Billy's Big Cycle: Santiago and Valparaiso

Santiago, Chile's capital is the largest city in the country with a population of over 6 million people in the greater metropolitan area. I was keen to spend a few days here to have a look around, get my bike checked out and repair a few things. Local couple Daniel and Maeva who I stayed with during my time there were an absolutely lovely couple who made me very welcome and did a great job of showing me around. With Daniel's love of history and Maeva's love of art they made for great tour guides and brought me on a few bike tours of this stylish city. Daniel was also a keen cook so I was treated to several very tasty home cooked meals. In fact such was the amazing effort they went to, Daniel checked the internet for some traditional Irish meals so one evening we had a lovely bangers, mash and stew combo and another evening a shepard's pie meets a local Chilean meat and potatoe dish which was fantastic. A different night when I cooked for them Daniel was mysteriously sick with a pain in his stomach the next morning..?!

La Moneda - the presidential palace in central Santiago which was bombed by the
Chilean air force during the coup in 1973.

More Botero, this time outside the museum of fine art in Santiago

The incredible Maeva and Daniel with the incredible bangers
and mash and stew...mmm!!

During my first day out with Daniel and Maeva we headed off to the local Irish pub where I got to see Ireland's rugby match in the Six Nations against France which was the first match I'd seen in a year and a half. My time in the city also coincided with Saint Patrick's day so we spent a great night out in the same "Dublin" Irish pub. The place was packed unlike the other day for the match. As well as lots of Chileans there were seemed to be plenty of tourists but it took until later in the night two run into (not literally) the only two Irish girls in the place. It turns out one of them was from Booterstown not a million miles away from where I grew up. They were nice girls, one of whom was studying in Santiago and they brought me out later with their student pals.

All those glasses on the table are not ours..

While in Santiago I got a pleasant surprise when it turned out that my uncle happened to be arriving in town the following day as part of an organised tour of Chile and Argentina. The following evening my uncle Colin treated me to an extremely good meal followed by a few beers. It had been a few years since I had seen him so it was a fantastic catch up.

The gang at "All is Pussy" bike shop

During the previous weeks cycling before arriving in Santiago I had been experiencing a few issues with my back wheel and I had thought that it just needed to be properly trued. Luckily Daniel's good friend Tomas ran a bike shop called "All is Pussy". It turned out that my bike wheel was beyond repair with a large five inch crack running along the rim that could only be seen on the inside when you took the tyre, tube and covering off. If that hadn't been discovered in Santiago and further down the road I could have been in real trouble. I guess I was paying the price for being so heavily loaded riding some very bumpy dirt roads for too long. Or maybe after more than 23,000 kilometres it had just come to the end of it's life. Either way I was extremely grateful to Tomas and his friends at All is Pussy for all the help and time they gave me in replacing my wheel and getting my bike properly road worthy again.

Cracked wheel rim that needed replacing

Some sealions along the coast between Papudo and Valparaiso

Mural of Valparaiso

After a longer than planned stop over it was time to leave Santiago. I got the bus out of the city and back to the coastal town of Papudo where we had stopped on the bike when Jack and Michael had visited. It felt strange getting off the bike on my own in the village where I had been with the lads. I spent a lovely day cycling along the coast from there to the port city of Valparaiso. I had another few days off here planned as it is famous for the striking colourful houses built up along it's many hills and has some great street art. Valparaiso has more of a run down or bohemian feel to it than most of the neighborhoods of Santiago that I saw. There are several large universities in the city so has a significant student population.

Valparaiso in the distance at nightfall

Cerro Alegre

Valparaiso is a large port city

Tsunami warning to evacuate the coast

I was in Valparaiso when a sizable earthquarke struck off the northern coast of Chile. I didn't feel any tremors but it was interesting to watch things unfold on the local news channel. There was a tsunami warning and the television showed various coastal cities such as Antofagasta where I had passed getting evacuated to higher ground. I am pretty sure that my friends at the firestation where I stayed in Antofagasta would have had a busy night. Despite being on the coast in Valparaiso we were fine as I was staying well up one of the hills. A few days later we did get a little tremor however.

I was slightly shook after experiencing my first ever tremor but some of my
friends did their best to reassure me.

I was staying with a bunch of guys who are were all on CouchSurfing (the website that puts travellers and locals in touch) in a house known as "El Headquarter"! They were a great social bunch who were big into the couch surfing thing so there were always plenty of people coming and going as well as their big gang of local friends. They sure knew how to throw a party or more accurately parties. It was of bermuda triangle kinda place where night turns into day and like many's the couch surfer before me I got sucked into El Headquarter and ended up staying more than a week. I lost count of the number of days that I had planned to hit the road. Good times.