February 12-15, 2020

Getting My Motorcycle Legs Underneath Me, the Atacama Desert and Arica

Since I started the riding section of the trip, each day has been an adventure…but probably not in the manner you are assuming. It’s been six days of riding so far and I would describe it as follow.

Day 1 – TOTAL MAYHEM. Getting used to the bike and understanding its balance points and limitations has been and continues to be a challenge. On the 12th, I was all over the place, stalling out repeatedly and a danger to everyone around me. I was scared and in over my head with the load I am carrying, particularly when I was trying to navigate to the hotel in Valparaiso, which is up on the side of hill…think of trying to get to the top of on of the hills in SF on a motorcycle and having to shift and stay on the road with about 100lbs of baggage on the bike. Because the experience was so new, everything was all moving very very fast and I was challenged processing all the new information. Luckily, I made it in one piece with only one fall (which I would characterize as minor given it was me not yet understanding the bike’s balance limits). THANK GOD!

Day 2 – Confusion and Ignorance. First having to work through the gearbox issues (and losing most of the day) and then being caught in traffic but eventually making it to Pichidangui. I would characterize the trip as a gear shakedown. I got up to speed with all the motorcycle stuff, my helmet communication gear, navigation software, cameras, etc. There was a lot of pulling over to the side of the road and reading manuals to ensure I was developing a comfort level with all the technology.

Day 3, 4 and 5 – These have been long days in the saddle. However, the benefit is a developing comfort level and confidence in what I can safely take on and where I should draw some boundaries. I went off road for the first time. It started as a packed dirt road, then turned into sand and lead to inclines that had been reinforced with stones so that it was ride-able. I was terrified of falling off the bike given I was in the desert with no one around and if something happened, I would be reliant on my Spot to call for help, which is not where I should be. I’m going to wait for the off-road stuff until I am with the group in March and have others with me that can rescue my butt when I get out over my skis.

February 12 – Pichidangui to Huasco

Left Pichidangui early. Pichidangui is a very small beach town populated with families on summer vacation. Chile’s February is the equivalent of our August. I walked around last night and it was all families just doing the summer vacation routine, except Chilean style which is more or less the same as what we do.

Got on the road early and below is a photo of my view as I got on the bike. I don’t think you can see them here but there were several men riding horses down on the beach.

Traveled from Pichidangui to Huasco, which is a little over 500k and took me about seven hours. I’m attempting to stay on Highway 1 as much as possible but there are inevitable detours around areas not passable or where the route is broken up. I didn’t take any pictures since I was sufficiently challenged just staying on the bike and keeping my wits about me.

Pulled into Huasco, which is a gritty, small, mining town. Mining seems to be the primary industry all along the Northern Pacific Coast of Chile. Each of the sizeable towns sit aside a mine or mining shipping port or processing facility.

February 13 – Huasco to Mejillones to TalTal

Left early out of Huasco and had a wonderful drive along the coast through National Llanos de Challe Park. Off to my left for hundreds of kilometers was breaking surf and to the right mountains dropping into the sea. The landscape then changed as I entered into the Atacama Desert. It is hard to describe the scale of the Atacama. My frame of reference is the steppes of Kazakhstan and Mongolia and this is very similar. Miles and miles of sand, rock, scrub, flatness interrupted by mountains and hills. Below iare two photos that attempts to capture this, but don’t really capture its scale.

Stopped for lunch in a Chilean resort town called Bahia Inglesia. Had a great lunch sitting by the beach. Below is the scene in front of me.

After lunch got my first real taste of Highway 5, which the Chilean leg of the Panamerican Highway. Today in the desert, there were high winds, maybe 20+ mph, which was a challenge on the bike.

I pulled into a town called TalTal and stayed at a nice little hotel run by a very friendly husband and wife. They took good care of me. The town was less gritty than Huasco but still had its seedy side. Sunset below was beautiful.

The photo below is lead in to my next story. As you can see, the dogs own the beach and pretty much all aspects of the towns I have been in. They are ALL OVER THE PLACE and THERE ARE A LOT OF THEM! The residents feed them and treat them nicely and they seem to behave pretty well most of the time. However, I was coming back from dinner and one of them snuck up behind me and bit me in the heel…just to show me who’s turf I was on! Then the hound just stood there and looked at me as if to say, get off my turf.

The other story from TalTal is the nightlife. After being bit by the dog, I went through the towns Plaza de Armas, which every town has, and there was a stage with live acts and a small crowd having a good time. This started up at about 9:00 and there was a rapper on stage really going for it. I’m disappointed I didn’t get a pic. Anyways, the shows went on and on and on until 4:00 am, live and loud and I was about a block away and it could have been in my room for all the distance mattered. The Chileans love to party and they are night owls…getting started aroung 9:00-10:00 and going until 1:00-4:00, almost everynight!!!

I sort of discussed this with the owners the next morning and they laughed and acknowledged this was true.

February 14 – TalTal to Tocopilla

Got an early start but with a minor hiccup. Couldn’t get my bike out of the enclosed parking area because of another car that parked there. Had to have the owner work with me to push it backward while his wife laughed at both of us sweating and struggling to get it out. I’ve learned to choose wisely where to park the beast.

As I pulled North out of TalTal, the scene below hit me. I will be traveling along this coast for most of the day. Beautiful morning and what looks like a great road ahead.

The ride was interrupted for certain stretches by going up and into the desert, which I again tried, rather unsuccessfully, to capture the scope of below.

The Atacama Desert is one of the driest places on earth, I believe only drier than the polar ice caps. Further, parts of it are very high, in the 15k-20k foot elevation. As a result, there are a number of observatories that engage in serious research. I went by one of them, Cerro Paranal Observatory, and took a detour to check it out. The observatory is at 8,645 feet and there is NOTHING around it for many many miles. I took the first photo but then downloaded a very cool pic off Wikipedia after doing some research.

The afternoon was a long ride, in high winds, in the desert. There were stretches that I could see a straight road for miles ahead of me with no cars/trucks on it…just immense and ugly and beautiful. The ugly part was going around Antofagasta a mining center in the middle of the desert. It was huge, smelly, gritty, ugly, etc.

Pulled into Tocapilla, another very gritty port town. Stayed in seedy little hotel, the Royal Hotel, of course (and all I could think of when entering the room is that Royal Tenenbaum and Pagoda would have been right at home here), with nothing other really of note to report.

February 15 Tocopilla to Arica

Got out of the hotel parking area without any incidents (celebrating the little victories) and headed out along the coast line. The ride was glorious…sunny, temp was good, beaches all along the way. The Chileans love to camp and many of the beaches have scenes like the one below. Extended families setting up camp on the beach and enjoying the summer…fishing, hanging out and partying.

As I turned the corner on a stretch of highway, I was faced with the image below. The line sloping up and to the left on the dune ahead is the highway. I measured the distance of that line on the ride and it was more than two miles, to give you some perspective on the scale of these mountains. As I went over the top of the pass and entered into the next “cove”, I could see the road ahead of me for over six miles!

A bit later in the morning drive I entered into, went through and then above the city below, Iquique. The western edge of the city is bound by a huge sand dune, pictured below. When riding through town there were maybe 20 hang gliders in the air above the city coming off the road I was on.

The afternoon ride was the most difficult yet through for the most part flat featureless desert and salt flats with high winds coming at me from all directions. The winds were so high that at times I had to cant the bike 5-10 degrees to counter the wind and sometimes the wind would push me 2-3 feet from side to side…scary at times.

Alongside the road in a couple spots were ancient geoglyphs, which are prehistoric works of art placed on or worked into the landscape. They are found on hillsides and valley floors throughout the Atacama Desert, but they are always found near ancient pre-Hispanic trackways marking llama caravan routes through the difficult regions of the desert connecting the ancient people of South America. The oldest were created in the BC period and they are believed to have continued to be created into the 1500’s. Below you can see a couple pics I took of them. The first has a sun in the upper left and another image, I can’t make out. The second, speaks for itself. The hill it is on reaches about 500 feet into the air!

I went through a series of huge canyons near the end of the ride that were 2,000-4,000 feet deep with the road winding up and down with no guardrails for protection. Humorously, the Clileans had left several vehicles positioned at particularly difficult turns wrecked as a warning…no lack of subtlety here. Below is one of the more picturesque canyons I went through. Mostly, they were barren and stark and foreboding.

Interesting sign below…never thought I would encounter this set of metrics.

Arica, where I am staying for two nights and one day is a beach community and considered to be the center of the surfing scene in Chile. I went to the beach after I arrived and encountered a seven-on-seven rugby beach tournament. I didn’t know rugby was a thing in Chile, but it is.

Great sunset from my dinner table.

Walking home along the beach, the city had set up a stage and there was an outdoor zumba class going on with about 100 people participating. 9:00 pm on a Saturday and getting ready for the night out!

I’ll be back in touch soon. Taking tomorrow off the bike to get some rest, beach time and catch up on stuff. Hasta leugo!