[Editor]: Special Diary reports and photos by Sanjay Shanbhag. Check back as Sanjay will be keeping us updated as his story unfolds from South America.
A full selection of Sanjay's photos (1281 of them!) is up in the gallery. Click for Sanjay's Gallery
Here's a shot of me doing what I do in Deer Valley, UT. Off the brakes, looking ahead in some gnarly rock gardens.
I also spend a good amount of time dirt jumping. Not so much into tricks, but I love doing big transfer lines and keeping thing nice and smooth/flowy.
I try to wear all my gear all the time, but sometimes you are caught off guard. Here a bunch of friends and myself rented scooters and proceeded to have the greatest 3 hours of our lives, all for $33 ($108 in my case because I lost my $75 deposit).
So on to my Ride Report…There is some history to this as well. About a year ago a friend of mine told me about a possible trip down in South America. Basically she was going to do a NOLS mountaineering program down in Chilean Patagonia and was thinking about traveling around for about a month after the program. I love traveling and seeing new places, and hanging out with her is a blast, so I said that I'd be game. The plan was for the two of us to do our own research and then to then combine our list about what we wanted to do. I'm usually not one to do this sort of research. What I did instead was tell a guy I know down in Santiago (I sold a bunch of mountain bike frames to him on a mountain bike forum) that I was planning to be in South America around February to March of 2007. Instead of telling me about places to go and things to see he informed me about 2 big mountain bike races that were being held during my timeframe. The first was an urban downhill race which was to be held in Valparaiso, Chile and the other was going to be the UCI PanAmerican Championships in Villa la Angostura, Argentina.
As for urban downhill I had only competed in one event prior which was held in Ensenada, Mexico. They are pretty uncommon, but are a ton of fun. I wound up getting disqualified for taking some creative lines on unmarked sections of the course. I basically gapped over a switchback by using a wooden berm, but didn't cross any course tape. I guess the Mexican officials weren't too thrilled with this, and my Spanish wasn't good enough to plead my case, so DQ for me.
Here is a picture of that race.
So while my friend was hitting the Rough Guide and Lonely Planet books finding places to go, I was finding races to go to. Unfortunately because of this it put the two of us on opposite ends of South America while she was here.
Over the fall I was trying to figure out my plane tickets and how I was going to get to Santiago. I did a bunch of research and somehow came across some links on Yahoo to a couple who rode their motorcycles from California to Chile. A friend of mine had made a comment about a year back that we should ride down South. At the time I only had a dirtbike, streetbike and a supermoto. The streetbike was a Yamaha R1 and I didn't think it would handle the roads of Central and South America (little did I know). In my research I also came across this site and quickly fell in love with the KTM 950. It would be the perfect bike for me. I could sell all of my bikes, just keep this one and have just as such fun (the KTM can't really take the place of the supermoto so I decided to keep it).
So now I had about 6 months to find a bike, get it prepped to go 15,000+ miles and learn all the quirks of a new bike. It took about a month and a half to come up with the extra money I needed and to find a good deal on a bike. This left we with less than 4 months to put 3,000 miles on the bike (so I would know how to do an oil change and change a tire solo…), research a route south and around the Darian Gap, and to do a ton more things. Well long story short I ran out of time and money. I did however manage to get myself very familiarized with the bike.
New plan was to fly into Santiago and buy a cheap moto, then go and tour South America when I wasn't racing. So I decided to fly in on the Wednesday before the first race. I figured this would give me a couple days to find a bike (which I assumed were dirt cheap) and then go to the race on the Friday, but this proved to be a more difficult, lengthy process.
Onto my trip…I searched around to find the cheapest tickets possible and found some on Orbitz through TACA airlines. This would prove to be a bad mistake. They had the most strict baggage requirements. It would turn out to be quite a challenge to bring my complete downhill bike, 3 spare tires, all of my mountain bike gear, all my moto gear (luckily I race DH with a moto helmet so I only had to bring one), camping gear and my clothes and get them to fit in TACA regulation sized bags and to stay under the weight limits. I could have possibly put my bike into my Dakine bike travel case, but according to TACA I would be charged an arm and a leg, and since it was over their size limit would be considered standby baggage. This also would mean that the baggage would arrive up to 6 days late. 6 days could mean that I get my bike the Tuesday after the first race, and this was not acceptable.
What I decided to do was completely break my bike down which meant everything. I even took the swing arm off the main frame and the tires off the wheels. This allowed me to fit the bike into a much smaller box and to distribute the weight (around 40lbs) amongst a bunch of bag. The largest item size wise after being broken down was the wheel. So what I did was take one of my wheels up to our attic where my family stores our luggage and to find the smallest and lightest suitcase that it would fit into. Well I found a good one. I took it downstairs. Look on TACA's website again. They state 62 lineal inches as the largest sized bag they will take without it going as standby. This is very small. I've flown a good amount and my bags have always been much larger than this. So I go ahead and measure my bag. Completely zipped in the compact setting it is 65 lineal inches. I figured 3 extra inches would be no issue so I go ahead a start packing it. Ha stupid me…
So I got all my stuff packed. I had 1 suitcase, 1 backpack (which would be strapped to the bike I bought to hold my gear), 1 carry-on with wheels, and 1 carry-on with “books”. I put as much of the small dense stuff as I could into my carry-ons. So the tubes and the tires that could be folded were stuffed in. I also put my Roadcrafter suit in as well. TACA limits you to 22 lbs of carry-on luggage. When completely packed mine were around the 35-40lbs range. If it was going to become an issue, I was just going to put on my Roadcrafter suit and my SIDI boots and wear them for the flight just to say “Fuck you” to them. Luckily this was not necessary as I had only checked one of my carry-ons with them with a bunch of stuff removed, and had my other one waiting with my parents around the corner.
Here is a picture of my bags minus the carry-on with wheels.
All of my packing was very last minute due to a serious case of procrastination and a 3 day snowboarding trip to Mammoth the weekend before departure (its hard for me to pass up fresh powder, free lodging, free travel and cheap/free tickets). Due to all of this I finished packing about 15 minutes before heading to the airport. I got all my stuff packed and it was all a bit overweight and the suitcase was oversize. Pack it all into my parent's car and head to LAX. My flight was at 5:35AM so this meant we had to get there around 2am or so. Fun. So after about 5 minutes of driving, my dad asks me if I've ever thought of writing a living will. Thanks for having any confidence in me dad. He hands me a piece of paper and pen and I get to writing. It basically just broke up my meager belongings between my mom, dad and brother.
At 1am there is just about no traffic in Orange County, so we get to LAX pretty quick. Unload all of my gear. There are a bunch of families scurrying around taking things out of bags and putting them in other bags. They were all basically at the 50lbs mark and looked to be about the same size of my 3+ inch bag. I started to get worried because it seemed as though these people had all flown TACA prior and were being very cautious about the weights of their bags. SHIT! I think I'm going to have problems. So I take some things out of my bags and stash them with my parents. About 30 minutes pass and the ticket window opens. Since I was there so early I was one of the first in line. I see the people ahead of me getting some serious scrutiny on the size and weight of their baggage from the ladies behind the counter. I'm screwed. I wait a couple more minutes and it's my turn. I go to the desk and check my smaller bags first. The big backpack is a couple pounds over weight so I set it on the scale so that a bit of it is hanging off making it read lighter. Then I put my 3+ inch suitcase on the same way so that it reads lighter. The lady seeing as how it is a decent size pulls out a measuring tape. OK, definitely screwed now. She measures it a couple times just to make sure. She even kinda holds the tape a bit past in each direction and measures the widest parts just to make sure. Well I'm now 4” to big. She says that I can pay a bunch of money and can send it as standby, neither of which were options I was willing to deal with. Looking back at it I would have gladly paid the money if it wouldn't be any issue. She tells me that if I don't want to go standby that I would have to put my stuff in a smaller box. I try to explain to her that it's a bike and that it could not be made any smaller and that I would also need to have it for a race on Sunday. I also tried to explain that there just was not enough time or money for me to buy a newer slightly smaller bag (which would not fit my wheels) or go home and back. Her answer back to me was she handed me a roll of tape and said that I could tape it down to make it smaller.
Back of the line I go with all my bags and a roll of tape. I quickly realize that wrapping my bag in tape is not going to make it 4” smaller. It had these plastic inserts on the 4 sides which would keep it from compressing. She had turned away a family earlier and I now saw the father of the family jumping on the sides of his box to break them, allowing him to tape it into a smaller shape. Well this is an idea and will take a lot of force. I'm a scrawny 150lbs, so would take some effort. I take as much stuff out of my bag as possible. I didn't feel like breaking my bike. I managed to break the plastic side of the bag and get it taped down as tight as possible. The tape wasn't that good and was quickly stretching and breaking. I then take my newly taped bag and the rest of my stuff to the lady that originally turned me down. I wait for her to finish the person that she is working with and give me my things. She tells me that I now need to go to the back of the line. Yay. The line is now 5x's as long as when I first entered it. I look at a clock and realize that I'm running out of time for any drastic measures. After a while I am in the front of the line and to my luck go right back to the same lady that originally turned me down. About a 1 in 5 chance. She takes the weight of my smaller bags again and they are good. Now onto my “big” one. She takes the measuring tape to it and it is now 1.5” too big. The two of us wrestle with it and tape it down even tighter. I tell here there is no way it will get any tighter than this. I take a deep breath and she measures the bag. I see that it's heading in the direction of being too big. I start giving her pointers as to where she should start and end each measurement. I don't think she was too thrilled about me telling her how to do her job. Well, the measurement was finished. She did the math and tells me that it is 1” too big.
I'm now thinking about what I could possibly do. Maybe I can get to Santiago and borrow a bike. Maybe someone will get hurt or something else will happen and I will have a bike to borrow. I plead with her and she says that she can ask her boss. After 10-15minutes she comes back from some back office with her boss and they measure the bag again. It must have been a good morning for the boss because she allowed me through. In all the controversy over the size, she never even cared about the weight. While in line I managed to sneak some more things into the bag, so I was happy about this.
She sends me off to a new line. It is the checked baggage screening. Lucky for me they didn't take my bags at the front desk. This allowed me to strap some more stuff onto my backpack. I managed to strap my camping chair and my mud tire to the outside of my pack.
Next I was off to the screening for my personal gear and myself. I'm the first in this line when they open. Most of the other people are hanging out so I go in line. I say my goodbyes to my parents and head upstairs to get checked. With all the stuff I went through earlier I thought I would have issues here. That was not to be the case. I went through quicker than ever. I was wearing sandals so they were super easy to remove. I also put all my showering kit in my checked baggage, so no issues with my soap and toothpaste.
I board my plan about 30 minutes later for my first of 3 scheduled flights to Santiago. There were some 2 flight tickets, but were more expensive. The first flight was to El Salvador.
Here is a shot before we landed. I figured it would break up the monotony of all my typing.
I was supposed to have a very short layover and then be off to Lima, Peru. Well my layover became even shorter. My plane that I was supposed to take to Peru was stuck somewhere in the states in a snowstorm. Instead they put me on a flight to Costa Rica, and from there a flight to Peru. In Costa Rica I thought my trip was going to take a turn for the worst. There was a police looking guy with a drug sniffing dog. Maybe I fit his profile for a drug smuggler, or maybe it was my way overweight bags, but he kept making his dog check me. Lucky for me I was clean and he finally let me through. The flight to Peru was uneventful as was the one to Santiago.
February 15: In Santiago I get out of the plane and head to customs. I get to the front of the line, hand the lady my passport. She flips through every page of my passport looking for something and denies me. She tells me I have to pay for something and to head to another window. Well when I did my research it stated that Chile and Argentina didn't need visas for US citizens. I go over to other window and there is nobody there. A couple minutes later I am joined by some other American. We get to talking and he invites me over to his place for a party later in the week. I tell him that I will most likely be out of town for the race.
Finally someone arrives and tells me that I need to pay $100. I'm tired of dealing with this, so just fork out the $100. I guess we charge Chileans $100 when then come to the states, so they do the same for us as well as Canadians, Australians, and Mexicans. It was called a Reciprocity Fee.
Here's what was added to my passport.
Back to the customs window I go. This time they don't make me wait in the line again, which is now super long as about 5 planes have all landed and unloaded. I go right through this time. Now onto Baggage Claim. I gather all my belongings from the Baggage claim (completely amazed that they managed to arrive with me after 4 different flights), get a cart and go to the baggage screening. My suitcase with bike goes right through. The backpack is next. Remember that it has a chair and tire strapped to it. These are very loose from all the travel and I'm too lazy to retighten everything. Well this odd shaped bag gets stuck in the machine and jams it. They send me and my bags to the other machine. They already checked 3 of my bags, but insist that I check them again. This time everything goes through.
I pack all my stuff back on my cart and go to look for Victor (the guy I sold the frames to). I was now about 2 hours late. After my extra flight, having to get the visa thing for my passport and having to go through the baggage check 2 times. I was hoping Victor didn't go home. I also didn't really know what he looked like. He said that I should look for the guy with curly hair and a big dog. I thought this was some sort of joke, but low and behold a couple minutes later I see him, and he is being followed by a big German Shepherd. This definitely would not fly in the states. Victor also tells me that he was only there for a few minutes. The flights in the summer were always super late.
I was way too tired to take a picture, but here he is the next day.
Turns out Victor found him in pretty bad shape on the street and couldn't track down the owner, even though he was a pure breed with a tattoo in his ear.
Victor lives on the opposite side of Santiago as the airport. There is a highway that circles Santiago that is faster during the day when traffic is bad, but since it was so early in the morning we drove through the center. I guess some of it was through some sketchy areas, so he was running red light so that my bags wouldn't get stolen. We get to his house a little bit later and I think I'll be able to sleep. I was wrong. We needed to build up my bike because we were headed to Valparaiso the next morning. It's a good thing that I can sleep pretty easily in planes because building my bike took a while. There were some small problems trying to get it reassembled which took a while. At about 6am Victor went to sleep. He said that we needed to be up and out by 8am. We had to pick up a couple Canadians from the Airport. It took me another hour to get the bike finished and I went to sleep. An hour later I was up and loaded my bike and gear into the truck. We headed to the airport which would be my second of about 6 trips back to the airport over the next week.
We get to the airport and only Fraser had arrived. Jeffwas stuck somewhere and would be there in a couple hours. Not wanting to wait at the airport we head back to Victor's house to get some rest, unpacking and last minute wrenching finished up. Then back to the airport. At this point everyone we are supposed to pick up has arrived. Along with the Canadian are the 2x US National champ and a Frenchy named Cedric Gracia (one of the best riders in the world). I was in Andorra for 3 weeks just prior to this trip staying with Cedric, so I new that there would be a lot of partying over these next couple days, and I was right. We load up Victor's truck and a second rented truck and head to Valparaiso. I thought it wouldn't be for another couple days, but Victor was the one putting on the race and there is still work to be done, and he needed the riders input. Along the way I got super hungry (TACA only served me chips and sodas for the last 20 or so hours) so Victor bought some of these powder donut things from this guy while we were in the toll line.
They were a huge mess, but very good.
Less than an hour later we were in Valpo. This is not the best shot, but it shows a bit of Valpo, and in the distance is Viña del Mar.
The crew which is growing in size and hunger take a short stroll, from the Bed & Breakfast that we are checked in at, to a nice little Peruvian restaurant. Here's the crew waiting across the street.
I got the crab strudel (it was the weirdest sounding thing on the almost illegible chalkboard menu) and it turned out to be great. I washed it down with a local brew.
Outside the restaurant and all throughout Valpo is some of the best artwork/graffiti that I have seen. The people of this city are very artistic.
We all got a laugh out of this one
It was everywhere and was really good. I took many more pictures of the artwork over my stay in Valpo. Now that we were all fed and happy, Victor took us to the course in progress. Valparaiso sits on the side of a hill and is the biggest port on the western coast of South America. There are a ton of crazy stairs everywhere and in a couple days we would be racing down some of these. There was still a lot of building that had to be done. There was a road gap that had a ramp in progress. There was another one that launched onto a dirt hill. Later was the craziest section. We had to ride down a very narrow, very steep section that started with a drop, steep roll-in and a second sketchy drop. Then right away we were to be sent down a couple very steep sets of stairs, and then a hard turn to the street.
It's hard to see from this angle, but this is the section I am trying to describe. This one also shows some of the crazy wire routing they had in Valpo. I'm told only a small percentage actually do anything.
We walked the complete course and saw some crazy thing. There were a ton of strays that would become a problem for us riding the course.
Here is one of the many.
Victor's dog decided to be like all the strays and took a big shit right in the middle of the course.
Off to the side of the course was this car that looked like it hadn't moved in ages.
Somewhere in the middle I saw this cop. I think he was telling everyone a fishing story. “I caught one this big.”
The Chilean anti-smoking campaign...
This is a picture of the place we stayed from Thursday till Monday morning. It had just been opened a couple weeks earlier. It was a very bad idea to allow 12 or so rowdy mountain bikers to stay here, but in the end there was very little damage. They did have internet access here which was great. The breakfast was also nice, although when most of us woke up hungover it was almost noon. Thankfully the lady that ran the place would still bring out breakfast for us. The place also proved to be very hard to find at 4am while completely drunk. More on that later.
Across the street from the B&B was this cool little café. It was kind of quirky though. They had some weird hours, and they wouldn't serve some lunch items in the middle of the day.
Now that we have seen the course we go back to the B&B. Cedric is online and is searching for porn. He goes ahead and puts some X-rated pictures on the wallpaper of the guest log-in section. Luckily the owners of the place had there own log-in section. I think they would have had a heart attack.
We all get settled in. Rest for a couple hours. We figure out what the race schedule is and realize that there is no practice the next morning. This means that we party hard tonight. This would be a night all but one of us will remember for many years. We first headed out to where most of the clubs were, but first we needed some food. At this point none of us really had any Chilean money yet, so we went in search for an ATM. We all got turned down by this one.
After a little walk and some more ATM's some of us had cash. I didn't have any, but no worries. I would just pay for some of the meal on my credit card, and then get cash back. We headed to a Mexican restaurant called Taco's Bar. The name should have been a dead give away, but this turned out to be a bad move. The service was horrible, the music sucked (it at least stopped at midnight) and they kept running out of materials. A couple of us order some Corona's. We got a first round pretty quick, but when we ordered our second round it took a while. A bit later we saw a guy coming in with a plastic bag that appeared to have a 6-pack in it. This same thing happened a couple times. Also any meal with chicken took forever to cook. Our running joke was that the cooks were upstairs trying to catch the chickens to cook. We did hear an awful lot of footsteps upstairs where the kitchen was. At 1am after being overcharged we took off.
Now was time to let the festivities begin.
On our way to the club we passed this large monument.
We proceeded to go to a liquor store and by some beers. Not sure what the metric size of them was, but they were around 32oz. Finish these on the street making sure to cap them and hide them whenever the cops come by. We then proceed to a club. I don't recall what the name was though. We pay the cover and go in. Over here your cover also includes one drink. I got a Vodka/XTC (energy drink). Danced for a little while and then noticed some stuff going on up on this suspended catwalk. They were doing some contest.
It ended and a little while later I decided to climb up onto it.
From up on my perch I was going to recruit some ladies and have my own little private dance area. Well my plan didn't work as planned. About a minute or two later I was escorted out by half of the clubs security. I was kicked out some back door and nobody really knew where I had gone. Lucky for me one of the Chilean course workers who we were partying with saw where I was kicked out and went out to help me. On my way out my hand was stamped several times with a circle and a slash through it. When I tried to re-enter they shined a fluorescent light over my hand and quickly made sure I was to not re-enter. The course worker was able to sweet talk the bouncers into letting me back in. After saying over and over again that I would be “tranquillo” I was given access back into the club.
Here is a picture of my savior posing with the guys that kicked me out.
I tried to take a picture of all of the fluorescent ink on my hand that would bar my access, but my flash kinda ruined it.
Here is part of the crew posing for a shot. The guy with the sideways hat and the one with the red shirt I later found out had the job of keeping the gringos out of jail. They did a good job.
Cedric is the guy with the cigarette and his mechanic Seb is the guy with the backwards hat.
After the club closed around 3-4am we met a couple girls outside.
We then walked around and tried to find out what else was going on. We walked pass this one house and a couple girls we calling to us from a second floor window. We talk for a while and decide to head up and party with them. Up a flight of stairs and to a door. There was another cover charge here, which Cedric paid for. Again with our cover came a drink. I got a drink and went into the main room. The lights were off and I saw a bunch of people standing around the edges of the room. In all the people I only saw one or two women. I looked around some more and got the sense that we were not at the average house party. I find the others and we all report our findings and head straight for the nearest exit. From what I was told later there is a very large gay and transvestite scene in Valpo and Cedric led us to ground zero.
With nothing else in sight we stumble back to the B&B and bring the ruckus with us. We get back and it turns out two of the guys took a cab back. One of the Canadians (Jeff) was too drunk to walk back. He proceeded to puke all over himself and most of the bathroom.
After this was taken someone threw him into a shower. For the next day he kept complaining that he was cold. I think it was because he spent a good deal of time like this on the toilet.
Seb at this point was getting tired and wanted to sleep. Problem was that Cedric found some random chick on our walk back and needed the room to himself. I had an extra bed in my room, so I now had a roommate.
I was getting hungry so headed to the kitchen for a bite to eat. I guess the bathroom was still being occupied and Seb didn't know about the other one that was one door down.
He then went back to sleep and a little while later I did as well. Not sure how long later it was, but I awoke to a loud crashing sound. Cedric and someone else thought it would be funny to wake Seb up, but not some conventional way. They instead flipped his bed.
Here is the aftermath of Jeff. Notice the floor mats…
And look at Seb's pillow…
Where's the second mat?
February 16: So my first day in South America was pretty crazy. I've gone through a lot of shit and had a ton of fun over the last couple days.
Day two started off pretty late. I woke up very late, had some breakfast and set out to explore a bit more of Valpo. Here is another shot of Valpo with Viña in the background.
I saw a ton more crazy cool artwork.
Again we had nothing really going on the next morning, so we decided to go out again. The night before we saw this huge building that was a club. Unfortunately it hade a huge line out the door the night before and we didn't want to wait. This night however we would just go later and there would be no line. We had a little pre party at a bar just down the street. There you could buy these huge beer dispensers. It probably had about a pitcher and a half in them. They had hundreds of beers from around the world and we choose something great. I wish I new the name of it because I loved it.
The night two crew.
Our server after being asked a question in some pretty bad Spanish by one of the gringos responded back in perfect English. Turns out she is from San Diego and has been in Chile for a couple years.
The bars crew busy at work.
W was watching us as we drank.
After we finish our drinks we head out to the club we saw the night before. It was called the Huevo (sp?). Just like all of the other places we paid our cover fee and we got a drink with it.
A little while later I meet these two.
The only time I ever smoke is when I'm in these smoky clubs. For some reason it's better for my lungs to just join in. We hit the dance floor and have some fun. Here's a group pic on the dance floor. Fraser is the guy with the black hat. I guess he really likes my chest.
Outside exercising my lungs.
A little while later I found out that there was a basement level. There was a live metal band playing and I stuck around for a while.
I took off when some soft ballads started up.
I was starting to get tired so decided to head out. Fraser was ready to go as well so the two of us took off. Surely with two of us we'd easily find our way back. I was getting very hungry and saw a food stand outside. I decided to give my intestines a shock and bought a hot dog. This wasn't your average hot dog. It had all sorts of stomach destroying ingredients, but was good.
I was hoping that this decision wouldn't cost me many hours on the toilet, and luckily it didn't.
This was the end of another super fun night. Luckily we were able to fall asleep and were not woken up in some painful manner.
[today]So my hands are getting super tired. I've been typing all day. My original plan for the day was to hop on my moto and ride around Santiago and get lost, but it is now dark. Tomorrow I head out on the second large leg of my tour. I will hopefully keep adding to what I've started when I have time and internet access. I hope you all don't think I am some alcoholic party animal. I promise that there will be some pretty exciting riding in the next update, so please don't completely write me off.]
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