Thursday 28 December 2006

El Fogon de Cuaco To Ensenada

We wake up to rain, horses making sounds, and geese within earshot. It's raining, but we pack up quickly and head over to the showers. No hot water, so I just hurried through a cold one, it actually felt good. Tori wanted warm, and went to check with the lady. She had to light the heater. We heard her do it, and it didn't sound good, she wrecked it. So Tori had half a cold shower before the water stopped. We made our way over to the round building for breakfast overlooking the lake. They've got a band setup in here, I'm guessing this place might be the local social area. They of course have efficient light bulbs, but some of them are red and blue, undoubtedly for the party effect. It's cool again today, I'd say the weather has been more like the few days of Vancouver spring I had last year at Ty's apartment. If I had a house here, I'd have no problem going out for a 4 hour ride then coming back to warm up, but it's different when you don't have a place to come back to per se.

We got to our Kodak shop and did that business fine, then Tori made her way over to the post office to mail a copy of the CD home. Apparently this post office doesn't supply envelopes, so she had to make her way over to the store to buy one first.

I waited at the car to save my achilles from pounding the pavement, and eventually some guy came up to talk to me. I wasn't getting much, until he showed me his UCI card and told me he ran the Club de Bicicletta Osorno. He gave me a number to call if we were up there and wanted to ride fast. He admired our bikes for a while, and we didn't get much more out of the conversation after Tori got back other than it sounded like he was saying we could crash at his place if we wanted to.

We headed to Ancud, and visited an artisan market for a while, then the adjacent supermercado for lunch/ferry ride snacks. Not much in the way of excitement between Ancud and Ensenada, other than retracing a part of the trip's earlier riding. We make it to a campground on the lake at Ensenada. We can see Volcan Osorno poking out through the clouds. The campground is right on the water and staffed by a genuinely helpful "kid", probably the younger half of the 20's. He helps us chop wet wood, and continually asks if we'd like more, displays language patience, and brings us hot water for tea/coffee before he goes to bed. An easier day out of the saddle, but fun and relaxing. I think I'll try to find a way to ride unweighted for a while tomorrow, and emphasize spinning over pedal force. Want to make sure I don't fall into the two steps forward, one step back routine by being too gung ho.

I've realized I haven't been homesick at all because Tori is here. Guess the means the rest of my "home" is just walls to store bikes in.

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