Phase 2: South America

Phase 2 of my sabbatical has only two constraints. First, arrive in Santiago. Check.

Then, in mid-May, depart from Lima. Obviously no check yet. But between now and then, total freedom. So what am I planning on doing? Well…

The plan

The plan is to get kitted out with a full bikepacking rig, get to Villa O’Higgens, the southernmost point on the Carretera Austral, and then start biking north. When I hit the end of the Carretera, I’ll hop over the Andes to Bariloche in Argentina (about 1500km of cycling to that point), then somehow (not biking) get to Buenos Aires, maybe Mendoza, then head up to Salta and start biking again.

From there it gets even fuzzier. Will I go through the Atacama? Maybe. Would be cool. Will I go through the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia? Definitely. From there to Sucre? That’s the tentative plan, came highly recommend from a friend. Then somehow onwards to the “Death Road”, but from the bottom up, so the only danger will be me falling off the bike in exhaustion, not falling off the 2000-meter cliffs. That’s just on the outskirts of La Paz, so I’ll likely stop off there too before pedaling across the border to Lake Titicaca.

Beyond crossing the border, I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to do in Peru. I’d like to do some Inca trail stuff, though given the need to book Machu Picchu ages in advance, and given my obvious lack of detail around planning, that’s probably gonna be a no-go. There are also some spectacular mountains north of Lima, so maybe I bus beyond my target and ride back. Or maybe, because I’m so hardcore into surfing now that I’ve even copied Kelly Slater’s haircut, I just get to the coast near Lima and surf a while. I simply don’t know. And that’s great.

What’s not so great…

…is that this is all predicated on me having a bike. And, as of March 1st, I don’t. One would be forgiven for thinking that, given this was the part of the trip I was most anxious about and had been thinking about the most, I would have the fundamental part of this sorted. But I don’t. (Side note: I blame Vera; she’s not here to defend herself, so it’s an easy way to avoid taking responsibility. It’s not that I’m an idiot, I swear.)

I actually thought I had one organized long ago, a gentlemen’s agreement, but turns out we weren’t on the same page. Then yesterday I thought again that I had a bike organized, until I saw the photos of the bike today and almost spat out my beer. It wouldn’t be big enough even for Vera. And tomorrow I start a three-day journey south to Villa O’Higgins, where there are no bike shops; indeed, there are practically no shops at all.

Am I worried? Strangely, no. I’ve got an alphabet full of plans and nothing but time. Worst case, I do something else for a while (I have hiking and camping gear) and then have to cover more ground each day on the bike. Let’s be honest, it’s not like at 20kph I’m gonna blow past something spectacular and miss it entirely. Or I take a bus for a leg I was planning to ride. Or, maybe Plan D works out, and I have indeed managed to use my terrible Spanish to charm the owner of a rental agency into selling me a bike she didn’t want to sell…