Both Alex and I have been keeping blogs on this trip that have been somewhat complementary both in terms of content and timing of posts. Not really planned but two perspectives are seldom identical. Those of you only reading this blog may have wondered what happened to the trip to Ushuaia that was originally planned.
After the first three days of riding we had a discussion about the trip as we realized that the schedule of travel we had set would lead to numerous hard days of riding. The net result is we decided this was more about the journey than the destination and so amended our approach and chose to travel less distance and spend more time wandering around. This cuts our total mileage travelled by more than half.
This fits into an interesting collection of events that have coincided for me. First, I was invited to join my son and his friends for the last few weeks of a trip to the end of South America. My son ended up changing his plans but the trip southward survived. As we talked we kept Ushuaia as the target but were both of the mind this was about the journey more than the destination. So once we started riding we adjusted our route to a more relaxed tour briefly into Argentina but mainly around south central Chile.
The second was the start of a new choir in the Kokopelli choir organization, named Vacillando. The intention there is not exactly vacillating, but not driven so much by the goal as the journey. This has been tremendously fun in the first few months and I look forward to many more.
The third was somewhat intentional in that I took ¨Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance¨ along as reading material on our trip. For those of you who have read this you will know this is more on philosophy than anything else told in the form of a Chatauqau.
Overall the theme of enjoying the moment has been brought from several quarters. So our trip has been focussed on more moments and fewer demanding goals.
That said we have both had our skills tested and developed by a variety of road surfaces, wind and turbulence, and of course rain. Arguably we checked another box as motorcyclists today when we took shelter under a bridge hoping the rain would stop. It did, but as it turned out we caught up with the band of rain for another soaking. On a related noted I believe, based on a limited sample, that I own the brightest visibility raincoat in Chile.
So today we returned to the mainland and start hopping our way back to Santiago. Yesterday we visited a lighthouse and then wandered around town for a few hours.
Today we diverted enroute to the ferry to visit a beach that was a bird watchers paradise as well as providing opportunity for locals to harvest from the wide flat beach. There were even a couple yokes of oxen (cows?) pulling carts.
We rode on to the ferry, saw a seal, and reached the rain just before docking. We donned our "human pylon" rain gear and pressed on. The gear works remarkably well but we were still a bit soggy on arrival.
This afternoon we wandered around Puerto Varas and looked at some of the older houses; many with strong german influcence. Much of this area of Chile has a strong german presence and in fact today was the Kuchen festival with tables laden with what looked to be a crossover between cakes and pies.
Our gear is slowing drying and my friends I'm here replying, I have written so that you will know. take it slow, is how we go, make it so
Goodnight
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