Apologies in advance. It's been a week since we last updated the blog, but we've been a bit busy hiking if you haven't seen either of our facebook pages. That has lead to an abundance of photos being taken. Coupled with not great upload speeds on the wifi in Patagonia, we're about 150 photos behind that need uploading.
As you can see from the title, this post is all about driving. Our trusty car deserved it's own post after it got us through Chile for two and a half weeks! I am the automatic man. I will admit that I've never driven a manual car, not even in video games. While Jess is a master of the clutch, the steering wheel just happened to be on the wrong side.
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| Our trusty Mazda 6, which was an upgrade! It was also bigger than most parking spots. |
For any of you pondering a Chilean adventure, having a car is a great way to get around. While the larger cities offer a good bus service, the freedom of the car really lets you explore.
The main road that spans Chile from north to south is Ruta 5. It's a well traveled, well paved road with quite a bit of tolls (hopefully that go for maintenance). Exits are clearly marked and the signage is frequent and applicable. Gas stations are all accompanied by nice bathrooms and ample food options. There are 3 brands: Copec, Shell and Petrobras. There are always big signs telling you how far you have to the next one. While they typically end up about 100km apart, you always know when the next one is. They also pump your gas for you! In case you're not a fan of gas station food, there were always plenty of options, even right on the side of Ruta 5! People would have these little shacks on the side of the road selling bread or fruit or empandas. They would attract your attention with a ridiculous amount of flags leading up to their stop so you could see it in the distance. The people would be waving flags as well as you got closer.
As you get off the main roads into the back roads, it becomes a little more interesting. While very fun to drive, we lost GPS on my phone quite a bit which lead to a few missed turns but we always managed to get back on track. Occasionally you'd end up on a gravel road, especially going up into some of the parks for our hiking.
On the back roads you also have to watch out for animals! We saw horses (even saw those on Ruta 5), ducks, dogs, spiders and even chickens crossing the road that we stopped for!
Parking was very easy. Most of our places offered parking but in the few that didn't, street parking was easy to find. In the main parts of town, street parking was similar to large cities where they would have attendants that would come around and either have you prepay for the time or they would put tickets under your wipers and you'd pay at the end. The larger cities also had garages you could park in. In the small towns, parking was free but they had old ladies that would watch your car for you for a tip of a few coins. Overall, all you had to do was find the big E (parking in Spanish is estacionament).
While the Chilean drivers were all very courteous, they certainly did have some interesting behaviors. The first is that they are terrible at merging. Even though they have ample roadway to merge at speed, they'll drive to the end of that runway and just stop, waiting for a huge gap in traffic to pull out. Their other interesting behavior was with left turns. In the cities, it's not an issue as most time there is either an arrow or each direction gets their own green. On the country roads if they wanted to turn left off the main road, they'd flash their hazards, pull over to the right, let traffic behind them clear, then turn left. I'm sure the guy that did that in front of me was shocked when I just went ahead and turned left before him!
We even learned how to read the car manual in Spanish! We had an indicator light come up right towards the end of our journey that was just a wrench (spanner). Jess decoded the manual to realize we had driven so many kilometers that the car was due for an oil change and tire rotation!
All in all, we did just around 3000km (~1900 miles) on our journey from Santiago, up tho the Elqui Valley, then back down to Puerto Varas. It was a great time loading up on car snacks, listening to random Chilean radio and just seeing the country.
-Nick
The main road that spans Chile from north to south is Ruta 5. It's a well traveled, well paved road with quite a bit of tolls (hopefully that go for maintenance). Exits are clearly marked and the signage is frequent and applicable. Gas stations are all accompanied by nice bathrooms and ample food options. There are 3 brands: Copec, Shell and Petrobras. There are always big signs telling you how far you have to the next one. While they typically end up about 100km apart, you always know when the next one is. They also pump your gas for you! In case you're not a fan of gas station food, there were always plenty of options, even right on the side of Ruta 5! People would have these little shacks on the side of the road selling bread or fruit or empandas. They would attract your attention with a ridiculous amount of flags leading up to their stop so you could see it in the distance. The people would be waving flags as well as you got closer.
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| Roadside food stands |
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| The car can get a bit dusty after those gravel roads |
Parking was very easy. Most of our places offered parking but in the few that didn't, street parking was easy to find. In the main parts of town, street parking was similar to large cities where they would have attendants that would come around and either have you prepay for the time or they would put tickets under your wipers and you'd pay at the end. The larger cities also had garages you could park in. In the small towns, parking was free but they had old ladies that would watch your car for you for a tip of a few coins. Overall, all you had to do was find the big E (parking in Spanish is estacionament).
While the Chilean drivers were all very courteous, they certainly did have some interesting behaviors. The first is that they are terrible at merging. Even though they have ample roadway to merge at speed, they'll drive to the end of that runway and just stop, waiting for a huge gap in traffic to pull out. Their other interesting behavior was with left turns. In the cities, it's not an issue as most time there is either an arrow or each direction gets their own green. On the country roads if they wanted to turn left off the main road, they'd flash their hazards, pull over to the right, let traffic behind them clear, then turn left. I'm sure the guy that did that in front of me was shocked when I just went ahead and turned left before him!
We even learned how to read the car manual in Spanish! We had an indicator light come up right towards the end of our journey that was just a wrench (spanner). Jess decoded the manual to realize we had driven so many kilometers that the car was due for an oil change and tire rotation!
All in all, we did just around 3000km (~1900 miles) on our journey from Santiago, up tho the Elqui Valley, then back down to Puerto Varas. It was a great time loading up on car snacks, listening to random Chilean radio and just seeing the country.
-Nick
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