Dios Mio, if you have been off the beaten track in outback Oz, and had the feeling that if your chosen transport were to break down at that very moment (sooner than later if it's a swinehunt) when doubts begin to crawl into the darker recesses of your mind - whether, utterly isolated from the world at large, your survival would be possible for more than a few days. The Atacama, in northern Chile - the world's driest desert, is a place to breed such thoughts. There are thousands of square kilometers where it has never been known to rain and where no animal or plant life exists. No water no sustenance. In Latin America there is a long tradition of life being cheap. If you were to be stranded off the Pan American highway, even if it were noticed that you were missing, there would be no government search parties, no helicopter or plane dispatches, no 4x4 patrols, no abo trackers or sniffin' dogs. No kiddo yer on yer own - just you and the god you might worship. Cold comfort for agnostics. But wait, here's the philosophical point: Stifled by the 21st century's unhealthy, paranoiac obsession with safety/security? Utterly disgusted with the creeping yank litigation disease that rejects self responsibility? Suffocated by exponential increase in regulation of our everyday lives due to too much government? Well where can one turn for escape but the chaos of developing world? This need not necessarily be with a death wish. There is a large gray area centered on what is an acceptable risk. "Without risk surely men will find life too bland to be worth living" - Bertrand Russell (or words to that effect - sorry, I haven't brought the reference library to S. America with me!).
Like the ozzie outback, the sensation of isolation is powerfully real, however this is no sandy desert -though sand can be found - it is rock that is in the majority. The Pan-American highway runs north, briefly along the coast north of La Serena for a dozen or so km. Dodging and weaving through the coastal range with spectacular views of the (far from) Pacific smashing against rocky outcrops or pounding the beaches. Then there are several seep climbs through deeply cut passes that hide the sun before you emerge onto the central valley, where the road stays for most of the 2,000 km journey to the Peruvian border. Not that the topography born of the violence of warring continental plates is this neat. Spurs run all over the central valley and the coastal range dives inland in numerous places. Travelling northward the scrubby arid zone stunted bushes gradually decline in number until green was a colour for the memory. But other colours there are, in abundance. Towering furrowed and twisted hills burnt brown gray by the sun, peppered with mineralized blotches and crisscrossed by zigzagging fractured strata while on the far western horizon the snowcapped peaks of the Andean chain provide a touch of softening floss.
A diversion was to stop at a hole on the side of the road petrol station so that Ralphino Verde could fill up with Extra Verde (97 octane unleaded) at Agua Verde (name of the forgettable dustbowl).
Chile is a country 4,500 km long and on average 200 km wide, reaching almost to Antarctica in the south, with it's magnificent glaciated archipelago to above the Tropic of Capricorn. Thus uniquely all climate types are found within the one country. Then considering the X axis, from a 12km deep ocean trench off the west coast the majestic snow capped Andes rise to heights of almost 7,000 meters - only the Himalayas go higher. It's therefore difficult to find a horizontal surface anywhere in the country that is not man made or a salt lake (airport runways take a bit of earthmoving).
So after a couple of days of 100 ~ 110 km/h riding (S'hunt won't go much faster fully loaded) through the Atacama Desert's fascinatingly barren, constantly changing landscape you reach Chile's largest northern city - Antofagasta. After ducking down a dry valley right, left, right etc, the blue ocean jumps out at you while to the right, totally unexpected after days eternal badlands, the shock of a modern multi-story city of 200,000. Defiantly confronting the dust to dust ethos of the Atacama, by thrusting it's bold face to the ocean clinging onto the narrow coastal strip with the eastern colonias (suburbs) a little less confidently clinging to the foothills of the towering brown coastal range behind. What a great place it is - in a way because it offers nothing to the tourist beside an ATM and shelter from the desert. For this city's heart is truly uncompromisingly Chilean. So what is the reason for it's unlikely existence? Two hundred kilometers inland lies the worlds largest open cut copper mine. A hole of staggering proportions half a dozen km long, half as wide and a third as deep. Where machines as tall as multiple story buildings appear as ant-like dots around a wombat hole. The ore is shipped from Antogfangasta and much of the profits earned are spent on a brief taste of the good life before the inevitable return to the pit.
On the Friday of arrival I was having a good look at the remaining tread depth rear tyre which, I later further contemplated the through bottom of a few Pisco Sour glasses. (Pisco is the local firewater distilled from grapes but with a flavour completely different to brandy, add lemon juice and minimum sugar and you have a knockout cocktail that never dulls the pallet.) The final conclusion was that a new tyre was needed to get us to the next outpost where such things could be acquired. So on the Saturday morning I went to the only motorcycle shop I had noticed on the ride in the following day and began negotiating. By this I don't mean haggling over several suitable fitments, no it is never this easy. The questions were was there a tyre to suit in the country and how soon could it be in Antofangasta. The answers were yes in the capital Santiago and Monday provided $35 air freight was added to the bill. It was a sellers market so soon it was agreed, on their terms.
In the afternoon we went for a ride along the north coast. Initially through the northern area of the city where there were signs advising the limits of a Tsunami (tidal wave) protection zone. To our amusement this `protection zone' appeared to be 30 of beach, a few more of coastal highway then a unsteady looking 2 meter brick fence! A few meters behind this the urban dwellings loitered with a mistaken sense of security. Further on there were spectacular cliff formations similar to the 12 Apostles of Victoria's Great Ocean Road including a natural arch marooned out amongst the waves, spared because the base of it's pillars had the fortune to be formed of rock more resistant to the incessant wave erosion. Next we headed out on sandy narrow-necked isthmus who's headland jutted almost vertically from the water. Occasionally we passed a ruined building, some entrepreneur's windmill tilt at capturing the seaside holiday crowd's dollar, now fair game for the enduring appetite of the coastal dunes.
In a small village of no particular merit on the headland, the rear tyre punctured. Such an event is nothing too unexpected so at the side of the road I removed the wheel, tyre, changed the tube, refitted both and we returned to Antofangasta. It was unfortunate that the tyre was actually damaged (holed) so unwilling to risk a further tube penetration by some opportunistic sharp projectile we were forced to forgo a trip to the north eastern part of the headland which our 10 year old guide book advises teams with ocean life including seals penguins and hundreds of varieties of bird life. At least a new tyre was already ordered - sometimes you can take a trick though the ledger is always heavily weighted to the other side!
On the Monday the replacement tyre arrived but due to the stiffness of it's `newness' I had to use more force with the tyre levers and pinched the tube requiring it to be removed and patched by the junior mechanics at the bike shop. With few hours sunlight remaining we took off 200 km east for Calama. of the way there when stopping for a drink at minor town I noticed some oil on the side of the bike. Checking the front I the discovered that the oil radiator mounted underneath the headstock had sprung a leak, chucking lubricant at a slow but steady rate over the lower front half of the engine. With the wind pressure of 100 + km/h this effluent inevitably made it's way back, coating everything. I was ropable. Several years, countless engineering hours and many times the swinehunt's market value had been invested it trying to mould this crude and incompetent device into a tool that could transport man, women and accoutrements, through hostile environments and against serious odds. Any hint of failure that impinges on this `mission' is therefore grossly unwelcome.
So we got a further 50 km to Calama (ity!), dripping a bit around the gills. I spent an hour walking around the town after nightfall (shops open till 9-10 pm) visiting every hardware shop and many false leads emanating from same. At last after casually visiting an auto accessory hole in the wall to get a reserve liter of refined crude the `hunt was excreting I hit paydirt. The proprietor was a gentleman of down to earth and practical nature, with a Chilean accent that was easily interpretable. A man who had the perception to understand the tyranny of the gringo state in need of technical assistance. I'd already glanced through the local yellow pages but found the headings in the index impossible to resolve. Was I to look under the Spanish word for engineering, radiators, hydraulics or some combination? Throw in then the national and local dialectic corruptions of the castillian language and you are reaching a barn door and shotgun degree of accuracy. This gent took on my burden and from the directory determined the name and address of the only hydraulic workshop in Calama. I went to bed a little more confident that the problem could be solved.
The hotel was an expensive Latin version of Faulty Towers! In the morning when I got to the carpark the rear tyre was flat again! Far canal. Strong men might weep, but after contemplating this option, I took the wheel off, hailed a cab to the nearest vulcanizador (tyre repair alcove) and one hour and $12 later, including the cab fare, the bike was mobile again, no perspiration minimal capitalization. Next problem - oil leak. In the search for the outer industrial park where the hydraulic engineering workshop was located we stumbled across the daddy of all radiator shops. The kind of industrial outfit that handle the radiator fixes for the copper mine vehicles. On rolling into the yard we were immediately confronted by a radiator in repair that would challenge the size of a cinema screen. They were kind enough not to laugh at the 2" x 6" swinehunt oil cooler and once I had extracted it immediately attended to a long series of solders, cools, and leak down tests. This eventually came up with both a repaired radiator and a bypass adapter to take the oil cooler out of the circuit if necessary - this might cause problems with elevated oil temperatures in the Sahara but unlikely in the cool of the winter Atacarma. This is far superior to the level of technical assistance that is available in most of the rest of Latin America. So fortunate it didn't happen a few weeks later when we will be in Peru - where the gold standard is set by the national thieves but little other degrees of excellence exist. On reflection this is a too cruel. Peru is the country with the most interesting cultural history in all of South America. The expertise of the thieves could never persuade me from returning again and again.
I've got nothing against adventure tourism. "Gimme Danger" as Iggy so succinctly vocalizes. However a little less tourism with your `adventure' is more our style. San Pedro de Atacama (henceforth San Pedro) is a small town of 500+ on the northern edge of Chile's largest salt lake - the Salar de Atacama- in the foothills of the Andes at an altitude of 2450m. The desert air is thin and cool. Each day by mid-afternoon a gusting breeze arcs up clouds of dust which whip down the narrow one way dirt streets, channeled by the adobe walls. Grit is everywhere, on your clothes, in your hair, forcing it's way un-wantedly into your intimate crevices. It is on the table, aggregating on the windowsill, sprinkling itself on your plate, diving to the bottom of your beer glass to later appear between your teeth on the final swallow. Many buildings have no roofs as it typically never rains (el niño is challenging this ethos). The town is not however why the tourists are here, it merely caters to (mostly western) short stay in the way the restaurateurs, tour operators, hotels think will appear most attractive to this short term captive audience. It is therefore expensive in an unnecessary way. Do I really want cream chicken terrine followed by mustard crepes for $10 at lunch? Is this how the Atacama desert was won? When most elsewhere else in the country I could eat local seafood done Chilean style for $3!
The natural attractions of visiting are however compelling. A salt lake the size of a Kimberly's cattle property, sprinkled with shallow flamingo dotted lagoons, circled by bizarre and striking rock formations, at their most off the planet in the `valley of the moon", salt encrusted wildly coloured mineral lakes framed by lofty dark dormant volcanic peaks streaked with fresh snow. San Pedro is also the civilized (factor in relativity), comfortable entry vehicle to south western Bolivia - an area so remote that 45 litres (main and auxiliary tanks)of fuel wouldn't get the swinehunt there and back from the nearest Bolivian drum with hand pump. The attractions of SW Bollie include the Salar (salt lake) de Uyuni - several times the size of the Salar de Atacama and a perfect white flat surface 1000m higher. Navigation across the endless white blinding featurelessness of this by compass was a highlight of our '96 visit to four South American countries (available to motorcycle travel story masochists as a 26,000 word document, via rverde@ozemail.com.au ).
Our 3 days in San Pedro included a bit of silliness and inevitably in Latin America, things didn't go quite to plan. Being within 50 km of the Bolivian border and with fond memories of this country we decided to go and visit this imaginary frontier line for the sake of saying we'd visited a 4th country on this trip. So up east we went - more up than er, east. First the road aimed precisely at the cone of Volcano Licancabur (5916 meters) then to my relief, veered to the right (considering the run up, not to mention the landing after the jump on the Bolivian side!). From the level of the Salar deep gorges scar the foothills while the road wriggles around between them unavailingly trying to tame the incline. In less than 40 km the road rises from 2,400 to 4,700 meters on it's way primarily to Argentina via the Pasa Jama (nothing to do with weiner schnitzel sauces) though there is a sign off into the dirt, the left of the bitumen declaring "access to Bolivia". The at this height the asphyxiating swinehunt spluttered to a stall while we tried to work out where the road was between the snow drifts. The answer was that it was covered by same but numerous other wheel tracks ran alongside and near in true 3rd world highway style. We trundled off down one of these but with the temperature plummeting, a cruel wind that cut like a hailstorm of ice axes, and the "road" becoming invisible it was time to turn around and descend to warmer climes. We had all the winter gear with us but couldn't be bothered getting it all out and on when within minutes of 'free falling' back down the way we just came we would be stripping it off again. So waving at the border from a few km away had to do.
Next day we went on a trip to and around the Salar. Near the center there are a couple of shallow lakes. One of which is enchantingly called Largo de los Burros Muertos (Lake of the dead donkeys!). No donkeys spotted dead or alive but a flock of pink flamingoes (don't mention John Waters) were head down tail up sifting through the saline silt in the shallows in their typically busy but graceful manner. Next we tilted toward the Paso Sico - nothing to do with tuning 906 Ducatis - trying to find a turnoff marked on our map to Laguna Miscanti (4,500 m) where our crumbling 1995 guidebook promised abundant high altitude avian wildlife. No turnoff encountered and with the snow drifts taking over where the sand drifts had missed we did another U-turn. On the way back down we saw a turnoff un-marked on our map to Laguna Leija, so we took this instead. A couple of km later I couldn't tell the difference between the two possible tracks and a dry creek bed so we turned into the latter where the swinehunt tried to bog itself in the sand bed. After extracting it with a bit of muscle and a lot of plough and wheelspin we gave up on this was reclassified a laguna too far.
The thing about the Chilean road system and it's signage is that it is almost there. The road surfaces in the majority, aren't too challenging, provided you aren't on a road bike. If well prepared you start to believe that you can get to and find things because many times there are signs, placed within a standard deviation of the logical position, pointing within 90 degrees of the appropriate direction. A compass in the map pocket of the tank bag helps keep you going in then appropriate direction. This false sense makes is bit frustrating when you can't track down a destination that you know you are close to. The usual solution is to ask the locals but in Atacama Desert human, animal or vegetable life is scarce.
So 3 days of Gringo Adventure tourism culture was enough and shot north again to the tiny town Pica perched next to a natural mineral springs in the Andean foothills. In the morning the front tyre was flat. That makes four punctures in less than a week!! Is this divine retribution for some sins I have drunk off my short term memory???? The neck of the valve had began to separate from the rubber so this was a throw in the bin rather than patch job. I fitted the spare front 21" tube and we got away, late departure again.
The Pan American highway continues through the Atacama desert where sand is starting to mount a challenge against rock as the dominant ground cover. With so many steep surfaces and the prevailing SW wind it is a precarious existence as a grain amongst many. The only two man made features that infrequently scratch natures enormity are geoglyphs and nitrate mines. Both are a dead or more correctly in the case of the latter, a dying phenomena. The great shapes on the hillsides are an interesting remnant of lost cultures and deserve to remain same - no thanks to opportunist quacks like Von Daniken. The era of nitrate mines is almost over due to the advent of synthesized fertilizer. A couple of modern plants do still operate but the great era was in the late 19th to early 20th century where minor towns were built from scratch in one of the worlds most remote and inhospitable locations. When the price of extracted nitrate could no longer compete everybody "got up and left" leaving ghost towns and the considerable facilities afforded by the previous wealth to the mercy of the desert sun. These scattered clumps of deserted decaying buildings have now become a tourist attraction, including the one pressed back into service in the mid `70's by Pinochet as a concentration camp for the torture and extermination of thousands of citizen Chilean citizens judged to be remotely to the left of Genghis Khan. The enormity and continuity of bloodspill in Latin American history would fill a fourth ocean. Is the idea of human `progress' a corportate sponsored or politically convenient mythology? A question too great for a historical philistine's travel diary.
Iquique, Chile - 5/8/02
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