"You can't stop us on the way to freedom" - Van Morrison, Tupelo Honey
Leg Distance - 52.93km
Leg Time - 2:49.32
Total Distance - 299.24 km
San Jose de la Mariquina is a small town, the kind of small town where most shops trade in two or more different businesses, so that a bakery may also be a laundry and a stationary store. After a couple of laps I found the first Hospedaje (slash restaurant slash butchery) and was shown to an alcove room that could have been considered charming had it not been for the swarm of flies that stirred when the landlady opened the door. I told her that perhaps I would look around the rest of the town first and was met not with a reduced price, but with a knowing nod from the landlady, painfully aware that the room was not fit for human occupation. Fortunately she was nice enough to let me know where another (the other) hospedaje was and I was able to secure a room for the night with no visible fauna.
Literally as well as figuratively though, San Jose is miles away from Valdivia. Not only is Valdivia a lovely city, but I felt I could finally relax and enjoy being somewhere rather than constantly worry about the cycling for the first time since starting. After Wednesday's nightmare day, it was also nice to stay at a hostal and have the company of fellow nomads again for the first time since Puerto Octay. Hostals are funny in that you often meet likable people (or maybe you just don't have enough time to get to dislike them), but you rarely meet memorable people, like Peter and Annette. Peter and Annette were an Australian couple in their fifties that combined lovable Australian small-town curmudgeonliness and turn of phrase with a seemingly unending fascination for (and knowledge of) the wider world around them. Whether it was down to the fact that they resembled a long left behind family unit for us strays or simply that they were usually the first to crack open the wine, every night the socialising seemed to start around them. Peter and Annette were travelling the length and breadth of the Americas and hoped to end in Los Angeles (California, not Chile) with a camper van and a Jimmy Buffett concert. Odd as it may seem, I found them and their trip inspiring, their excitement for it was so palpable it was contagious and in their Jimmy Buffett I saw my Atacama and my Bolivia.
I have been asked several times now about the bike's name. Now, I've always been of the mindset that the only people who name machines are repressed homosexuals who are only one hot exhaust pipe from committing despicable acts. However, it has occurred to me that since I'm going to rely on the bike for transport and company (platonic, mind) for the best part of six months, we'll need to be on first name terms; for the good times and the bad. While trying to come up with a name, I thought of a Van Morrison song that I was listening a lot to around the time I decided to do this trip, and instantly there seemed nothing else that the bike could possibly be called. And thus, Tupelo Honey was baptised.
Leg Distance - 52.93km
Leg Time - 2:49.32
Total Distance - 299.24 km
San Jose de la Mariquina is a small town, the kind of small town where most shops trade in two or more different businesses, so that a bakery may also be a laundry and a stationary store. After a couple of laps I found the first Hospedaje (slash restaurant slash butchery) and was shown to an alcove room that could have been considered charming had it not been for the swarm of flies that stirred when the landlady opened the door. I told her that perhaps I would look around the rest of the town first and was met not with a reduced price, but with a knowing nod from the landlady, painfully aware that the room was not fit for human occupation. Fortunately she was nice enough to let me know where another (the other) hospedaje was and I was able to secure a room for the night with no visible fauna.
Literally as well as figuratively though, San Jose is miles away from Valdivia. Not only is Valdivia a lovely city, but I felt I could finally relax and enjoy being somewhere rather than constantly worry about the cycling for the first time since starting. After Wednesday's nightmare day, it was also nice to stay at a hostal and have the company of fellow nomads again for the first time since Puerto Octay. Hostals are funny in that you often meet likable people (or maybe you just don't have enough time to get to dislike them), but you rarely meet memorable people, like Peter and Annette. Peter and Annette were an Australian couple in their fifties that combined lovable Australian small-town curmudgeonliness and turn of phrase with a seemingly unending fascination for (and knowledge of) the wider world around them. Whether it was down to the fact that they resembled a long left behind family unit for us strays or simply that they were usually the first to crack open the wine, every night the socialising seemed to start around them. Peter and Annette were travelling the length and breadth of the Americas and hoped to end in Los Angeles (California, not Chile) with a camper van and a Jimmy Buffett concert. Odd as it may seem, I found them and their trip inspiring, their excitement for it was so palpable it was contagious and in their Jimmy Buffett I saw my Atacama and my Bolivia.
I have been asked several times now about the bike's name. Now, I've always been of the mindset that the only people who name machines are repressed homosexuals who are only one hot exhaust pipe from committing despicable acts. However, it has occurred to me that since I'm going to rely on the bike for transport and company (platonic, mind) for the best part of six months, we'll need to be on first name terms; for the good times and the bad. While trying to come up with a name, I thought of a Van Morrison song that I was listening a lot to around the time I decided to do this trip, and instantly there seemed nothing else that the bike could possibly be called. And thus, Tupelo Honey was baptised.
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