Today was the day we decided to rent some bicicletas from Bicicleta Verde and cruise Santiago. One of the guys there was from Kansas. We mentioned that there isn't a lot of people from the United States in Santiago. He has lived here 10 years and said he likely has either met all of the people from the US that have been there at least a year or he at least recognizes them.
First on the list was making it up Cero San Cristobal on an old touring bike with a basket in the front. Hey, that is part of the adventure...especially when the brakes are a bit squishy. We decided to do something different this time and film the adventure with a GoPro rather than take pictures. I've uploaded the video to YouTube and broke it into 2 different videos that are about 7 or 8 minutes a piece.
The first video (click here for YouTube video - includes music from local band Antu kai Mawen) is riding from the top of Cero San Cristóbal to the midway point. I broke the ride down into two videos (click here for YouTube video 2 - no music on this one, just the sound of wind) in order to keep them somewhat short and manageable on YouTube. It took about 15 minutes to get down the hill, but it could be done considerably faster with a decent bike and a death wish. It is about 3.5 miles from the top down to the zoo entrance.
The videos don't really show the steepness of the various areas of the hill, but it is nearly a 1,000 vertical foot difference from top to bottom - enough that you really don't have to pedal the bike at all on the way down.
We decided that renting bicycles is something we should have done a long time ago as cruising Santiago was a blast. Biking down Cero San Cristóbal is a popular thing to do on the weekends - pretty much a traffic jam - and it is stressful even to run then. We rode mid-day on a Friday. I have a few more videos of cycling downtown that I may put up in YouTube later.
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