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Published: March 14th 2012
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Wednesday 14 March
I had managed to book a hotel in Linares, which seemed a reasonable enough distance to go but I had not really got a route in mind. As far as possible I wanted to stay off Ruta 5 and see some of Chile's wine growing region.
Although the sat nav had properly charged the battery tended only to last 4 hours so I was determined not to use unless I really had to. My map of the area though was not very detailed so the plan was to follow the road out of Valparaiso keeping the sea to my left. This turned out to be a cracking idea as I had a really nice ride on good twisty roads with great views of the sea. A bit of a bikers' heaven
Eventually I joined the R-68 main road towards Santiago. I wanted to get off this as soon as I could and took the chance at Casablanca (no - not that one!) . I recalled Casablanca was one the wine growing areas and saw a brown road side tourist sign, like the sort we have in the UK, indicating "Ruta del Vino" so I turned
off. There absolutely no indication though, once of the main road, of which way to go to follow the Ruta del Vino so I pulled over and gave the map a gander. I had seen a sign for Melipilla, the next big town so I followed that and it too turned out to be an excellent choice.
The road took me along a little valley that lead into the hills. Either side were vineyards and it felt quite like I was in France. Once in the hills the road became nice and twisty again and I wished I had a good pair of road tyres so I do do it some justice but I took it nice and easy and took in the views.
At one point I could smell a what I thought was a bonfire but ahead of me up in the hill was a huge column of grey smoke. I then saw a helicopter with a big red bucket dangled beneath and realised it was probably a forest fire. It looked quite small and at least a few miles off so I wasn't worried in getting myself caught up in it
Melipilla was a
horrid little place. Very industrial and mainly composed of one or two storey buildings. I don't think it had a road sign to its name. The map, which simply showed Melipilla as a dot suggested the route ahead would be straight one. It wasn't. I ended up in some residential area and completely lost! So much for my navigating skills - on with the sat nav.
I was soon back on track heading out on the G-60 towards what I hoped would be San Pedro and the sat nav was turned back off. A few kms short of what I thought would be San Pedro the road hit a T-junction, which I hadn't expected from the map. The only sign was to the left, marked Lago Rapel. That was on the map but in the opposite direction to San Pedro. Going right then to San Pedro might mean I would end up going the wrong way, so I turned left onto r-66
This was a nice road too and it ran up a wide flat valley. The agriculture varied from vines, to maize and fruit trees. There was also acres and acres of 2x2 stakes someone had planted. They were doing quite well and had grown to about 3 ft high! I assumed they were for young vines.
The road was undergoing road works so every couple of kms I had to stop whilst the traffic from the other direction was let through. When I did stop you really felt the heat.
Lago Rapel is a huge lake. Looking at the map I would guess about 20kms long and a couple of kms at it widest and looked like it might be man made., a flooded valley as the result of a river being damned. The whole area was lovely and would make a great holiday spot. There was plenty of camping sites and signs for all sorts of activities. Unfortunately I just couldn't find somewhere decent to stop for a photo.
The road carried on through lovely little villages and towns such as Las Cabras and was lined with fruit sellers and shacks selling God knows what. I was deteremined to stop at one of these places and find out what they sold. There is never any indication, certainly to a non Spanish speaker like me what was for sale, unless they sold fruit. They all had loads of flags outside. Many with coke-a-cola flags or yellow flags with CF on them but everywhere had these so it was no real guide. The CF flag was frankly a little off putting. It stuck me as rather fascist in styling and wondered if it might be political. Later I passed a huge CF factory. I still had no idea what CF was but I guess it is some kind of drink. I google it but with no joy.
As it was I never did stop at any of these places. Many seemed to be in rather unsuitable places to stop or looked downright uninviting. So I gave them a miss. I wasn't hungry or thristy so I kept on going, enjoying my ride.
Eventually the envitable happened and I joined up with Ruta 5 - the Panamerican highway - at Pelequen. I had been riding for nearly 4 and a half hours, completely managed to avoid Santiago, had had a great ride in some lovely countryside and I only had another 120 or so kms to go, so I didn't think I had done all that bad. I could of turned off a few kms down the road and made my way though more of the same but as i was it was going to be nearly gone five by the time I rolled in and I still had to find the hhotel so I put my hed down and set off down the motorway.
I didn't get far as the reserve light came on but this stretch of the Ruta 5 was very built up, quite unlike it had been north of Santiago and a fuel station so popped up pretty quickly. I filled up, had a wee and drank about a litre of water. I bought a sandwich. It looked terrible so I gave most of it to the dog lolling about the service station.
Linares soon came up and I turned off. It looked a pleasant clean little place. I pulled over, turned the sat nav on and keyed in the hotel address - not found. I tried again in case I had spelt it incorrectly. Nope - it wasn't having it. Fortunately the hotel website also gave out a latitute and longitude for it. This is unusal and for some reason I had wriiten down in my journal so I tried that and up popped the hotel 1.2 kms away at the exact same address I had typed in ! Five minutes later I pulled into the hotel yard to a round of applause from two builders. I didn't quite know what to make of that but I smiled nicely gave the thumbs up and tried to look cool getting off, making sure of course not to drop the bike.
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