And Then They Were Three

Yesterday was interesting.  Tony didn't want to ride the gravel roads to San Martin de los Andes and then south to Bariloche via the Seven Lakes Road, so he headed south from our campsite near the Pan-American highway.  The "Seattle Language School," as I've dubbed Chip, Amy and myself, headed north to Los Lagos and then east to Panguipulli.

The Los Lagos to Panguipulli stretch was the most rural I've been through.  I praised the pavement and cursed its radiant heat in the same breath.  I am in awe of the beautiful rolling hills as I struggle to climb and coast down the same.  We road by farms with clear views of the patchwork Chilean landscape, past houses built of weathered gray wood and corrugated tin roofs, past barns thick with the smell of blood and slaughter.  Miles and miles of rusted barbed wire fences kept pace with us once we left Los Lagos.

If I had the room, I'd write 100 times, "I will not leave a stop without topping off my water bottles."  About 25 km short of Panguipulli, as the rolling hills were starting to get to me, I drank my last swallow.  I was close to bonking, but didn't want to eat anything without some water.  The dots on the map, supposedly there to represent towns, seemed to be mark the location of large, gated estates, hardly the place for tired, dirty bikers to go asking for water.

At the bottom of the next hill I stopped at a house, the only house near the road for miles.  A woman with a softer, paler face than most Chileans watched me as I pulled up.

"Perdoneme.  Hay agua, por favor?"

Rapid-fire Spanish at her 5 year-old boy, Manco, set him scurrying to the family's well.  An oasis!

Amy and Chip followed soon after and we pumped water from the well straight into our bottles.  The woman ducked into the house and came back with a strainer full of freshly picked cherries, "from their tree" I think she said.  We talked, as best we could with long pauses as the three of us deciphered her words and came up with a reply.  Conversation by committee.  Far too often we simply had no idea what she was saying.  She was so earnest in her desire to talk to us.   But our Spanish was so poor that only the most rudimentary thoughts were expressed.  I made a silent resolution to spend more time studying my Spanish phrase book.

We got back in the saddle as soon as it seemed polite to do so.  Twenty-five km to go after all, and my legs were running out of gas.

Now we wait for a 3:30pm bus to Puerto Fuy, unwilling to have another long day -- this one in the pouring rain on unpaved roads climbing to a pass in the Andes.  The bus driver keeps looking at Amy and Chip's tandem and laughing and shaking his head.  A cutting pantomime seems to be the most common, followed by more laughter.  We'll see what happens.