Nick Lobb's 4th Letter, 15 Feb 2002

Nick Lobb makes the local news! (See below for close-up on article.)

Nicholas Lobb ('90 Chapman) is on a 10-month journey across South America in aid of the Leukaemia Research Fund - read all about his epic bike ride across Chile, Argentina and Bolivia below. (Nick is looking for sponsors - to support his fundraising efforts please contact his brother Jonathan on 020 8399 2298 or Nick himself at nlobb@hotmail.com.)

Dear Sponsors,

I attach an update of my trip so far and an article from a Chilean paper showing that I really am cycling and not making it all up from a beach in Brazil, as has been suggested!

I am about to head back accross the mountains and into Argentina where I am told the temperature is in the 40s.

Hasta luego,

Nicholas

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4th LETTER FROM SOUTH AMERICA - 15.02.02

Total Distance: 2,510.71 miles
Maximum distance in one day: 105.09 miles
Maximum speed: 42mph

I have now more than doubled the distance ridden since last writing, during which time I have been making my way north through southern Chile, parts of which were previously described to me as the nearest I will come to cycling through the Garden of Eden.

After my Birthday I left the wind and plains of Patagonia behind me and with some relief rode back into Chile and up to the mountain town of CoIhaique, from where I last wrote. This was the last big town for some 270 miles of more unpaved road and, for me marked the beginning of the famously picturesque Caraterra Austral.

The road lived up to my expectations as I wound my way up and down through thick forests, along avenues of giant rhubarb lined with wild flowers, around lakes and under mountains topped with snow. Perched above me small hanging glaciers melted into waterfalls where they met the forest which reached high up into the hills above me.

This is apparently one of the wettest regions of Chile so I was lucky to spend only half a day riding in the rain. The abundant water and countless streams which ran down from the hills above meant that, whereas in Patagonia I had been carrying up to six litres of water, here one litre was more than enough to last to the next stream.

There was usually no trouble finding a lake or stream to camp by, but one night it was getting late when I stopped by a small cabin, whose smoking chimney indicated life inside, and asked if I could camp nearby. The lady inside pointed me towards another cabin on the other side of the road where I could stay. On walking inside it was apparent from the dirt and bits of rubbish on the floor, the ripped transparent plastic flapping in the window pains and the broken down rusting old stove standing alone in the middle of one of the two rooms, that no one had lived here for some time.

I later showed a picture of this cabin to two doctors in Santiago whose first reaction was that this was a perfect spot for Hanta virus. Carried in rats urine this virus, while not very common, if caught can cause flu like symptoms and sometimes death. I have been advised that if I want to stay in places like that again to carry a chlorine spray and wear a face mask.

The following night I stopped in a small dusty town called Santa Lucia. The unpaved streets, as in most Chilean towns, were arranged in blocks of small, mostly single story houses made of wood and corrugated iron roofs painted in different colours. Small harmless groups of dogs roamed the streets and horses were tethered to railings outside people’s houses.

While I had been used to staying in some fairly untidy and dirty hospedajes (family homes offering bead and breakfast) the one I found was immaculate and the surfaces, especially in the kitchen, shone. After spending the last few days washing in lakes and rivers, I was treated to a newly refurbished bathroom fitted with pristine new blue toilet, bath and shower; not something you expect along a road where one family had made its home in the shell an ancient DC10 airoplane.

Chaiten marked the beginning of the paved road and the discovery of my second broken spoke on my back wheel. It is always a nerve racking experience watching a stranger dismantling your bike - this was especially so in Chaiten. Outside the bike shop discarded and broken bicycles were piled high making it look more like a scrap yard than a repair shop.

Before I could change my mind the man had the back wheel and tyre off and it was the most I could do to keep track of all the knuts and bolts from my bike which he was laying among the debris strewn over the floor of his work shop. It became apparent though, that the speed with which he worked was attributable to his skill, rather than the enthusiasm of an overanxious amateur, and he knew exactly what he was doing. He even showed me how I could repair a spoke without the tools that had made it necessary to come to him in the first place.

When it came to paying I followed him into what appeared from the outside to be another workshop. When I got inside however I discovered it was his kitchen. He introduced me to his wife and baby daughter as they and a group of friends were gathered in animated conversation around the large kitchen table, which was almost entirely covered with a bleeding side of recently butchered beef. I never found out how they planned to dispose of so much meat, but given the entrepreneurial Chilean spirit assumed it was to be sold as a sideline to bicycle repairs.

I caught the boat from Chaiten to Chiloe with Ros (Rosalind) and Paul, a couple from London who I had met briefly in Coihaique and then again in Chaiten. They had been married in September in South Africa, where Ros grew up, and were now on one of the longest honeymoons in history, riding up through South America. Chiloe is fabled to be a mythical island inhabited by mysterious creatures. Among these are Pincoya, sea goddess of fertility, a creature of extraordinary beauty who lives on the island’s beaches.

Less appealing is El Trauco, a deformed dwarf who is apparently irresistable to women. None of us attracted the attention of any of these creatures, although Ros appeared to be doing her best as she rode along in a bright pink top. This apparently was to indacate to drivers that she was a woman in the hope that they would take more care when passing her. It had the result however of making some men nearly loose control as they leaned out of their windows to get a closer look. As a van full of men went by they were practically hanging out of the windows as they screamed for her attention.

We celebrated Christmas together in the town of Castro, in the centre of Chiloe. The large and impressive Cathedral was covered on the outside in corrogated iron painted in blue and yellow. On the inside it was made entirely of carved wood for which Chiloe is famous. As we walked into midnight mass a group of teenagers stood on the steps outside beating out a loud and fast rhythem with their hands on large drums slung over their shoulders.

Although at first it seemed incongruos, it was entertaining, and when we later saw the same group had swapped their drums for casacks and were serving serenely at the alter it became clear that they were not part of some alternative group, but that this was just another part of their contribution to the celebration.

Chiloe is well known for a fish delicacy called curanto. Traditionally, a hole is dug in the ground in which a fire is lit and covered with a layer of stones. As the fire dies down, the fish and other ingredients, wrapped in giant rhubarb leaves, are placed among the heated stones and left to cook. Apparently the result is delicious. Perhaps we should not have chosen to try this delicacy in an empty restaurant.

Certainly Paul and Ros felt it safer to opt for the salmon dish, leaving me faced with a plate of dried up mussels, a greyish jellylike lump which I couldnt identify and various dried up bits of meat. Looking suspiciously reheated, I took some tentative bites before leaving it for the next unfortunate customer. Encouraged by my incessant complaints as I eyed the plate in front of me, Paul asked the waitress as she stood chewing gum whether the chef was on holiday. Embarressed and speechless she could only manage a giggle before retreating to the kitchen to find the bill.

As if one of Chiloe’s mythical creatures were reaping revenge for the embarrassment suffered by the poor waitress in the restaurant, the day after we left Castro Paul had four punctures. This was more likely due to the fact that he had been riding while the rim of his back wheel had fractured causing two spokes to work themselves loose.

Before leaving England Paul had been on a bicycle repair/maintenance course which seemed to have imbued him with the confidence that no matter how bad the problem with his bike he would be able to fix it. In fairness, he had been able to do just this since he and Ros set off in October. So it was that with a calm air of invincibility, hammering his way up and down the kerbs as we arrived in Chiloe, he rode the length of the island with a broken back wheel.

It was little surprise then, that faced with his fourth successive puncture, undaunted as he squated by his unturned bike sweating in the heat of the afternoon sun, that he came up with his masterful back-up plan. He announced that it was possible to ride without the aid of an inner tube if instead you stuffed your wheel full of grass! As Ros and I looked at each other she laughed and I tried not to, as Paul knelt by the side of the road tugging out tufts of grass. Impressed by his single-minded determination but worried that maybe he was just suffering from the effects of too much sun, I decided to ride on to the next town, Ancud, to find the campsite.

Later on that evening Paul and Ros caught up with me, having got a lift in the back of a truck with the bikes. As we walked into town for some dinner Paul laughed at the evidence of his earlier efforts, as he pointed out sad tufts of dried up grass which had been shed from his back tyre as he pushed his broken bike up to the camp site. Not to be beaten though, and showing the resolve which will no doubt ensure he and Ros successfully complete their trip, he mused that his idea still might just work on a bike unladened with panniers.

I left Paul and Ros to find a new wheel in Ancud and during the short ferry crossing back to mainland Chile watched a dolphin jumping and diving in the wake of the boat. As I approached Puerto Montt; “the beginning of civilized Chile,” the road, which was now lined at regular intervals with tall advertising boards, widened to four lanes to accommodate the speeding new cars now filling the road.

On the other side of the road a couple of hausos (country people), as they are known in Chile, were struggling to replace the wheel that had fallen off their horse-drawn cart. Finding a gap in the traffic I walked over and with one of the men lifted the cart. While thoughts flashed through my head as to whether this would be classed as a hazardous activity not covered by my insurance policy, the other man steadied the horse and successfully slid the wheel back onto its axel. They shook my hand, uttered some words, I could only assume of thanks, in their thick incomprehensible Chilean accents and trotted off.

Puerto Montt was the largest town I had visited since I started riding in October and weaving throught the traffic was not so different from cycling in London. When I woke up on New Years Eve and looked out of my window overlooking the back of a large super market I decided to leave for the small town of Puerto Vares on the shore of Lake Llanquihue.

On the opposite shores of the lake stood the perfect cone of Osorno, described by Sara Wheeler in “Travels in a Thin Country” as the Taj Mahal of the natural world.” Within minutes of arriving I was invited to a party being held at my hospedaje and saw the New Year in with a cosmopolitan crowd from England, Switzerland, Scotland, Italy, Japan, Sweden, Chile and America.

After New Year I decided to head off the beaten track on to the unpaved back roads in search of more of the Edenesque landscape which I had been promised in the Chilean Lake District. So I skirted the shore of Lake Llanquihue and right under the shadow of Osorno. As I cycled throught the forest that was spread across the slopes of Osorno on my right, to my left I looked across the lake and down on to its secluded black sand beaches.

On entering the forest below Osorno however, I became prey to swarms of large black horse flies (tabanos). I had heard about these in Puerto Vares and how one man had cut short his stay by one of the lakes just to escape them. I had experienced normal brown European horseflies on Chiloe, but these creatures were twice as big and black with red flecked tales.

When I first went to swat one I drew back when I mistook it for a bumblebee. At times I would look down to see three or four had settled on my shoulder or cycling shorts, and was constantly pursued by a small swarm behind and above me. At least it was a good incentive to keep pedalling and I found that they couldn’t keep up once I reached more than 16mph. I passed a girl at one stage huddled under a tree with her head between her knees as tabanos crawled all over her and was thankful to be on my bike.

The lake district is a very popular holiday destination for Chileans and also Argntianians whose boarder is very close by. As a result some of the lake side towns have developed into thriving resorts. After leaving Puerto Vares it was clear from the numerous signs that the land in this area was all part of the Estancia Rupanco estate (so named after the nearby lake). I passed Estancia Rupanco farm buildings and offices as well as the Estancia itself, which enjoyed good views of Osorno and whose long drive was lined with poplars. The Estancia had also taken advantage of its position as a tourist centre and built small complexes of holiday homes or “condominios”. So with all the land accounted for it was not so easy to find a campsite.

Early in the evening I stopped at a Rupanco tourist lodge offering organised outdoor activities, white water rafting etc. As far as I could see there were no tourists there and I asked a Chilean man inside if I could camp nearby. He wasnt sure and made a phone call to the owner who it happened was on her way over. As she got out of her white 4WD folded her arms and walked over to me with her face fixed in a frown she looked down at me from behind her dark glasses, jewellery glinting in the evening sunlight. The answer was clear before she spoke.

This was not a campsite and she had a guest staying. Apparently there was a campsite 9km up the road. As I walked away part of me wished I was back in Tierra Del Fuego. I never found the campsite and at 9. 30pm rushing through the gathering dusk I watched the sun set over the volcanoes of Lake Puyehue as, briefly, it turned everything in the world around me a shade of pink. By the end of the day I had cycled more than 82 miles.

True to form, my front pannier rack had taken exception to the unpaved roads and broken again, so I stuck to the paved roads as I rode east to Puyehue National Park. The horse flies had been hard at work all day and I took refuge in a small wooden house advertising empenadas (the Chilean equivalent of Cornish Pasties). I was greeted by six barking dogs, which I have now grown used to. A small fat lady appeared at the doorway in her apron and, calling off the dogs, invited me inside.

As I sat at the table in her front room cluttered wih photos, and ornaments I looked around at the walls coverd in religious pictures, including favorites which I had seen in other homes, the Pope and the Last Supper. Near the centre of the room was an ancient wood burning stove which she said was at least 100 years old. The bathroom was similarly cluttered with clothes hanging from the walls and piled up in the bath and on the back of the toilet which I had to lift up in order to search for the flush. Choosing to ignore the state of the kitchen, I sat back down and ordered two empenadas.

I rejoined the horseflies outside and went to find a campsite by a stream in Puyhue National Park. The sky was perfectly clear that night and I have never seen a night sky bursting with so many stars. I watched the shooting stars before setting my alarm for 6.30am in order to beat the horseflies. I managed to sleep until 8.30am and jumped up with a start when I saw the time.

I only just got packed up in time but as soon as I took out my sun cream the horseflies went into a frenzy. They can not land on, and so bite you, if you are moving so I ended up running round in circles and jumping up and down as I put on my sun cream. I thought I was on my own until I looked up to see a couple of walkers making their way past me up towards the volcano looking irritatingly unmolested and politely, or perhaps to their mind sensibly, ignoring me.

The following night I camped at Agua Caliente, so named because of the hot springs which bubble up from underground at the foot of Volcano Casablanca and which make a very relaxing bath once the horseflies have retreated.

I had wanted to get a better view of the surrounding lakes and volcanoes, so leaving my bags in the office of the park guard set off up the track to volcano Casablanca. The winding track was idillic as I passed more waterfalls and lakes where I could hear the fish jumping for flies. But the surrounding forest began to fill with the sound of tabanos as they buzzed into life with the rising temperature. As I reached the deserted ski resort of Antillanca the forest thinned and as I rose higher the wind picked up keeping all but the odd stray horsefly at bay. The forest gave way to barren black volcanic sand.

As I reached the first view point down over the lakes I saw a car inside which a family sat eating some lunch as they looked out at the view and I was reminded of England. Leaving my bike I walked up on a hill and looked down over the lakes I had ridden past a couple of days earlier. On a clear day I could have seen some one hundred miles back to Osorno. But there was thick cloud directly above me stretching as far as I could see blocking my view of any other volcanoes. It was very peaceful until on the opposite rise I heard two people shouting and looked across to see they were both waving.

I looked around to see if I was the only person there, which I was. When they continued to wave I politely gave them a brief wave before making my way back down. A few minutes later a tall young man with long black hair ran past me following a shorter and older man, with wild grey hair blowing in the wind, who was holding onto a plant which he had pulled from the side of the volcano. Looking both worried and excited with their find, they ignored me now as they carried on jogging down the hill and out of site.

I carried on up the volcano looking for a path which I had been assured would lead be over the top and round in a circle back to my camp site. At 5 o´clock I stood on the snow line with my bike which for the last couple of hours I had been dragging up through the thick volcanic sand looking for the path over the top. To the east I could see the mountains in Argentina and below me to the south and west, the lakes of Chile. I gave up looking for the path and made it back down to the bottom in one and a quarter hours just before the park guard’s office closed.

I spent the night in the home of a family who lived nearby. While it was a small single story house, as I ate dinner I counted ten other people in the main living/dining room. The mother worked in one corner in the kitchen, the father sat glued to the small TV together with two girls, who appeared to be his daughters, and two boys. Some more boys and girls sat around dinking tea and eating fresh bread the mother had just cooked. One girl sat quitely at the table listening to music on her headphones. Judging by the picture of Prince William on the wall of my room, it appeared one of the girls had had to give up her room.

In the morning at breakfast a tiny bleary-eyed girl of about three wandered out of her bedroom. Her two older sisters kissed her goodbye before leaving for work and as she watched the door shut behind them she burst into tears. Her mother took her up into her arms and explained to me that she had three daughters and four sons plus the little girl in her arms who she had adopted from a 14 year old girl in nearby Osorno, so named after the volcano.

The father got up a little later than the rest of the family, and ate some breakfast on his feet before rushing out of the door, apparently late for work. As I left I saw him smoking contentedly in the door of the carpenter’s shop opposite chatting with his friends and I remembered the no smoking sign hung on the wall close to the picture of the Last Supper.

Leaving the lakes, volcanoes and horesflies behind me I cycled to Osorno. I was fortunate to be staying in the home of one of the editors from the local paper who was happy to arrange an interview for me, the results of which I attach with a rough translation.

In Osorno I was able to get my pannier rack fixed. I was directed first to “the best solderer in Osorno.” Without stopping to remove the pannier rack he lifted the bike onto his work bench, pulled his protective visor over his face and lit up his soldering iron. Sparks flew and metal smoked before the man annonced that the rack was not made of aluminium after all and then disappeared not to be seen again. As his colleague made optimistic thumbs up signs, I looked down at my smouldering bike; at the melted rubber which separated the front fork from the rack; the black scar accross the front fork and the now black and deformed stub where previously the rack had been attached to my bike.

Not encouraged, I went in search of a competent solderer and found Ruben E.Soldan Scholbitz, a “Tecnico Especialista en Soldadina,” whose work shop was a hive of activity. Outside men crawled over what looked like an oil tank, to be fitted to the back of a lorry, and I thought that if they could build this they could probably fix my rack. One of Mr Scholbitz’s men did a very impressive rebuilding job. Although the newly rebuilt section did break away a couple of hundred miles north, it has since been successfully re-repaired and is still intact.

From Osorno the Pan American highway lead me relentlessly all the way to Santiago, apart for a diversion to the active volcano, Villarica. It only takes a morning to climb up to to the craters edge where you can stand right next to the plume of smoke and steam which pours out of the top. There was a biting wind blowing which kept the smoke just to our left as we climbed up through the snow and ice which surrounds the craters top. An occassional shift in the wind’s direction bought the column of smoke on top of us, thankfully moving away again before our lungs were filled with the sulpherous smoke. A group just below us apparently didn’t lie the look of it and turned back.

As I left the lakes and volcanoes behind me the rest of my journey to Santiago became a whistle-stop tour of the towns on the way, conveniently placed a days ride apart. Each town while quite different from the next had at its centre its own Plaza De Armas, invariably a hub of life and activity in the early evening. In Osorno men played chess in the middle of the square on large boards painted on the ground and strolled up and down among the knee high pieces, hands behind their backs, as they considered their next move. Families and friends sat on nearby benches chatting as the games unfolded.

If any of the buildings surrounding a plaza in any given town is going to make an impression, it is likely that that building will be a church. Although Santiago’s spacious plaza is surrounded by colonial architecture, its cathedral is no exception.

On one evening the entrance to the cathedral was a hive of activity as people passed back and forth through its doors which had been pushed wide open against the summer heat. I walked through the square, past the portrait painters, performing artists, hawkers selling post cards, sunglasses, cigarettes, and Harry Potter books and past the people sitting outside the cafes around the edge of the plaza and joined the ebb and flow of people coming and going from the cathedral.

In the centre of the cathedral the congregation filed up the aisle to receive communion as the choir sang. The continuation of the activity outside on the plaza was seamless as people milled around the aisles along the sides and back of the cathedral. While some of those standing near me at the back of the church sang along unselfconsciously, others stood looking on at the spectacle before them while groups standing near the doors or down the side aisles simply chatted among themselves as their children played at their feet.

The central valley along the Panamericana is one of the most fertile regions of Chile. As the temperature rose into the thirties I passed fields of corn, and maize and closer to Santiago row upon row of vines in the heart of Chiles wine making district.

I had been painstakingly avoiding the debris of past car accidents and the piles of shattered glass, as well as numerous dead dogs, which littered the hard shoulder. However I didn’t see the rusty nail which I hit some thirty miles before Santiago until it was firmly embedded in my back tyre, not only making a hole on the outside rim of my inner tube but also perforating the opposite wall. As a result there are now three patches on the inside wall of the tube and one on the outside where the nail first entered. Paul and Ros, at least were happy to hear this bit of news when they arrived in Santiago.

As I reached the city limits the white mountain tops of the Andes which I will have to climb in order to pass back into Argentina, sat suspended on a cloud of smog. As I rode towards the centre the mountains disappeared altogether, as did the hard shoulder as I raced along vainly attemting to keep pace with the three lanes of traffic to my left. I eventually branched off and found myself in the heart of Santiago and wondering the pedestrianised streets around the plaza. Without my guide book which I sent home long ago to reduce my load it wasn’t so easy to find a hotel as it had been in the tiny towns down south. I did however find one of my cheapest rooms to date in Hotel Nuevo (down town) at roughly 3 pounds a night.

A lot of my time in Santiago has been spent taking Spanish lessons and even trips to the library in a further attempt to get to grips with the language. Just as I am getting used to some of the many Chilenisms which transform the language into something often unrecognisable as Spanish I am planning very shortly to climb the Cordillera to my east and head back into Argentina.

During my stay in Santiago a diplomat from the British Embassy, Sanjay Wadvani, introduced me Doctor Olivari, sub director of Roberto Del Rio Hospital de Ninos. It is the largest childrens hospital in Chile and, one of the oldest, it recently celebrated its hundreth birthday. One of the first things you notice about the hospital is the paintings, more than one hundred in all, which cover the walls, all of which were painted by the children at the hospital with the help of well known artists. Save for the fact that we were in a hospital you might not have known that many of the children were ill or guest at the suffering they must have been going through. An air of tranquility reigned as the children contentedly read or coloured or just played and chatted with the nurses or members of their family at their bedsides.

In one ward a girl smiled as, legs covered in bandages, she showed off the scars covering her stomach, the results of boiling water and an accident in her kitchen at home. In the same ward a young girl dressed as a clown was entertaining the children and making toys out of bloons. Her American father and Columbian mother, she explained, were non-denominational missionaries and she was helping with the mission founded by them called the “Train of Happiness.”

The picture was the same on the leukaemia ward as the children were helped throught the side effects of their chemotherapy, which apart from causing them to loose all their hair reduces their resistance to viruses.

I was later introduced to Doctor Miriam Campbell who specialises in treating children with Leukaemia. She explained the use of chemotherapy and how the improvements in the drugs used in this therapy have greatly increased the survival rate of children with Leukaemia; how the LRF was internationally recognised for the role it played in this process through the collaboration of doctors and scientists around the world and how the work of the LRF was directly benefitting the children she treated. A few years ago she worked directly with a doctor from England funded by the LRF and assisted in his research. As a result in the improvements made in the drugs used Roberto Del Rio has a survival rate among its Leukaemia patients on a par with developed counties.

Doctor Olivari smiled as he took me to his office, in which hangs one of the childrens pictures, and told me how much he loved working in and coming to the hospital every day. As a gift to mark my visit he gave me a book of all the paintings in the hospital next to which were poems penned by famous poets such as Pablo Neruda dedicated to the children of the hospital.

Nick Lobb rides into the Chile press

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