After first going into the subway to change our second floor bus seat to the east side of the bus to look at the mountains tomorrow we went off in search of bike parts.
Most of the bike shops we were told about were in the vicinity the Alta Los Condes mall on the east end of town. Altogether we must have visited about 8 bike shops and only one of them had individual chain rings and not the right type. The bikes we have parts that are designed to be available internationally. Some of the bike shops had complete crank sets. We went to one place called the MallSport which is actually a modern mall only all the stores were sports related. They had some sort of wave water slide that you could surf on.
We took buses to get out to the bike shops and Laurie got to practice her Spanish. We were too cheap to take cabs but it was more of an adventure on the bus. We met quite a few people in the process. One of the guys we met said if you take a cab always pretend you have a GPS unit no matter what it is so as not to be overcharged. The buses were often jam packed with people leaning against the front door by the driver like sardines.
I had been forewarned that biking in Santiago would be crazy dangerous but there were lots of cyclists. Most of them were on the sidewalks. In retrospect I still think I would not have chosen to put the bikes together as it seemed like it would be a bit dangerous to do a crash course in bike survival in Santiago. The motorists are very horn happy here.
The Alta Los Condes mall was the place to get maps at the book stores. There is a map set by compass that looks like the ticket. That map set for 10 maps is about $160 dollars for most of the country but we only needed a few of them. Map number seven of the Camino Austral was particularly had to come by which of course is one of the most important ones we needed.
Some of this is geared toward bike tourists who might read this and need the info.
I have to pack for an early bus otherwise i would upload some pictures.
Tom
