Mar. 17 – Curico to Temuco

Slept in, then had the nice hostel breakfast.  Rode two-up to the motorcycle shop and Levi’s machine was all ready to go.  We settled up with Chalaco-Lopez, and rode back to the hostel to load up.  We gassed up and had a very easy out of town.  Back onto the excellent Chilean freeway.

Great to be back on the road!  We stopped for lunch at a roadside restaurant, and spent too much on a couple of HUGE steaks.  We are so excited about making time going south again, that we run completely out of gas near Las Angeles, and have to split the gas can and barely make it to a station before we have to park and hitch-hike!  Our closest call yet on running out of gas.

At the station, Levi notices that his rear wheel adjustment is not correct, and some of the adjuster nuts are almost off.  So we do a chain and wheel adjustment on both bikes.  After that delay we ride a few more miles, and then stop at Temuco, short of where we had hoped to get.  We are driving around, checking out all the cheap-looking hostels,  when a woman drives up while Levi is waiting for me outside one dumpy place, and tells him that she rents out rooms in her back yard, and has an opening, if we want to check it out.  So we follow her home, and decide that her place is a good deal.  She mostly rents to students, and each tiny room has a set of bunk beds and includes kitchen privileges.  It is cheap and clean, so we stay there.   We do sandwiches for dinner, and then get invited into our landlady’s house for wine and conversation.  We hear lots of stories about life and politics in Chile.