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Oh crap, what hotel are we staying in?

July 1, 2019 (Night)

Exercise Type: Run

Comments:
Before venturing out at night on a dirt road with no lights in a foreign country you've never visited, it can sometimes be advisable to learn the name of the place where you're staying. You tell yourself that you'll stick to a single road and not make any turns right or left so that you can easily retrace your steps, but sometimes the road will split and you'll make a decision without realizing it, until you find yourself back at said intersection 30 minutes later unsure which direction you came from. Or you'll be coming back on what you could have sworn was the right road except that nothing looks familiar in the rapidly fading twilight and you begin to have doubts about whether maybe you turned somewhere after all didn't remember it or perhaps you've simply overshot your destination. All these thoughts occurred to me on this run, and that fact that I didn't know where I was staying, had no phone number for anyone in the group except my parents and sister whose phones were on airplane mode, and hadn't even bothered to make on the google maps where I'd started (always a useful thing if you're not using Strava) didn't help matters. Still, aside from some barking dogs and existential doubts about whether I'd even see my family again, it was a lovely run. Quite magically to have have the stars, planets, and Milkyway gradually emerge as you cruise along through the back roads of the Elqui Valley in central Chile.