RTW: Exchange in Chile

Operation: Atacama

The words of my Reserve Officer School instructor crept into mind: "There is no pain and agony is just a feeling". I "accidently" cycled 80 kilometers in the desert in one day. Oops.

The story began with sitting-muscle-training 26 hours in bus, which were eventually rather painless as the past days in Santiago had been quite hectic and I slept most of the way. Arriving, I had an extra day in San Pedro de Atacama, which is a small but touristy place and often referred to as THE gathering point of backpackers in Northern Chile. Prices are high, but there is also loads of touristy stuff to offer from fancy restaurants to all kinds of tours imaginable, as it is promptly in the Bolivian border and right north of the Atacama salt desert.

On my extra day I had this sudden urge of taking a mountain bike out for a run, after all San Pedro is one of the best mountain biking places in Chile, and that is saying a lot in a country as hilly as Chile. I had planned to just see the nearby Inca fortress and then maybe go check out a famous (backbacker famous, that is) sunset in Valle de la Luna, however I had my doubts as the place was 15 clicks away from town. And what happened? I got overly excited about biking in that terrain and the Inca fortress was far from my mind as I blasted beyond it. Describing is that the fortress was 3 km away from town and when I had cycled about 12 km I started to wonder where the damn thing was. Check out the valley where I was from the photo below, you can just imagine how I could not focus..

Then, things got even worse. The road ended into a tunnel through the mountains, and what do I do? Instead of turning back I trust my flawless sense of direction and ride into the tunnel. On the other side I found the closest thing to heaven that can be found in the desert: a 3-km (or more), medium-steep downhill ride along a dried riverbed. Even the flawless sense of direction said not to go there, but I couldn't resist. Definately the best biking experience ever, no doubt about it, it made the day even in the end after all the trouble. The first downside of the perfect ride was that after it I popped out into a part of the desert that has the descriptive name of Llano de la Paciencia, or the plane of patience. In the photo below you can see me with my ride -the mountains on the back are about 20 km away.. Lucky I had a compass in my Nokia and a couple liters of water so I eventually found back to the city and even the Inca fortress alive. The fortress, however, was a big disappointment after the ones I saw in Peru.

More excitement to the trip brought the fact that in the area there are still unfound mines in the ground, heritage of the Chile-Bolivia(&Peru) war. This meant that I had to stay on routes already travelled - but even right next to the bike trail I found an old cannon ammo.. The idiot in me almost woke up as I was considering scenarios of how to detonate it, but I quickly continued the search for civilization (mainly because it was too hot to do stupid things and because there was no cover for the pieces of the ammo anywhere).

The story did not end there. When I got back to town I knew the trip had been a bit longer than I expected, but no idea as to how long.. Then I found two Chilean guys who were heading to the beforementioned sunset and as I am extremly hard to persuade, even more so if the task is insane, I followed them. After the cycling menace I still had to climb a huge sand dune to see the spectacular sunset, and I crawled there with my last ounces of strength just to witness a sunset behind clouds (below). Wow. And to top it all off, other 15 kilometers back to town in the cold and dark desert.. I was quite blown away as I asked in the bikeshop if they could estimate my travels that day and the answer was: "Man, the car rentals are next door. I'd say 80 kilometers, give or take a few."



Here's also a picture of my Chilean friends-at-arms. I promised to put the photo on the blog so here it is. The guy in front was a crazy local hobo that insisted on being in the picture.

posted by Kassu @ 4:40 PM