A Happy Place

After a 12 hour bus ride on Monday, we arrived in Pucon. It was a long day, but luckily many people helped to make it easy. A very nice Chilean man stepped up to make sure our bikes were loaded onto the bus before all the smaller bags. Many hands helped move them through the crowd and onto the bus. In Pucon, one taxi driver recruited the second taxi as it took two to carry the bikes. After dropping everything in our room, we headed for dinner. It was 9pm and everyone in Chile seems to be enjoying summer in Pucon. We enjoyed Pisco Sours and an all meat BBQ dinner while sitting outside. The sunsets are late and the temps are great.

On Tuesday, we enjoyed a late breakfast and then decided it was time to unbox the bikes and see what surprises awaited us. We decided to start with my bike as the box was the more squished in appearance. So, it looked like TSA did a piece by piece check of my bike based on how they re-stuffed it into the box. The rack for carrying gear was twisted and bent. At first, it didn't want to align to the rear axle. Then Arn used a "special bike repair" technique --- brut force! After several iterations, he managed to get it to work. Later, it was time to reconnect the rear derailluer (the thingy-bob that changes gears). The cable housing into the derailluer looked like a family of rats sharpened their teeth on it. At first, we thought the universial repair item (duct tape) would fix it. In the end, we tracked down a bike repair shop and for $.80 we bought a new housing. Everything else on both bikes came together with no issues.

We spent the afternoon sorting gear and figuring out what goes where. More importantly, we tried to figure out the answer to a very important question -- does it all fit? The answer? Let's just say we won't be buying any souvenirs. After the gear sort, we headed off to buy unleaded gas for the camp stove and groceries. We will be dining on pasta with tomato sauce (sold in foil packages here -- not glass jars), soup from dried mixes, oatmeal, cookies, Granola bars, crackers, and PEANUT BUTTER!!!! Arn is carrying the food with exception of the peanut butter. I'll let you figure out who couldn't leave the store without. With our purchases in hand, we stopped for ice cream -- thanks to my Spanish interrogation into flavors, we both ended up with Tiramisu. Our Internet connection is great, so we made a couple of phone calls. Dinner was enjoyed at a Peruvian restaurant. We faced an interesting dilema. Do you order the "Peruvian pisco sour" because we are in a Peruvian restaurant and maybe our waitress is from Peru? Or do you order the Chilean pisco sour because we are in Chile and
perhaps our waitress is Chilean? Luckily, she stepped in and declared the Peruvian pisco sours to be better. Last night's meal was fish followed by more fish.

In case it is not obvious, Pucon is a happy place --- good weather, long days, beautiful scenery, friendly people, and great meals. The lake is a huge beach and sun bathing scene. People stroll the streets with ice cream cones in the afternoon. Locals sell giant containers of fresh raspberries for $4. The dinner crowd starts around 9:30pm. Sandals, flip flops, shorts and t-shirts are the fashion. It is a very, very happy place and we are enjoying it very much!