Chile

  I passed the Chilean border easily. The customs officer neither put my panniers in to X-ray nor opened them to take look. They only let the dog sniff my bicycle. Nobody was curious about what I was carrying in my bags. I knew that normally it wasn’t so easy,…

  We set off early in the morning from our Santiago Embassy. I had met Engin Kaban in Turkey while riding through Izmir. He came to the presentation I was giving to the cycling enthusiasts and said: “Gurkan I’ll catch up with you somewhere in the world”. He also published…

  After I left Maria and her family’s house, I ride towards Temuco. It was very easy to find a place to camp along the way. Besides there were also cheap trailer parks called Hosteria on the roadsides in Chile.   Before arriving to Temuco, Onur and Ayfer, who had…

  Carretera Austral is the legendary road of Patagonia in Chile. This 1240 km long road starts from Puerto Montt and ends in the town O’Higgins. In 2017 winter 60 % of this road was paved. I’m sure the rest will be paved because construction work was continuing in that…

After spending the night with the highway crew, I set off early in the morning with Nicholas. We’ll continue towards Torres Del Paine in Chile. The border cross was close to the place where the highway crew was staying, about 20 km or less. Before coming to the Argentinean border…

I was not sure whether to stay in Santiago or not for a while. But then I got a good opportunity to improve my Spanish a bit. Furthermore, I had some books which I wanted to read and books we were writing together with my friend Mine Poge. I thought…

It was time to set off. This time I’ll travel with an old friend of mine, with Elif Uzer. I had met Elif in 2011 in Istanbul at a Mountain Film Festival. She was the person who had invited me to this program. At the exit she came to me…

I don’t know how to start, what to write. I starred the white color on the screen of my laptop for a long time. I might hadn’t written anything but this time you would say “Why did you stop writing?” The last sentences of my previous article were: “The journey I…

  When writing again after a long pause, it is worth to remind what happened. Why did I stay in Chile for such a long time? I had set off for my South America journey from Buenos Aires on January 2017 and had arrived in Santiago after one month on…

After a long ascent, I arrived at the border gate and entering the building I saw it was crowded with people from two busses. A classic at the Chilean border gates. As I have mentioned before all the belongings are X-ray checked. As it was my turn, I also was…