The roadside kilometre posts  suggest that its a mere 1,020 km to the capital, only the bike computer has a score of 1,600 km. 

What these bald scores don’t tell are the circuitous deviations that riding the Chilean coastline entail as opposed to the Central Valley’s autopista. One is a collection of map navigations and rolling hills the other entails keeping to the right and heading interminably south. One is peaceful, if you can ignore the lactated muscles and the ear blood pounding, the other has goods traffic and their attendant effluvias. One has curiosities and interests, the other has a linear direction and speed. One has fishing caletas where the boats are hauled out by oxen and surfers bob in offshore, the other an easy way to the ‘muy hermoso’…. ‘the beautiful south’.

There’s attractions to both. You make your choice.

The last time that we visited Valparaíso, we headed north, so it would seem logical that we would start this tour in the capital’s sea port and head south. A chronological succession, a linear progression, that with time will lead to a completion. It was also a chance to revisit a town with some of the best street art in Latin America. Many of the murals have been painted over, new material confirming the mantra of wall art’s transience.  However, one of my favourite pieces still sits on a steep street corner, the simple message, advice for our lives…”use the bike”. Wishful thoughts in a city of multitudinous hills, where ascensores connect barrios and steps connect streets, lifts that clamber cliffs, staircases that count in hundreds, an easy place to wander aimlessly, to explore serendipitously. 

Which is how we get gassed.

The university students are revolting. Black bilious reek is roiling out from between two buildings, a squad of riot shielded carabineros loiter on the corner, a  militarised  canon hoses water into the side street, a rattle of popping noises, spent cartridges litter the carriageway.   

Your street sense takes its cues from the behaviour of the locals around you. Nobody seems unduly perturbed; sure, the traffic is snarled up on the diverted street, but it is rush hour.  People are wandering past, chatting with friends, taking photos’, interrogating  ‘phones. Then one of my eyes starts to water… teargas…. probably time to turnaround and find another street. 

The students’ grievances are centred on tuition fees. Governments of various colours have been fiscally prudent and managed successfully two sovereign wealth funds, primarily based on copper returns. The students are of the opinion that some of that prudence should be redistributed to them. Presently, the government disagrees. Not my dispute, but I can’t help but wonder if similar senes would be re-enacted at an Oxbridge college. 

A thousand flat kilometres against considerably more hilly ones, probably explains why we have met only one other cycle traveler. On the few occasions that we’ve graced the wide shoulder of the autopista, we’ve seen several other cycle tourers. Seen…. but not met. There’s a double height – double width crash barrier protecting a deep concrete moat that separates four lanes of grumbling traffic between us and them. It makes for a noisy, busy, but lonely journey. The autopista’s shoulder does, however? return your faith in your own ability to cycle travel, to the feeling that some form of southerly progress is being achieved. Good therapy for two days and then its time to go and find some more exquisite southern volcanoes and reflective lakes. 

Time to wander serendipitously again.