For the next ten days I will be in Chile before returning to Panama. I got a bike yesterday, so I will have a week of riding the hills above the beach in Valparaiso and along the beachfront. This is my first trip to Chile, the fourth country I have visited in South America. I have also been to Argentina, Brazil and Columbia on this continent.
As with other countries south of the equator, riding in Chile is strange because the sun crosses the sky in the north, rather than the south. Since the late 1980s, I have ridden more than 150,000 miles in the northern hemisphere and a few thousand miles either near the equator or in the southern hemisphere.
Riding in the northern hemisphere, especially in cold weather, conditions me to feel the sun in the south. As I ride due west, for example, my left side is slightly warmer and the glare of the low winter sun is in my left eye. Tens of thousands of miles and decades of riding burned this into my mind as "normal."
My first ride in the southern hemisphere almost 30 years ago was due west from Perth, Australia, to the Indian Ocean. It was mid July, winter, and barely above freezing. On that 20-km ride, I stopped twice. My body told me I had to be going the wrong way because my right side was warmed by the sun. Instinct led me to think I was somehow going the wrong way. I was not.
For the next week in Chile, I will have the same instinctual feeling of going the wrong way. When I ride south and have the sun behind me, I will have to tell myself nothing is wrong.
In the meantime, the view along the coast is spectacular.
As an aside on travel, I have been to all six continents, and ridden in five. I have yet to ride in Africa. Chile is the 62nd country I have visited. I have lived in five countries including the US.
Also, South American and Oceana are the two continents where I have ridden in all the countries I have visited. Four countries in South America. And in Oceana, I have only visited one country, Australia, and ridden in it.
I have only been in five countries in North America and ridden in just three:the US, Canada and Panama. I have not ridden in Mexico or Haiti.
Which means I have ridden in 43 of the 55 countries I have visited in Europe and Asia.
I have ridden a bike in more countries that I have done any other activity I keep track of. For example, I have been in an airplane in 43 countries, driven in 30, ridden in a train in 25, used a laundromat in 21 and swam in 14. My biggest decade for travel is the current one. I have visited 35 countries since January 2020.
I'm not sure when I will ride in another country. I have no definite plans to visit a new country in the near future. I have ridden in 35 of the 41 United States, so I have more states to visit sometime in future.
