We’re in Chile! The last border crossing with the bike is finished, we arrived in Victoria yesterday evening, and we plan to finish our riding today (inchallah). The relief at crossing yesterday was amazing – another hurdle cleared for us to run this last leg.
Our day didn’t go as expected. We’d planned on crossing the border within the first couple hours, riding to Osorno, then spending the rest of the day riding north to Temuco. But three hours of riding in Google still showed the border being an hour away; it turns out I’d made a wrong turn at some point and when I’d pulled over to check the map, Google had already rerouted us to a border crossing further north. By the time I became suspicious enough to zoom out to see the whole route, we’d gone too far to go back. I wasn’t worried till we saw the gravel section coming up, which took us 30 minutes to travel just 7 miles.
We got lucky, though. The Chilean side of the Mamuil Malal border crossing was fully paved, and beautiful. And instead of the 3-hr wait as we expected for crossing at Antonio Samore border crossing, we had about 20 minutes total of friendly officials who liked my Thor’s Hammer.
And while I’d been worried about my fuel, we found a beautiful lodge-style gas station with a restaurant and friendly waiter, a man from Haiti who’d immigrated to Chile.
As an even bigger bonus, we were sad to leave the YPF gas stations with Full Cafes, but the highways here are lined by magnificent stations with Pronto cafes. I’m happy to be in Chile, happy to be making it safely so far, and asking for one more day of grace on the road; and a lifetime after that while I continue to travel, because it never hurts to ask, right?