‘What are you doing in the country?”

“Didn’t recognise you… didn’t expect to see you this time of year”

“Still around… when do you leave, then?”

Three different days, three different bus trips, three different people. There would appear to be some sort of expectation, like the roll of the seasons; the geese fly in and we fly out.

An ennui of ‘laissez faire’ has permeated much of this trip.  Even down to deciding it’s destination and timing.  A regard for careful planning has been severely lacking.

A dark damp November evening at home, we’re challenging ourselves: “Are we going to go away this year?  Everybody seems to expect it”.  Ten minutes later the decision would appear to have been concluded by hitting ‘send’ and an account being the lighter for the cost of two tickets to Chile. 

Sometimes I wonder if we both have an alternate shadow, an amalgam entity that seems obligated to interfere.  The same imp who has sent us over high Andean passes, insisted we sleep in Pampas drainage culverts and claims that forward planning is for others.

At baggage reclaim: our panniers come off first and our bikes come out last; nothing is obviously rattling, nothing is spewing clothes, nothing is of use to use as displacement activity… it’s time to make a decision, time to do some planning. 

Three minutes later and we’re in possession of two bus tickets to Valparaíso, add a further five minutes to buy a phone chip with which to book a room l, and a realisation that that wee gremlin is still running this trip.  At some point we’re going to have to have words. 

Thirty-three hours from cycling away from our frosted front door to hauling our kit up a Chilean hospededaje’s creaking, polished and steep wooden stairs, there to store our bikes in the kitchen.  Then to realise that the market is just across the road and the local Chifa is just around the corner, to wondering when, or where, all this ‘largesse of ease’ will be redeemed. 

Shadow, gremlin, imp?…. no, it just our Guardian Angel.  Seems that she’s decided to come along on our next South American journey.