The Back of Beyond

We need to get a move on Northwards. Not because it makes any difference to our non-schedule, but we are running out of summer time. Things were a little chilly when we left Pisco Elqui. Nothing dramatic, just a little cool. This is particularly noticeable as you get closer to the coast where there is the inevitable fog rolling in.

A good five hour drive got us to Caldera and the nearby beach resort of Bahia Inglesa. It was not a great choice as the prices were inflated and I personally would have preferred the hustle and bustle of Caldera which has a working fishing harbour, to the pretentious Bahia Inglesa, and we still did not have a swim even though we were camping right on the beach. From what I have seen, I don’t think that I would come to Chile to swim. The coast line is really dramatic, I am sure there are really decent beaches, but the water is a little cold for my liking. That being said I WOULD come to Chile if I could surf and I WOULD come to Chile to Fish. We have seen some amazing waves, and the coastline is pretty deserted and almost begs you to don a wet suit and help yourself to sea food.

As you drive North the country side gets really barren, but not in any way boring. This is mining country, and you can almost see the copper and minerals in the rocks. They are a spectacular colour. Shades of green, orange, reds, and purples. In parts they are dramatic mountains; in other parts they are rolling colourful sand dunes. We stopped at a mining town called Taltal, where we got a hotel room on the beach for a little more than we have been paying for camping, so to celebrate we went out to a very pleasant restaurant for some fish.

We are now into the Atacama region. We headed along the coastal road to a tiny village called Paposo. The drive would leave many Sunday Fun Run Bikers with their tongue’s hanging out. Spectacular stuff.

Coast from Taltal

 Perfect road, no wind, crystal blue sky and breath-taking rock formations. At Paposo we turned away from the coast and immediately climbed up a pass which was littered with small mines. I would have loved to have got off the bike and taken some pictures as it is very hard to describe what you see. There are near vertical tracks leading up the sides of the mountains, at the top of which are the diggings of a mine, marked by a hole in the mountainside. I would have been scared to walk up that sort of incline. There is no way you would get me driving a bulldozer up there!

After 17km you top out the pass and land on the moon! I said to Ewa that I wondered if we were the first OAP’s to ride a motorbike on the moon! 127km of spectacular road on a near deserted road before meeting up again with the Pan American Highway.

Ewa on the moon

Moon Buggie

Nothing

 We are now driving on the road between Antofagasta and Calama. This is copper mining territory, not just any copper mine, the largest copper mine in the world. Chuquicamata Mine produces 630,000 tons of copper annually. It is an open pit mine, deeper than any American lake at 1250m, with a surface area of 800 hectares. There is a permanent dust haze over the mine which I am sure would be visible on Google Earth. I thought the Manos Blancos mine that we passed on the way up, was impressive, but Chuquicamata dwarfts them all. However, for us, there was a more practical problem. The road was really busy with HGV vehicles of all descriptions going either way as well as a convoy of three vehicles carrying the tipper section of the trucks used on the mine.

Tipper Truck

 The convoy just managed to avoid the road signs on either side of the road, well most of the time managed to avoid them, some signs were not so lucky and lay bent and battered.  The other problem was the road surface took was stressed by the traffic and serious concentration was required to avoid the potholes and remain upright in the cross wind. It was not fun travelling and the turmoil of one passing truck dispatched our bike cover into a ditch without us realising, presenting us with a bit of a security problem as we used to cover the bike when we did our quick shopping.

All things pass and once we turned East on reaching  Calama and headed for San Pedro, the gale that was a crosswind before turned into a tail wind, which if you drive a motorbike makes a huge difference. Everything goes quiet and there is no wind pressure on my chest! The road was a dead straight road for 60 km with bare desert on either side and mountains on the distant horizon. Because of the quietness of the tail wind and the huge vacant spaces there was a really peaceful feeling after the wrestling match of the previous four hours.

To San Pedro

Moon Men and Women

At the end of the straight road we started winding down to the Oasis town of San Pedro de Atacama through some of the most unusual scenery you can imagine. It was another moon landing for the OAP’s. Absolutely nothing like I imagined. The landscape looked as though it had been sculptured then painted by Salvador Dali. The mountains are almost made of solid salt, and the wind and water erosion over time has created the most unusual shapes. It is a landscape exhibition. The green San Pedro comes into view against a backdrop of barren flat sand. The backdrop is snow-capped volcanoes that top out, in the case of Lincancabur at 5960 meters. Dramatic stuff indeed.

Looking down to San Pedro at sunset

San Pedro Street

In two and a half months of travelling we have had two days of misty rain. The first time we see thunder and lightning and flash thunderstorms is in the Atacama Desert, the driest desert in the world. It has to be said that it did not last for very long, but thunderous rain did pour down all around us, how we missed getting drenched I cannot tell you, but it was quite a sight and very little rain touched our tent in Los Parales Camp Site, located in the centre of San Pedro.

Almost the entire economy of San Pedro de Atacama is based on tourism. The attractive low level mud buildings are a hostel, a restaurant or a tour operator. That being said, it is low key tourism without the glitz. Mud is not a good medium for glitz, but charm it has in abundance and the surrounding geology is wondrous. We were taken by the place. Meeting interesting people in the campsite was the cherry on the top even though we were older than the average age by at least 35 years!

It was not our intention to tour the Lagunas of South West Bolivia, which include Salar de Uyuni  the largest salt lake in the world, but there was absolutely no way that we could do the trip on my bike. Indeed the roads or lack of roads would tax most 4*4 vehicles. We were very happy to be driven with four others through this fascinating part of the Atacama Desert known as the Alto Plana. The average height of the area is about 4000 meters.

Prior to leaving we were pretty blasé about altitude sickness, but on leaving San Padro the road climbs for 47 km without a break. I am sure the poor cyclist with the overloaded saddle bags and pink legs, that we passed as we left the town, was not informed of this fact or that by the time he reached the summit he would have a splitting headache and more than likely would be puking his heart out. No were we informed. After about three hours at this altitude I certainly had a head ache, but Ewa was REALLY sick and only recovered the following day. We will now show a lot more respect for the effects of altitude on OAP’s. SLOWLY is the name of the game.

Health and Safety in the UK would have had a fit had they visited the Geysers of Sol de Manana or Polques Hot Springs. The Sulphurous steam literally roars as it spurs out of any orifice, super-heated at the bowls of the Earth and exiting at a temperature of around 130 degrees centigrade. There are absolutely no safety measures, how there are not daily accidents is truly remarkable!

Salt

Salt seller

She was worried about the river

Atacama Rain

Abstract

Coffee break in salt

Living in this part of the world must be hard. It is desolate, what water there is, is either sulphurous or very salty. Surprisingly there is evidence of procreation. Clearly the locals are not affected by headaches!  We are sometime away from winter and already the nights are cold enough to freeze the Laguna’s. No doubt the locals have genetically adapted to cope with living at this altitude which does not go much below 4000 meters. There is not much evidence of agriculture, but potatoes, tomatoes, quinoa, avos, bananas, lettuce and cabbage are readily available in the markets of Uyuni.

LLama's

Salar de Uyuni

Keep the flag flying

Our Group

Bolivian Border Post

Which way up

Fashion Queen

Rovos Rail

Not in the water please it already stinks of Sulphur

Geyser

Geyser

Road!

Mountain Colour

Hot Tub 

Stone Tree

B & B

Green Lago

Bikers from Israel

The pictures do little justice to the scenery; the Salar de Unyui was closed in certain parts because of the unseasonal rains which covered the salt flats with a 10cm layer of water. If it were not for the salt farmer’s mounds of salt, there would be no point of reference on the surface of this, the world’s largest salt pan, where the horizon vanishes into the sky.

I have said it before and I will say it again, there is a hand out there who guides us. Had we ventured onto this Alti Plano region of Bolivia as planned, on the motorbike, we would have been in big trouble. The effects of altitude sickness would have left us with no way forward and no way back in a desolate, freezing landscape, with really testing roads and no signposts, not helped by the tour operators who simply cross the space at will, leaving a myriad of tracks. The Garmin Lady would have been beside herself.

Strangely, of the 9.8 million population, 70% live on the harsh Alti Plano.

We were happy to get back to San Pedro to recoup our much diminish energy and set off North, where we leave Chile via Putre where we will stop a day or two to acclimatise whose altitude is about 4000m. We then climb to 5815m before crossing into Bolivia again on our way to La Paz at lowly 3636 m.

Slowly does it, we have learnt our lesson!