Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Probably not enough fine detail for a sprint, but Valparaiso would be an epic place for a long-form urban race - heaps of hills and streets winding everywhere. (Looks like some decent forest - mix of pine and eucalypt plantations - in the area inland from there, too).

In Valparaiso. As I mentioned yesterday, this is definitely not a flat city - from a narrow coastal plain a few hundred metres across, a steep range of hills rise up with the city stretching to the top of them - the geography has a little bit in common with Wellington (except that even the steepest bits that have been left alone in Wellington are built on here). Not sure how high the range is but I'd guess 400-500m.

My initial target was the top of said range. I didn't think the bits of my body which take a while to warm up would appreciate hitting it cold, so started with a flat-to-downhill initial loop before starting the climb about 2km in. From there it was a 35-minute climb with only a couple of brief flats, getting me to the highest parts of the city - it was a slightly murky morning but the view was still worth it. (I had thought from the description of the event that this might take me into some of the areas affected by the fire earlier this year, in which about 2500 properties and 15 lives were lost, but it didn't).

The first attempt at coming off the range went into a slum which I didn't feel comfortable in (and wasn't sure I'd be able to get out of at the bottom anyway). The second attempt made it clear immediately that there were much steeper ways of taking on the hills than the way I'd climbed it - it took only 2k to lose most of the height it took 5.5k to gain. That put me onto a road which contours around for a while at about the 100-metre level, which was nice, before dropping down onto the flats. Thought I might be a bit short of 2 hours when climbing back to where I was staying but was enjoying myself enough to add an extra loop to take it up to that mark.

Certainly happy with the way I handled the big climb - no issues, just steady grinding without feeling like I was struggling. Quads were a bit iffy after the major descent but settled down again and were fine later in the run (though we'll see how they come up tomorrow).

Valparaiso is an interesting, gloriously chaotic place - all manner of building styles spread over the hills and lots of street life. Definitely glad I came out here rather than spend the weekend in Santiago.

Because English-speakers most commonly associate the word with military dictatorships (most infamously here), it seemed a bit odd to see signs erected on behalf of various juntas. In fact it just means a board or committee (I think the ones I was seeing were community associations).

Headed to Santiago in the afternoon, the last stop of the trip.

Morning run in Santiago, a bit later than has been usual of late - slept in a bit after the long day yesterday. Thought I might have been raring to go after the unplanned rest day yesterday but it didn't quite work out like that (perhaps I was still hungry?) - a bit of a struggle though perhaps a little improved later. Back was playing up a bit mid-run, in a area which was dead flat. Not sure how it will respond tomorrow in Valparaiso, which is definitely not flat.

I was staying a bit west of the city centre. Feared the worst in the traffic department after having to cross a six-lane highway in the first 200 metres, but the rest was fine (it might be a bit less fine at a similar time on Monday, which is why I've chosen my Sunday night accommodation to be as close to parks as possible). Headed initially for the Quinta Normal park, mostly in the name of seeing what "Santiago Q. Normal" stands for on international meteorological reports (didn't find the site, though), then aimed for the river (such as it is) but never quite got there.

More old buildings around than I've been used to seeing in Chilean cities, mainly because, unlike pretty much everywhere between here and Puerto Montt, Santiago hasn't been flattened by an earthquake at one or more points in the last 100 years (the 2010 quake, centred further south, caused widespread, but mostly light to moderate, damage here).

With not much time left, the advice from everyone I'd spoken to was that Valparaiso (90 minutes away on the coast) was worth more of my time than Santiago, so it was to Valparaiso that I headed in the middle of the day.

C • Valparaiso 5

Today was always going to be spent more or less entirely on the bus - the last long haul (on land) of this trip, up to Santiago. I'd picked out the bus I wanted several days ago, as it was the only route that did a daytime trip from Puerto Varas to Santiago by day, meaning that (a) I could see things (one of the objects of the exercise) and (b) I didn't have to backtrack to Puerto Montt.

The biggest challenge, by far, for this was getting the ticket. In general it is difficult or impossible - and in Chile it appears to be impossible - for foreigners to buy bus tickets online in this part of the world (you usually need to enter a local ID card number), so you need to find a company office - a challenge in places which aren't big enough to have a proper bus station (in Chile, except in the larger cities, buses normally depart from the street near the company office). Attempt 1 was in Punta Arenas where the Pullman website gave 2 addresses. Number 1 was for a different bus company who presumably used to sell Pullman tickets but don't any more, number 2 was closed for the day. Attempt 2 was in Puerto Varas. The address from the website was a car park which looked like it used to be a bus station but wasn't any more. The tourist office eventually pointed me to the right place, which turned out to be an ordinary house with an annex with no company logos, but a few printed notices with timetables suggesting it was probably the Pullman office, and another sign saying it was open from 9 to 1 in the mornings, but at 10.30 there was no-one to be seen.

Attempt 3 was in Osorno but I couldn't find the bus station (this was the fruitless half-hour mentioned in yesterday's entry). It turned out I'd been led a bum steer by the normally reliable South American Handbook, a remarkable publication which, in terms of the density of information contained therein and its long history, published annually since 1924 (to say nothing of its paper thickness and font size...) resembles Wisden. (I did think it a bit strange that somewhere described as '4 blocks from the centre' had an address with the number 1400 - in most of the places I've been to here, as is common in North America, addresses use block numbers, normally starting from 0 in the centre)). I eventually succeeded fourth time lucky with a diversion into Puerto Montt (so I did go into town after all) on my way to drop the car back to the airport.

With that saga completed, I still wasn't entirely confident of seeing a bus in the appointed place at the appointed time, but it did turn up. It was very comfortable and there were often good views once early cloud cleared (more volcanoes at regular intervals), but there was one small problem - no food and no stops to get any, which meant that lunch consisted of a muesli bar and some leftover bits of chocolate from the Torres del Paine expedition. We finally got into Santiago about 10.30pm; you won't be surprised to learn that after dumping my bags I was straight out the door to the second-nearest restaurant (the nearest was McDonald's - I wasn't that desperate).

I had hoped to squeeze a run in early this morning, but discovered that the front door was locked and there wasn't an obvious way to get out at that time of the morning (something which means the place will get a suitably scathing review from me, which is a pity because everything else about it was good - apart from the nuisance it's a serious fire hazard, though I guess if you had to you could get out through the part of the building that the owners live in). Wasn't that upset about missing a token-gesture run, more that if I'd known I could have slept an extra 45 minutes....

Long run from Puerto Varas. Started with a bit of a loop of the town trying and failing to find the relevant bus company office in preparation for tomorrow's departure, then along the lake east of town - this is a main road but has a separated bike lane once beyond the town limits. Perfect morning for it, crisp and no wind (first time I've said that for a while), and responded with a pretty good run, at its best in the last few kilometres. Left hamstring a bit iffy from time to time (but the time away from running while on the trek seems to have settled my Achilles down).

Today's principal sightseeing mission was to view Volcan Puyehue, the one which caused me (and various others) a certain amount of grief back in 2011. (The eruption was actually from a side vent, Cordon Caulle). This is about 180km from Puerto Varas through generally nice country, and it was suitably photogenic when I got there (despite some cloud). The trip itself had a mixture of the good (the scenery), the bad (spending at least an hour of the day stuck at various lots of roadworks) and the ugly (spending half an hour battling Osorno's traffic on the way back without finding what I was looking for).

We're far enough north to be a little bit back into the mainstream - in the last day or so I've seen my first electric fence since Mendoza (surprisingly in Puerto Varas, a place which shows no other evidence whatsoever of being a crime-prone spot) and my first slum since Buenos Aires (less surprisingly on the fringes of Puerto Montt). Still waiting for the first sighting of golden arches since Bariloche (maybe NZ does possess the furthest south of these after all?).

C • McDonalds 2

Another early one, this time in Punta Arenas before the flight to Puerto Montt. Once again along a waterfront, mainly in the name of traffic avoidance (coming into town yesterday was the first traffic jam I've seen since the special case of the blockade between Mendoza and Neuquen), though at this hour there wasn't much traffic to avoid. There was, instead, a distinctly Punta Arenas feature - the rope along the footpath to hold onto in high winds (not needed today, but would have been over the weekend).
Northern waterfront features included a set of open-air basketball courts - presumably with a slightly lower standard of play than the Venice Beach equivalents (though three-point shots in the wind must be interesting).

I turned around a bit before the naval base. Chile is obviously still getting the hang of this democracy thing because the sign at the base entrance (seen later in the morning) listed the security threat level as "None" on a scale from "None" to "High" - obviously no-one's told them yet that they're supposed to beat up trivial threats into something not too far short of several divisions of the Third Reich massed on the borders. Given local history and the personal history of some of the government - Chile, like Brazil and (until last week) Uruguay, has a President who knows what the inside of a torture chamber looks like - one imagines that security forces aren't taken on trust quite as much in this part of the world as they are in some others.

The run was pretty good, especially in sections where the crosswind wasn't too acute.

The flight (45 minutes late because of a luggage belt breakdown) was a bit of a change after about 11,000km on land (or water). It was also the most spectacular route I can remember flying despite scattered cloud, taking in all the highlights of my last couple of weeks early on, and then plenty more in the remaining 90 minutes.

My mission upon arrival in Puerto Montt, an unlovely city in a lovely region, was to get out of it as quickly as possible. (In fact I never really went into it, skirting around its fringes). I noted a few days ago that it was the subject of one of Lonely Planet's increasingly rare scathing assessments - to quote:

"Puerto Montt's most redeeming quality is that of its plethora of exit points: be it by plane, ferry, bus or rental car, you can make a quick and virtually painless getaway to a near-endless inventory of memorable locales. Otherwise, travellers have occasionally become endeared of the unpolished working-class Chilean atmosphere here".

Working-class Chilean atmospheres not being the highest priority of my remaining time here, I picked up a car at the airport and headed for the lakes, with the nearby town of Puerto Varas (on a big lake with a spectacular volcano overlooking it) as my base for the next couple of nights. It turned out that Peter Taylor is here for a workshop and had the afternoon off, so I picked him up and we spent the rest of the day exploring (and my first experience of South American driving wasn't too scary, though Chile is sedate compared with some of its neighbours in that respect).

C • Puerto Varas + Puerto Montt 2

C • Streak 1

Early start in Puerto Natales, which I thought might have been a test given the late finish last night - felt a bit sleepy at times but otherwise not too bad. Decided that south along the shoreline was the direction to go (despite its exposing me to an icy crosswind). Started out keeping pace with the Navimag ferry as it was leaving port (this is a three-day trip ending up at Puerto Montt, which if it is on time - by no means a given on this run - will get into Puerto Montt around the same time that I'm leaving the area on Friday), but its acceleration was eventually sufficient for it to pull away from me.

The turnaround point was a small lighthouse. I presume it has a name but my Spanish has developed to the point where I recognised that what was on the sign next to the lighthouse was not its name - otherwise I might have recorded that today's run extended from Puerto Natales to Rubbish Dumping Prohibited and back. (It must be said that observance of said prohibition was evidently somewhat incomplete).

Main activity for the day, before getting the afternoon bus down to Punta Arenas (the least comfortable one I've been on in two months, but at least it was only three hours), was to visit the Cueva del Milodon, a series of caves where interesting fossils have been found (and the caves are quite interesting in their own right). This is the end of the Bruce Chatwin trail - these caves were his ultimate goal. (I read his book many years ago and have almost completely forgotten it, but it appeared to be popular reading on the trail, in numerous languages). The fossils are ancient but the "rock art" is very recent - barring the unlikely scenario that the word "fuck" is actually of indigenous Patagonian origin (brought back to Europe by Magellan's sailors?).

There were three plans for today. Plan A (good weather) was to do the Valle del Frances as an out-and-back with a day pack from Paine Grande. Plan B (mediocre weather) was to do the western leg to Refugio Grey and see the glacier (the original plan for today when I was planning to do Frances yesterday). Plan C (weather as bad as yesterday) was to get the early boat back and bail out to Puerto Natales early.

The day dawned bright (though with plenty of new snow on the ground above 800m or so), so plan A it was, and it was definitely worth it - getting up into a magnificent mountain valley with glaciated peaks all around. I'd had contradictory reports over whether I was actually supposed to be up there (a sign said no, a ranger earlier said yes), but was glad I did (and plenty of others had the same idea). Definitely a good note to end the trek on. The last 3km (repeating the same section as yesterday) was definitely a lot more pleasant than yesterday...

Having less weight to carry definitely makes a difference - today was the longest day by some margin (26km) but felt the easiest.

Got the late boat out, which when everything else was said and done, meant not getting back to Puerto Natales until about 10.30 (without any chance to eat in the interim). I'm not used to being the last person left in a restaurant as it's about to close.

Torres del Paine was definitely a spectacular experience (and the experience wouldn't have been complete without at least one bit of exposure to really foul weather). Didn't quite do everything I wanted to do, but a more than sufficient percentage to be satisfied.

C • Rifugios 2