I thought Emergency was emergencia in Spanish. But maybe this is more like Urgent Care. Anyway, more on this later.
It seems like whenever we wild camp, I sleep through my alarm. Granted, it’s not that loud. Maybe I need the chickens and dogs barking to wake me up on time. But, it was fine. Markus flew the drone for a bit anyway. Funny thing, when I sat up, I saw a dog go running by the river (I had slept with my rainfly door open). I put my glasses on, and shortly after saw a haré go by. Hmmm…looked a lot like the “dog” I saw. I don’t think there was a dog.
We had to ride back across the creek. I still managed to get my foot wet, but not as wet as yesterday. It would dry quickly anyway. Then we had to go back up the steep and rutted little road to get back to the road that would take us back to the Carratera (got all that?). I made it up partway, then had to push. Markus rode the whole thing!
Soon we were back to the Carratera…and the dust bombs.
We had a big climb of over 5kms. It was only the beginning of the steep climbs today (we did 700m of climbing in 27kms). We would climb and climb, then go down down down, losing all the elevation we had gained, only to go back up another long steep climb.
Just come up that.
Then down to the Rio Chacabuco.
Then back up (you can see the descent across the way).
Alex struggled today. Her foot was hurting from the “spider bite” (hint: it wasn’t a spider bite). It was getting worse, and she was worried about it. Plus, it was just a damn hard day.
Still, she was doing great.
Not much further, we came to a viewpoint of the Confluencia de Rio Baker y Rio Chacabuco.
We walked down to the viewpoint.
If you zoom in, you can see the road we were on.
The Rio Baker is the largest river by volume and force (evidenced by that waterfall yesterday). They wanted to put in a couple of hydro dams (one just down below before the confluence), but people fought it so much, they abandoned the idea. Instead, it’s a National Park. Way to go Chilean people!
We still had a lot more up to do. When we started some downhill, I saw a spot where we could get off the dust bomb road for some lunch. Then we completed the downhill, so we could…you know…go back up again! Of course!
Rio Baker. The views were nice though.
That was a 13% grade up there.
I knew we had to have at good downhill because Cochrane is on the Rio Baker, and we were still way above it. Sure enough, down down down went the road. At the bottom, lo and behold, it turned to pavement!
It was glorious pavement all the rest of the way into Cochrane! Don’t get me wrong, I love me some gravel, but a stretch of pavement once in awhile is nice.
First order of business in Cochrane was to seek out a doctor for Alex’s toe. As I said above, we found the right place. Turns out, the doctor didn’t think it was a spider bite. Instead, he thought when she was going barefoot, she got a small wound that ended up getting infected. An antibiotic was prescribed and dispensed, all within about an hour, and for the grand total of 42€!
We made our way to our accommodations for Christmas. It’s quite the luxurious place. Alex and Markus say it’s bigger than their apartment at home. We even have a washing machine! A load of skanky clothes has already been washed.
I’ll include some photos in tomorrow’s post (of the place, not the clothes).
The bearings in my right pedal are going bad. We found some flat pedals in the Supermercado, but there is supposed to be another shop with even more bike stuff. We’ll check that out tomorrow. Odds are I won’t find clipless pedals. What I will do is get the flat pedals, and carry them until my right pedal fails completely.
Here’s the climb profile of today’s ride. Notice there wasn’t really any flat riding today.
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