Moments after arriving in Santiago, I received some troubling news: it turns out that, in Chilean Spanish, Gil is a colloquial term for fool.

But no bother. This information didn’t alter my excitement over having finally taken the first big step for this bicycle trip. After months of uncertainty, stacks of paperwork, multiple COVID tests, endless hours working on the bike, and many sad goodbyes, I flew from Toronto to Santiago (via Miami and Lima) with my bike in tow.

I spent a week in Santiago, taking care of some last-minute errands and adjusting to a new country before heading south. Karina, my Airbnb host, picked me up from the airport with her partner, Francisco, and strapped my bike box to the roof of their jeep. She dropped me off at her childhood home, where I would be staying with her father, Don Giuliano.

What a time to be in Chile. The country is currently drafting a transformative new constitution. While it’s been a long time coming, the major impetus for the project was widespread social upheaval in late 2019, an acute response to the violent military and police crackdowns against metro fare evasion protests that conjured nightmares of the repressive state violence during Augusto Pinochet’s 17-year dictatorship. More broadly, the upheaval was a more generalized expression of the widespread frustrations with 30 years of neoliberal governance and stark economic inequality that began under Pinochet but has essentially continued through the democratic era. As the rallying cry went in response to the 30-peso fare hike prompting the initial protests : No son $30, son 30 años (it’s not 30 pesos, it’s 30 years).

The 2019 protests saw students, feminists, Indigenous groups, labour unions, workers, environmental activists unite around the goal of constitutional reform. Now, 155 delegates have been chosen by Chileans to strip down the current economic and social model and design a greener, more inclusive, more equitable Chile.

Chile also has a new leader. On Dec. 19, 10 days before my arrival, Chileans chose Gabriel Boric, a 35-year-old socialist and popular student leader who gained prominence during protests in 2011, as their
new President. 

Santiago was hot. It felt surreal to have jumped from freezing, Omicron-infested Ontario to a scorching summer city where, masks aside, life felt pretty normal. The vaccination program is advanced here – as of Jan 1, all citizens over 18 needed three shots for their vaccine passports. Although I arrived without a booster, it was easy enough to find one.

My time in Santiago was defined by Karina, Don Giuliano, and their family. I spent New Year’s Eve on Karina’s balcony with her extended family, and was back there two days later for an asado. When I wasn’t roaming the city by foot, I spent the evenings drinking beer and arguing with Don Giuliano in the shade of his patio.

After a week, I was ready to hit the road. I threw my bike on top of a taxi, and headed for the bus station, where I grabbed an overnighter south to Puerto Montt.