:00 AM, but when I do, there’s a good reason. This time, it was to get to the airport to catch a flight to South America to race my first Enduro World Series (EWS).
Quick tip for setting important alarms: Make sure it’s not daylight savings time. The clocks switched over at 2:00 AM, and since it was spring, they immediately switched to 3:00 AM. This meant that if you set an alarm at 2:30 or 2:45, it wouldn’t go off. For some reason, I decided to set two alarms, one at 2:45 and one at 3:00, so my 2:45 didn’t go off. Luckily my 3:00 went off and I was able to get up and load everything in the truck on time. Unfortunately for my team mate Anthony, he only set one alarm at 2:45 and awoke to me banging on his door expecting him to be ready to load up and leave for the airport.
Evoc taking care of our bikes on the flights down south
We made it with plenty of time to spare and started studying up our Spanish with a pocket guide from the library. Little did we know, we’d need it a lot more than we thought…
Good ol Texas…
We had almost a nine hour layover in Houston and our gate wasn’t even announced so we decided to walk around the whole airport. It was massive and took a while to get to every end. I haven’t been in airports much so it was quite the experience with some parts of the airport looking more like a mall. After almost 9 hour exploring, smelling Texas BBQ and playing card games, we hopped on the last flight to Santiago, Chile. The flight was over 9 hours and since it was so long and the airplane was a bit bigger than the one to Houston, I thought it would be a bit more comfortable than the other flights. Boy was I ever wrong…
The bigger plane had just as much leg room as the smaller ones that I had usually flown on. Not so good for two guys who are 6’3″! The 9 hour flight was pretty hard for me, especially since I wasn’t able to sleep. We flew overnight and arrived in the morning and got our first glimpse of Chile’s landscape. It was definitely different than what I had ever seen before! There were no trees and hardly any vegetation, even on the mountains!
After getting our bags and going through customs, we met our first challenge; finding a way to get to our accommodation. Our bike bags wouldn’t fit in a normal taxi, and the bigger vehicles were really expensive to rent. We tried to negotiate with the rental companies, but they barely spoke any english, which was a bit surprising to us, especially being in an international airport. After giving up on that, we decided to leave and see if we could find something outside the airport. As soon as we stepped out of the airport, multiple people were grabbing at our bags trying to get us to try to fit into their taxi. Never being out of Canada/USA, this was a bit alarming to me, but I realized that it was just how things were in South America. After a while of trying to fit our bags into small cars, we negotiated a deal with someone who had a van that would take us to our condo.
After waking up at 2:45, a 5 hour flight, 9 hour layover, and a 9 hour flight, I was ready to unpack a bit and relax to prepare for the upcoming week. Anthony had other plans though, so we set out for a 14km walk through the city to explore and see what there was to do within walking distance. The city was surrounded by mountains on all sides and was completely flat, except for a few “mountains” (hills) in the middle of the city, which made getting around pretty easy on bike or on foot.
The part of the city which we stayed in was nice compared to other parts, with many parks with green grass and tall trees, old buildings, street markets. I’m not a fan of big cities, and Santiago didn’t really capture what I imagined South America would be like. The city was just a dirtier, hotter, more European version of Edmonton or any other big city, in my eyes. One thing we heard from a local is that you shouldn’t be out past 10:00pm or after the sun had set, especially in the parks. There was also a large police presence everywhere we went. Which made us feel safe, but at the same time, left us wondering why there had to be so many.
Since I am not a seasoned traveler I was a bit surprised by all the stray dogs that were laying around in the sun. The people looked and dressed much like we do in North America. One interesting thing I noticed pretty quickly was how much affection couples showed for each other in public. In the parks there were couples laying in the grass kissing, or hugging on the street while waiting for the lights to change, things that would be uncommon or weird to see in Stanley Park!
Taken on the top of one of the hills in the middle of the city
After getting some food and lots of water, we headed back to the condo to eat, build up the bikes, and get some much needed sleep. The condo was a bit smaller than the pictures imply, which made building bikes a bit interesting, but we made everything work and we were ready for some riding the next day! According to our research, the water in the city was safe to drink, but had different minerals than what we were used to, so we stuck with bottled water just to be safe. The first few days we were there, I drank 6 litres every 24 hours! The temperatures were in the mid 30s and very dry and sunny, so it was a bit different than Vancouver with it being 5 degrees and snow on the ground when we left. It didn’t take long at all for me to climatize, and I think the 6L of water every day helped! By the second day, I wasn’t even noticing the heat.
We slept in a little more than we thought we would the next morning, so we ended up going out for our first day of riding during the hottest part of the day. We decided to try the place that was closest to us, since we could see it from our condo and we noticed it had a gondola. Of course, being the enduro racers that we are, we rode over to the mountain and up on our bikes. There was a bit of a tourist section at the top with a big Mother Mary statue at the top with an excellent view, so naturally we took a lot of pictures.
I didn’t know what to look at, the view or the beautiful bikes…
Look at all that lovely smog
The only picture I got of the actual statue… What a horrible tourist I am!
Anthony had a small wipe out and got his first taste of the local dirt and a feeling for how the conditions would be for the race the following weekend. No rain since November makes for some very dry and slippery conditions! The mountain in the middle of the city was pretty cool and the view we had riding on the way up of the whole city were definitely worth the climb rather than spending $3 for the gondola ride. There weren’t a lot of trails on this mountain, but it was a good first day on the bike and it was nice to have something that we could easily ride to!
After our first ride, we rode around the city to get an idea of how much a rental car would be so we could go to different areas and eventually up to the mountain where the race would be. Luckily, Santiago was flat, so it was very easy to get around quickly on the bikes. We also did some shopping to stock up on food for the next few days of riding.
Most of the stores in the cities were similar to this one, just a 50×50′ square building with rows of food. Of course there are things that we don’t have up here and stuff that they don’t have down there, but most foods were reasonable or way cheaper than groceries back home. One thing that was more expensive and harder to find was peanut butter.
The next day, we ventured out a bit further to another mountain on the edge of the city. We were using an app called Trailforks to find riding zones that were close to us. There weren’t many good mountain bike shops around so we weren’t able to get any advice on trails or locations to ride until we got the rental car. Luckily, Trailforks works without cell service, but you can only see the mountain bike trails, you need data or wifi to see where the roads are. It didn’t take much time or effort to ride 10km to the base of the mountain and with a little bit of luck, we found the right roads through all the fancy houses and started riding up the mountain towards the trails.
The climb was long and hot, but the view at the top was pretty cool!
The next day we got our rental car and went to some bike shops that sold mountain bikes in search of CO2, which we couldn’t bring on the plane, and advice on where to ride next. We found a shop that sold Rocky Mountain and even though we could barely understand eachother, told them we were racing the EWS the following week and wanted to know some good places to ride to prepare. They showed us where to go and we ended up riding in a “bike park” for the rest of the day.
Definitely the best meal I had in South America. Some kind of beef and rice dish with some really good sauce. So good!
After riding and exploring every day since we had gotten there, we took a trip without the bikes to a city on the coast called Valparaiso. This city was a lot nicer than Santiago and was more of what I thought South America would be like. Very colorful, cobblestone streets, lots of culture.
A short elevator that takes you up to a different part of the city. It costs 3 cents for a ride up.
I don’t remember what this dish was called in Spanish, but it was like a Chile version of poutine. French fries, beef, some egg and onions.
After walking around the city a bit, we drove along the coast and saw these huge sand dunes that seemed like they came out of nowhere. There were 5 or 6 big ones in a little sections along the ocean just on the side of the road.
“I can see Australia from up here!”
We got in a couple hours of surfing in before they closed for the day and made our way back to Santiago in the dark. Our little rental car wasn’t really meant for the highway with it being so small and the tires being so thin, but we made it back without any incidences and it was off to bed!
How did we manage to fit all this stuff in the rental car? It took some squishing and not much foot room for either of us, both being 6’3″. It was a standard which didn’t help either! Another day riding on a mountain nearby gave us some good views and even more time getting used to the slippery Chilean dust.
There was no shuttling or chairlifts. It was really cool to see how much elevation we actually gained on our bikes. We usually don’t get a good perspective in BC because of all the trees in the way!
On the way home from that ride, I started feeling really tired and not so well. Being stuck in traffic in 35 degree weather with no AC didn’t help and I was glad to get home and to bed. I didn’t sleep much that night due to feeling sick and stayed in bed the whole next day. I’m not sure if it was something I ate, or maybe some bottled water I bought. I’ve heard of people taking empty water bottles and filling them with just tap water and selling them in the store as purified bottled water, so that could have been what cause my involuntary day off the bike. Luckily I was feeling a lot better that night and went out to get pizza with Anthony. I got to sit there sipping a coke and water while he was eating a delicious looking pizza…
Fortunately, I had one more day on the bike before we headed up to the race village. I had absolutely no energy and had to push my bike up most of the uphill where I usually would have been on my bike, but it was good to get out and ride some more.
Our travel day was mostly spent in the city packing up our bikes and luggage in the tiny car and going to the store to get everything we needed for the 5 days we were up on the mountain. The car was even more packed than before because we had all our luggage/spare parts and enough food to get us through 2 days of practice and 2 days of racing.
