We hit the road that Easter morning unsure of what the riding into the earthquake disaster area would bring. We knew very little about the whole event because we had been on the road since it had happened. As we approached Santiago there were still no obvious signs of mass destruction, but Santiago is also a fairly modern city. One of the more developed in all of South America. We stopped on the outskirts and life seemed to be going about as usual. However, a little farther south we began to see the havoc this quake had caused. We saw bridge after bridge that had collapsed, long sections of roads that had sunk deep into the earth, and a good part of what we could ride on was riddled with cracks big enough to get your front tire caught in. Whole buildings were reduced to ruble and countless more damaged in some way or another. 60 miles outside of Concepcion, where the force of this quake had moved the whole city by 10 feet, many of the houses still standing had piles of debris out front waiting to be cleared. We stopped for the day in the city of Chillan, which had clearly been devastated. The first couple of places we tried to get a room were closed. The hotel we stayed in had cracks in every wall in the room and up and down the hallways. I remember a couple of minor earthquakes in San Francisco, it's an eerie feeling that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Not to mention, a instant reminder of what little control you have over things in this world. I can only imagine what it was like to live through this one.
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