Caution: Pilgrims on the road

Every year, thousands of faithful pilgrims make their way across Chile to the Santuario de Lo Vasquez, located 80 km west of Santiago, to ask the Virgin there for favors or forgiveness on the day which is celebrated in Catholic countries as the day of the Immaculate Conception. According to the news channel 24 Horas, over a million people made the pilgrimage to this small rural temple complex this Thursday, thousands of them on bike. Last year, Din walked the 80+ kms from Pajaritos station to Lo Vasquez, and this year he asked me to go with him by bike.

I hadn't ridden a bike since I was about seven years old. An incident involving a bumble bee and crashing into some prickly bushes was enough to keep me from riding for about 17 years. In August Din decided it was ridiculous that a grown woman couldn't ride a bike, and he bought one from his "connected" friend for about $40, and thus began my training. I started off like a little kid, all wobbly and insecure, but with time I got better, and now I ride all over the city to all my classes, even on the street with the buses. I have to say I'm pretty pleased with my progress!

All this city biking didn't mean I was ready for a 50-mile ride leaving in the middle of the night, but I resolved to take it slow and get it done one way or another. So Din was in charge of preparing the bikes and I was in charge of preparing mentally. Wednesday afternoon when I had finished classes I picked up some rations and Din picked up the bikes from the shop. He did some final tweaking at home as I made a carb-loaded spaghetti dinner. We finally headed out a little after 10, taking the Alameda to Pajaritos and then getting on the 68, the highway to Valparaíso.

Me with the Pink Panther, Din with "Chilito" (the little pepper)

At first I was uncomfortable and stressing out because he had just put new handlebars on my bike and lifted the seat so it was at my hip bone, where it used to be at my upper thigh. I'm a shorty so this made it really hard to stop, and while we were still in the city I had to stop a lot, so I didn't have the smoothest start, but once we got on the highway I was fine.

The awesome thing about this pilgrimage is that they close the highway to traffic, so you have all the lanes to ride at ease with no cars to watch out for. And there are so many kinds of people who do it: the rich guys on their fancy mountain bikes, the poor guys who strap boom boxes to a cart that they pull behind them blasting reggaeton as they go, the middle class people like me and Din, the faithful, the athletic, the young, the old, the penitent, and the righteous. There were real gauchos (Chilean cowboys) and horse-drawn buggies.

I asked Din so many questions about why people do this, because I knew that most of them weren't like me and were actually doing it for their beliefs, but I couldn't see it looking at them. Maybe I'm judgemental, but some of these guys did not look like they thought much about where they were going in the afterlife. The way Din put it, they grew up with Catholicism, just like they grew up with reggaeton, violence, alcohol, and drugs. And just because they might sin doesn't mean they don't believe, and that's probably why they're going. I guess I still don't get the idea of believing you will go to hell for something and continuing to do it anyway.

After we got out of Santiago and were passing the airport, all the people from the poblas (poblaciones- the slums) had set up stands selling headlights, tail lights, water, and those glowing plastic things we buy on the 4th of July. Din had to stop at all of them, and we were outfitted with new headlights and some nifty decorations.

Din's bike with it's decorations in front of the lights stand 

We made our first pit stop at a Copec station and filled my tires with air, while Din did some other repairs. All of these stops really slowed us down at the start, but then we made better time, and as we were riding through the hills we could see the Coastal Range lit up by the full moonlight and smell the eucalyptus trees around us. This part really was a magical experience.

The Central Valley lit up by the moon

Then we were climbing through a hillside village and passed some local girls sitting on the edge of the road drinking wine in a box and yelling vulgar pick-up lines at the bikers (who were mostly young men), while the bikers, pumped up on a adrenaline and testosterone, yelled even more vulgar replies. Again, it seemed strange behavior for someone making a pilgrimage, but I'm trying to understand the way Din explained it.

We made a steady climb through those hills, stopping to eat at a tollbooth and making our last big ascent before hitting the Lo Prado Tunnel. After the tunnel it is a looooong, steady, steep descent into the valley before reaching Curacaví, the main town before Lo Vasquez. Remember, I have about 4.5 months of real biking experience, and I don't do hills. I'm pretty athletic, so going uphill is fine, as long as I stop for water some. But going downhill for me is HARD. Not physically, but psychologically. I, for one, do not love the wind rushing past my face with nothing to protect me but my helmet, riding on top of a thin scrap of metal and going faster and faster down a hill. For the experienced people I'm sure this is exhilarating, but at 3 am I was exhausted, and I squeezed the brakes the whole 20-30 minutes of the descent, and cried the whole time. I am a crier, I admit. I cried because of the exhaustion, because my hands hurt from squeezing the brakes so long, because I was afraid of crashing, for Din who wanted to go fast and me holding him back, and because I thought I was a bad companion. Oh man, I cried. Din finally insisted we stop and walk the bikes down the hill. (For the record, this was the only time we walked the bikes). And of course I ate some chocolate and then felt better. Once the road had levelled out some we got back on and decided to push it all the way to Curacaví, which was about 15 km ahead.

And so it was. We rolled into Curacaví at 4 am and pitched the tent outside the cemetery. We bought a couple of hot dogs from the stand across the street and I remember my last thought before going totally unconscious was "oh, this is so uncomfortable."

The hotdog stand in Curacaví

We woke up at 6 to an irritating phone call from our neighbor downstairs complaining about the noise in our apartment, which had pretty big consequences, but is a subject for another blog. After that we couldn't rest anymore and we still had about 35 km left so we decided to get up and get moving. We got a couple coffees from the stand, ate some cookies, packed up, and headed out at 7. We were both in good shape in spite of the lack of sleep, and we made good time on the second leg of our trip. The sun was shining, there was a cool breeze, and the ride ahead once we got out of the town was through the Casablanca Valley and its fields of grapevines. Immediately after Curacaví we had to climb the Cuesta Zapata. This was the steepest hill, but thanks to 2 sets of gears we made it with only 2 stops for water and snacks and 1 to put my chain back on after it had slipped. We went through another tunnel and then downhill (a smoother slope this time) past vineyards and into an easy pace and incline. We rode along like this, talking and laughing, awake on pure adrenaline, for a couple of hours. We had one more big hill to tackle, Cuesta Lo Vasquez, and by then we were pretty wiped out. But we did it! (see video) and when we reached the top we could see the Sanctuary and the sprawling fair and thousands of people around it.

We were both pretty ecstatic as we coasted down the last hill to Lo Vasquez at 11 am until we came to the beginning of the whole thing. I have to say, if there is a hell on earth, that was my version. By 11:00 the sun in central Chile is hot, no, boiling. As if riding 80 km wasn't enough to a penance, we had to weave our way through throngs of people under the scorching sun, under tents selling hot empanadas, barbecued skewers, grilled hot dogs, and all that smoke and no breeze flowing in because it was all covered. Not to mention all the people who came in by the busloads to leave flowers for the Virgin, who gave us dirty looks if we bumped into them with our bikes, even though it was so crowded that it would be impossible not to. It was like the metro at rush hour. And this fair was that kind of fair where you keep your purse tucked under your arm and never let your loved ones out of your sight. And who knew that riding a bike for so long would hurt your feet? Maybe it was just wearing the same shoes for a long time, but there I was, bright red as a tomato, with my feet halfway in my shoes because my toes were so sore, clinging to my bike, looking over my shoulder every 30 seconds to look for Din, trying not to run over old people's feet or small children, with a neon yellow vest over my head to keep the sun off me. All doubts about being a good companion dissolved.

But this was what we had come for: Din bought some white carnations to leave at the Virgin's feet. I didn't get to see the Virgin; I found a spot on a step and sat drinking water and eating bread while Din waited in line to leave his offering. When he came back I was ready to get in line for the bus to Santiago, so although he was ready to eat one of everything they were selling, he agreed to work our way back through the crowd and find the bus. The line for people with bikes was about 150 people deep, and they were only loading 7 bikes at a time. We got in line at noon and waited under that damn midday sun for an hour and fifteen minutes, hungry, tired and thirsty, until they loaded us on to a bus- a bus that left the fair only to sit on some country road in the middle of the Casablanca Valley for 2 hours. I guess there was traffic or a road was closed because of the pilgrimage, but I never found out, and to be honest, everyone on that bus slept those whole 2 hours. I never heard a single complaint except from the driver. We got back to Santiago at 4:30 and had to get back on our bikes for the last trip home. It was rough last ride, but worth the unforgettable experience.

Here comes the novia

I have BIG news which calls for some serious updating. As you have heard or can guess by my title, Din and I are ENGAGED! Yes, amazing, I know. It happened so fast, we're so young, this could be complicated, etc. But I am really excited. And HAPPY! First thing's first, let me tell you about the proposal....

Last year when my friends came to visit I took them to this little eco-friendly surf hostel in Ritoque, about an hour north of Valparaíso. I loved the hostel and the location and I had been wanting to go back, but with Din's schedule and our lack of funds, we didn't manage until last weekend, to celebrate my 25th birthday. This was after I had hosted Thanksgiving (a week of cooking and cleaning) and I could make no excuses to stay in Santiago when a relaxing beach weekend was just a short bus ride away. So I booked the private double at Ritoque Raíces and we left on Saturday morning. On the bus ride we noticed the strange but all-to-familiar phenomenon of leaving behind sunny Santiago, not a cloud in the sky, and after descending from the Coastal Range, hitting a solid curtian of dark gray clouds that hug the coast. I want to sound like I know something about this country where I live, so I'll attribute this to the Humbolt current and the temperature differences, but really I never leave the city and have no clue why this happens. Anyway, we arrive in Quintero and picked up some groceries, and an unusual request by Din to buy champagne piqued my curiosity. But damn me for telling him that we didn't need any because I had brought wine. Oh well. 

The room was not what we were expecting. After months of me telling him how awesome this hostel was, we were both pretty disappointed when the would-be subsititute host (the owner was out of town when we arrived) showed us to a dingy room with low ceilings, an unfinished mural that looked like a child had been doodling on the walls, a strange odor wafting from our bathroom, and the BED. Oh, the bed. I don't know where this thing came from or what possessed Angie (the owner) to buy it and put it in her hostel, but it was like laying on metal coils covered by a sheet. I had to position myself all night long so that the springs were poking me in the muscles and not my spine or hips. Ugh.

So Din got a little pouty, and I wasn't in the mood to put up with that, so I told him (a little insensitively in retrospect) that if he didn't like it we could go back to Santiago, or go find a place in Valpo for the night. Unbeknownst to me, this did not fit into his plan of asking me to marry him and having a romantic night just the two of us in an isolated beach. But we went for a walk, and he cooled off, and we made the best of it. We curled up on the hostel couch and I read Wuthering Heights, and he browsed the Nat Geo collection and looked for English words he knew. As the afternoon wore on, I kept asking him when we would start making dinner. He kept telling me "not yet, let's wait another hour". Poor Din's heart was probably beating like crazy for several hours as I sat immersed in Catherine and Heathcliff. 

Finally I couldn't take it any more, so at about 8:00 I started cooking the hamburgers and toasting the marraqueta. He busied himself making votives out of cut up plastic bottles, and by 8:30 it was dark and brooding outside and we took our food, wine, and candles down to the deserted beach. We planted ourselves on a grassy patch and made our picnic, with his ipod shuffle inside a shell amplifier to set the mood. 

The grassy spot...imagine candlelight

After we finished eating (thank god I thought to rinse my hands off in the surf as they were covered in ketchup) he started saying sweet things, and reflecting on our year together and how happy he was and how much I meant to him. And then he just popped the question: Quieres casarte conmigo? 

The ring! We decided on the right hand then

Mind you, this is not the first time I've heard him utter these words, but in the past the question has been hypothetical. So this night I had to ask him what kind of question it was (meaning Are you for real???). But then, as if suddenly remembering, he reached behind his back and presented a little box. He opened it and revealed a little ring with something very shiny in the middle. I believe my response was something to the effect of  OMAIGODOMYGODOHMYOGMYGOOOOODDDDD!!!! Yes!! And after some tearful hugging and kissing, one of us remembered to put the ring on my finger, and had a moment in which we realized we didn't know which finger it would go on (still resolving this issue). So after trying to draw out that moment as long as possible, I couldn't contain it any more and I had to take the picnic back to the hostel and tell whoever was there.

The two of us in our little hostel room

By that time, Angie had returned, and I showed her the ring, and she was excited, and invited us to a glass of wine with the others who were hanging out on the porch. It was weird sharing something so personal with people I didn't know, especially since my own family didn't know yet. (There was no internet at the hostel and my phone had died, so I was incommunicado until we got back to Santiago).

So that's the story. Beautiful, romantic, and memorable, and brings a smile to my face as I recall it. 

The next chapter was less so. On Monday I started compiling all the documents needed for the fiancé visa petition. We both knew that our next step would be to apply for the visa and go to the US to get married and make a life. Luckily, I had most of the paperwork ready and just had to double check, print some things out, and get some new passport photos. I sent off the petition package on Wednesday, so hopefully by the end of December we'll know if it was accepted and we can move on to the even bigger task of the visa application.

In the meantime, we head off to Peru in about a week to spend Christmas with his family, who I will be meeting for the first time. I am nervous, but I think I'm good with parents. Of course, I don't really know what Peruvian parents, or his parents in particular, want or if it's any different than what other parents want. But I am eager to meet them and to get away from Chile for a bit, and have the romantic beach weekend we've been craving.