Day 55 - Smuggling fruit

Villa la angostura to Aguas Caliente (100km and a ton of hills)

Tuesday 25th October

Wow, just wow. Today was as long and tough as we'd expected it to be, but amazingly beautiful with so much varied and changing scenery on both sides of the border.

We headed out early for us, on the road just after 9.30 having had two breakfasts (hotel's plus ours to supplement the dry bred and jam!). The 10km into town that we resented so much yesterday was actually fairly pleasant and over quickly, and soon we were on our way up the road to Chile. Literally, up, and up and up.

A beautiful road with stunning green scenery, weaving its way up the mountains at a fairly pleasant gradient.  Thanks Argentinian road builders, today we love you! Our fear that the road would be stuffed full of trucks and other heavy vehicles on their way to Chile was thankfully not at all realised and the further we went, the more the traffic thinned out. Yep there was the odd truck, nerve jerkingly close bus and heart wrenching overtaking pick up truck, but mostly we had the road to ourselves. The first 40km of the day would consist of this gradual climb of over 1000m and we were churning the pedals and working our way slowly up it. About 15km into the climb we passed through Argentinian immigration, added yet more stamps to the passport and got laughed at by border control because I look nothing like my passport photo - something to do with hair colour (though Ant explained it by saying I look really hot in the photo... Keep digging!!).

We decided a few km later that it was time for lunch number 1. We'd decided we'd need several stops on the way up the climb, not just to give us energy, but also to eat up the fresh produce before crossing the border. (it's against the law to try to smuggle apples into Chile... You think I'm joking... I'm not! What's more I have a tomato and I'm not afraid to use it!!). Apparently Chile has an alarmingly small number of agricultural diseases, and it wants to stay that way, so fruit, nuts, cheese, meat - you're not welcome! We snuggled under a tree out the sun and overlooking a beautiful river, and munched our way through several apples, bananas and avocados.

As we climbed we found ourselves getting closer and closer to the snow line. We started out with rocky verdant spring green, with trees all proud of their newly grown leaves and water flowing proudly down the valley, but as we rose life became harder, trees were still tucked up in their winter shades of brown, the air got thinner and colder and we even started to cycle passed snow!  After seeing our road rise right above us our of the tree line, we apprehensively chugged on and eventually got to the border. 40km climb - done. And wow we actually enjoyed it and neither of us is at all broken! What's more it's still before 2pm so we have plenty of time in hand. We celebrated with photos of us and the 'Welcome to Chile signs' (yes we've been in Chile for a while, but this is the first time we entered on our bikes!), then wrapped up ready for the descent down the other side (nippy up here!) and the impending hot springs.

We stopped for lunch number two just over the top of the hill and realised the trees has no branches or bark and the ground was covered in grey sand. It took until we were discussing how beautiful the snow peaked volcanos were that we realised we were surrounded by volcanic ash from the 1960's eruption. Awesome! How cool is this! Incredibly grey and eerie though.

45km done, 1000m climbed, two lunches eaten and it was still only 2.30pm. A brilliant day! We were on our way again and then we were reminded of how Chile build their roads. Why go slightly around when you can just go straight up. 10, 15, 20, 25% all acceptable gradients for sometimes snowy mountain passes right??!  And if you're planning to lose altitude, don't expect to actually spend that whole time going down a hill. What will actually happen is you'll start off by going up a 20% climb, then down a 20% climb for just a bit longer, then repeat until eventually you've accumulated enough descent to get you down the hill you were aiming to get down, with enough lactate in your legs to curse and squeak.

Ok so we did get a good 10km downhill once we were over the top and whizzed into the Chilean immigration so fast we needed to put our jackets on, but we'd done a lot more ascending than we'd bargained for.

Now I've never been interested in smuggling forbidden items across borders and as far as I know, neither has Ant, but when we bought our garlic in Chile a week ago we didn't plan for its life to end quite so abruptly after a short Argentinian road trip - so we were on a 'save the garlic mission'.  That was probably the most legitimate of our borderline items, in that it originated from the country from which it was now banned. We also couldn't really bring ourselves to throw away the dried fruit, cereal bars and snacks that we would probably need to tackle the remaining 60km. Luckily we'd been informed through our secret sources, that you should always tick the 'yes' box on the customs form, declaring that you are indeed in possession of forbidden agricultural items. That way when they find avocado the assassin, or carrot the con-man during their full grocery search, they can't fine you, just ask you to throw them away. So that we did. Despite being careless smugglers (I mean we didn't even go to any lengths to hide the contraband, no tomatoes up the jumper or anything) as soon as they saw our forms they half heartedly checked our bags, asked us what we had in them, stamped a form and let us pass. No fines to be had here then! Moral of the story always tick the 'yes' box!

So garlic, avocado and carrot breathing a sigh of relief (we hadn't even realised we were in possession of the latter two until we stopped for a snack!) we were on our way through the ridiculously undulating roads of Chile. The road started off in a cloud forest which really felt like rain Forrest, with broad drooping leaves and huge tall trees, and ended up descending into wide open undulating farm land, with tree lined hills either side of the valleys.

We kept on chugging away amazed at the changing landscape and growing ever more weary from the biting hills. After 95km we cycled passed a spa hotel, our first hope for a home, but they were fully booked. Surprisingly we were fairly relieved, it looked expensive and not quite the epitome of natural springs we'd hoped for. The down side was our next hope lay at the top of a 4km detour climb, that was 10% at it's kindest and 20% at its most evil - right legs I need you to shut up and do your thing.

Thankful for the distance markers every 200m, we were able to count down the burn - the ultimate gym session.

And then we were finally rewarded with a Chilean natural version of centre parcs! A choice of camp sites, lodges or... DOMOS!! Yay, we can stay in a domo! The 4 year old inside me is screaming with joy! And we get natural springs included in the price, but they shut in an hour... The race is on.

We ran to our domo through the forest, showered quickly, grabbed our swimmers and ran back to the pool.

And relax!!

What a day! We love our domo, we love its home, we live the restaurant... And we're gonna get the best night's sleep ever!