The Kindness of Strangers

Fortunately, not too much to report by way of seasickness during the gulf crossing.  No one got sick except for the French couple who was sharing our cabin-for-six.  I went to lay down for a minute after dinner -- the overdose of potato chips, my response to the lack of food in the cafeteria, had done me wrong -- to find him hogging the toilet in the tiny bathroom while she was using a supermarket shopping bag.

Needless to say, this only increased our heckling of our oh-so-French cabin-mates.

Natales has got to be the most positive town I've seen so far.  The town itself is kinda dumpy, but the people are the most friendly I've encountered and will go out of their way to help you.  My rear rack had split where the lowest part of the rack attaches to the bike.  I'd wired it together with my spare brake cable and that got me into Puerto Montt.  Without enough time to search the bike shops before the ferry left, I figured I'd try my luck in Natales.  The bike shop we found, El Ray de la Bicicletta, was small and their only rack for sale looked depressingly weak.  The mechanic sent me to see a welder up the street.  I found what was basically a car repair shop in someone's garage.  Julio, who didn't look older than 18, looked at my rack for a while before spending over an hour welding and filing a glop of aluminum to the bottom of the rack.  He then drilled a hole through it to line up with the brazons on my bike.  An hour of his time when it was obvious that he had other things to do.  He refused to let me pay him.  Or even buy him a beer across the street.

Instead I named my bike after him in hopes that I would remember his attitude when I got back to the states.

Back at the bike shop, which was now packed with people, I got a spoke in my front tire replaced, the wheel trued, two bolt holes drilled through my frame to replace stripped and nearly-stripped brazons and a handful of new nuts and bolts.  They took care of it as a rush job when I explained that we needed to leave the next day.  Total cost: 1500 Chilean pesos or about US$3.

There is a certain informality about the sorts of things that you don't find in the US that allows people to be either very helpful or a total hindrance.  Natales, more than anywhere I've been, they opt for helpful.

We're riding the back road in the Torres del Paine right now.  We went about 50km today.  Got out of Natales around 12:30pm today, but on the nicest unpaved road yet!  We're biking down a glacially cut valley with walls on either side and camped next to a river just downstream of a waterfall.  It rained lightly as we rode today, as it is now.  I've got that cozy feeling as I'm warm and dry in my tent writing by the light of my candle lantern.  This is the part of this trip I will savor.  While major views such as Paine and FitzRoy will no doubt stick out as the most impressive moments, it is this simple experience of rain on the tent fly and my lantern swinging gently as the wind buffets my shelter that I'll think of when I say I was biking in Patagonia.  The sensation of cresting a ridge in your lowest gear to see the valley -- lakes, rivers, meadows -- spread out in front of you is the reason I'm biking rather than driving right now.  I seem to have rediscovered my faith after questioning my mode of transportation over the past few weeks.

Nine broken spokes, two rack problems and a stomach virus had me wondering if I wanted to be riding.  Perhaps the rain and wind ahead will cause a relapse -- who can say? -- but for now, I feel resolve.