After 2 nights in the very nice hostal in Curacautin to recover from stomach problems a bit, we got back on the road. We needed to move on. We wanted to cross the country to get to the shore at Concepcion. That proved to be a pretty long trip. Fortunately the road was very good; paved and only in the beginning some hills but the rest was mainly flat. So finally we could do some old fashioned stages, even though we still were not completely fit and hadn’t eaten much. It took us 4,5 days to cover the almost 450 kms (270 miles) to a town called Dichato, about 35 kms (21 miles) north of Concepcion. The scenery was not very special; mainly cropfields and pineforests.

There wasn’t much to do in the towns where we spent the nights, at that moment we were the main attraction. We were stared at, called after by the local kids (in the only English words they knew; ‘Hello’ and ‘How are you?’) and looked at from all angles. Sometimes in a curious and nice way, sometimes in a weird way. When we answered with ‘Hello’, the whole group started giggling.

Cycling through the forests, we saw huge, tarantula-like spiders on the road.

There was no campground in Tome. According to a lady in a store, there should be a campground in the next town, Dichato, 10 kms (6 miles) further. So we went there, even though we would have to go the same way back when we left the town. More hills. Finally we arrived in Dichato. It was pretty late already, we were tired and there was no campground…

So we asked the first person we saw. He didn’t know anything about a campground, but he knew people where we could camp in the back yard. Well, we couldn’t camp there, but they did rent rooms for less than we’ve paid at some campgrounds. So we rented a room.

After we had installed ourselves in the room, we were invited for tea and after that it was bedtime already. We stayed the next 2 days because we still weren’t fit and because it was a nice place. We could cook in their kitchen and in the meantime try to improve our Spanish. There was a large beach, but the good weather had left us so we couldn’t go to the beach.

From Dichato we had to leave the coast for a while before getting back. More hills to climb. And our first flat tire, after about 4200 kms ( 2500 miles). A piece of metal had made a small puncture in the tire.

The shore we reached then was very nice and unspoiled. No tourists at all and definitely no large apartment buildings. Only a few old and rundown houses and buildings. Also in the towns here they looked at us like we were aliens and about all the cars honked their horn and the people waved at us. Here too, we couldn’t escape the unpaved roads, but they were not too bad.

We stayed in the surftown Pichilemu for a day. Finally we could camp again and the people from the campground were very nice. We must have looked very tired and hungry, because we were greeted with coffee/tea and crackers with homemade jelly. We could pitch the tent in a sort of beach house, like a beach bar. Very nice. At night we shut the shutters and the door and then it was just like a real little house.

The town also was pretty nice, with many restaurants. How touristy it actually is, we discovered when we left on the Friday before Easter. It looked like the whole town was being invaded with people. We would have liked to stay longer, but the weather wasn’t really suitable for the beach. It was grey and clouded, so we decided to leave.