The Atacama Desert, part 2

Now that we’ve shared our experiences travelling through the flood ravaged areas of Northern Chile (in the last post), we can focus more on our experiences pedaling through the utterly vast and barren expanse that is the Atacama. From Chanaral it was 4 long days of riding to the next populated area. In this time our only resupply areas were small posadas, which are roadside diners that mainly cater to truckers as they drive across the desert. We witnessed stunning sunsets and sunrises, were awed by the stars, visited a famous (and massive) sculpture of a hand rising from the desert, and were welcomed into the home of a wonderful Chilean family. In short, it was an incredible week of riding!

One of the best things about this part of the desert is how easy it is to camp. There are no spiny things to worry about, no mosquitoes to sting us, and no ants to eat our tent. We can walk off the main highway and set up just about anywhere. Once night falls, the wind dies down, traffic tapers off, and it’s like we have the whole vast expanse to ourselves. We spent a few nights camping this way:

We saw some incredible sunsets and sunrises, too:

At the posadas we often stopped to get their fixed lunch menu and to fill up on water. In the US, restaurants are expected to have multiple menu options, but that is not the case here. We love it that the offerings are simple, hearty fare for a very cheap price. For example, we got a small salad, a bowl of hearty chicken soup, and a plate of fried fish with rice for a whopping $5.50 each. And this in the middle of the desert! Our options were chicken or fish with the rice, but they had already run out of chicken. At another place we decided just to get the soup, and were surprised when Jason’s dish arrived with a chicken neck included!

The posadas were sometimes few and far between, at one point we had 101 km between them. For this stretch we simply carried lots of water and kept pedaling. Luckily, the winds were with us for most of the uphill stretches. Over the course of two days we climbed up up up to 7,000′ elevation. Of course, that also means we got to go down down down for the next two days! During the descent we came across the iconic concrete sculpture of the ‘Mano del Desierto’, or ‘Hand of the desert’. It is simply a giant hand that rises out of the featureless sand. Of course, we had ourselves a little photo shoot.

We skipped one of Chile’s largest cities, and continued north towards Bolivia along the main highway. We passed some absolutely massive copper mines. The tailings from these mines are piled up in such a way that they appear to be mountains. Upon closer inspection they are giant terraces upon which over-sized dump trucks drive and deposit their loads. It was just as we passed our first mega-mine that we also hit another big trip milestone: the tropic of Capricorn. It’s hard to believe that we’ll be in the tropics for the remainder of our trip.

That same night we slept in a funky hostel run by a retired miner who had built a number of small rooms next to his house. Our room was mostly finished, but still had stacks of mattresses and smelled like paint. We had privacy though – he came in and nailed up a blanket over the room’s window for us. Ha!

The next night we camped in the desert again, but this time the stars were almost overshadowed by all the bright lights from the surrounding mines. We are truly in copper country now. Chile has some of the world’s richest copper deposits, and is home to the world’s largest open pit copper mine. Clearly, mining is king around here. We got to spend some time with many of these miners just the next day.

We met a group of mountain bikers in a posada, and they invited us to share a second breakfast with them. Of course we accepted (well, Jason did, I just had coffee). What followed was a fun hour of chatting and laughter. One cyclist, Eduardo, invited us to his house in Calama and drew us a lovely little map. We all set off from the posada at the same time and started pedaling up the hill towards the city.

We soon learned that cycling on pavement with heavy bikes is easier than cycling on the dirt with light bikes. Shortly after leaving we passed all the mountain cyclists! We decided we had to stop and take a long rest to give Eduardo a chance to get back to his house before us! It was still a nice ride, and we received a warm welcome from Eduardo and his family. They even organized a Chilean barbecue (asadero) in our honor. We got to spend the evening drinking Chilean wine and laughing with the cycling guys we met earlier. Thank you all so much!

Despite being up late at the party, the next day we headed off towards the tourist town of San Pedro. We climbed up and up to 11,240′ of elevation. This is the highest we’ve been in our entire lives! As we descended towards town we passed many lovely rock and salt formations. Towering above the town is a string of volcanoes along the Chile-Bolivia border. We are spending 3 days resting here, and acclimating to 8,000′ before climbing ever higher into Bolivia.

Next up, we’ll pedal to over 14,000′ into Bolivia and stay there for weeks as we ride dirt roads through scenery that promises to amaze. Don’t be surprised if we don’t update for a while though, as we expect internet to be increasingly scarce and precious during this stretch. We are very excited to enter a new country!

The Atacama desert, part 1

We just completed 12 days and 760 miles of riding through the world’s driest desert. When we started on this route we imagined high temperatures, blowing sand, and the potential for days without water. We were also very worried about supplies and road conditions, since the major towns were severely damaged by flooding a mere week earlier. In spite of our worries, we sincerely enjoyed this challenging and desolate stretch of road. The temperatures were bearable, the wind was almost always at our backs, and we never had to carry more than one day’s worth of water. Oh, and we hit 12,000 miles!

In the Atacama desert.

In this update we will share our journey from the lovely city of La Serena through the flood-ravaged towns of Copiapo and Chanaral. In Copiapo we had to ride in streets coated in a thick layer of mud, and in Chanaral we saw the destruction that flash floods are capable of. It’s been a wild ride, but let’s start at La Serena, on April 1.

The excitement began before we even left town – there was a 5.5 magnitude earthquake that shook us out of our beds at 5:20 am. We both awoke with the motion, but Jason was much faster to realize what was happening. He shouted ‘doorway!’, and we leaped out of our beds to huddle together in the doorway. Doorways are a bit more structurally sound than ceilings, so they provide a bit more protection in case the building falls down. It was over quickly, but we were a little out of sorts. That was scary!

As we left the seaside city we had lots of climbing to get into the higher valleys of the desert.

Tendrils of fog creeping over the mountains.

We spent most of the day coated in a thick layer of marine fog before emerging suddenly at the top of a climb. Suddenly we were in the real desert. We hit 12,000 miles and decided to camp in the soccer field of a small town (with permission of course!). It was a good introduction to the desert.

Big desert roads.

Morning visitor at our soccer field camp.

The next day we once again awoke to another earthquake. This one was only a 4.9 magnitude, but we still got woken up. We weren’t as worried this time though, as we were quite confident the tent wasn’t going to collapse around us.

From there it was just long, straight roads through the desert with the occasional long climb. We were very lucky with road construction, and had one half of a divided highway all to ourselves for well over 50 miles. It was a dream bike path through the desert. Something that we really noticed these past days has been the true vastness of the desert. It is so big, and so stark, that it messes with our sense of scale. Sometimes we can’t tell how far away things are, and what we think are small rock are in fact distant boulders the size of a house.

We saw a surprising amount of pick up trucks, cars, and firetrucks draped in Chilean flags and driving north. They were all packed with emergency supplies like food, water, toilet paper, and clothes. These folks were driving themselves to the north to help the disaster relief. It was surprising and uplifting. Chileans are no stranger to natural disasters, and seem to jump at the chance to help each other out.

Firemen driving supplies and volunteers north.

After 3 days we came to the big city of Copiapo. This is a city that powers the entire region with the money from copper mines in the hills, and about a week ago it was hit by a flash flood following torrential rains in the mountains. When we arrived we were blown away by the amount of mud still coating everything. The main road was barely passable and coated by a thick layer of mud, and oftentimes standing water. The side roads? We didn’t even dare explore them, but we would occasionally see earth-moving machines pushing small floods out of them and onto the main road.

Because the sidewalks and bike paths were impassable, we were forced to ride through the muck in traffic. At times the mud was 4 inches thick, and at times we were riding through standing water. Needless to say, when we finally emerged we were dirty, and our bikes were coated in filth. Luckily, just a short ways out of town we found a gas station with a car wash. That’s right, we took the bikes (and ourselves) to the car wash. 2.5 hours later we were clean and back on the road.

The fun wasn’t over yet though. We had two more mostly uneventful days of desert riding:

Nothing here. Just sand and rocks.

Next we reached the town of Chanaral. This town had been built, really, in a place that should have been left free of human settlement. It was at the outlet of a wide river valley draining a vast stretch of high-altitude mountains. When the flash flood reached the town it came with massive force. Large trucks carrying toxic waste from the nearby copper mines were turned over and over again, eventually coming to rest (ruined) in the mud. Houses were swept away. The main highway vanished and was literally washed out to sea. All that was left was a new inlet where seawater crept closer to what remained of town.

There is supposed to be a highway here. Excuse the power lines.

An alternate route had been created for traffic, so we could sneak through and witness the destruction. It took us longer than expected because there was so much to see.

Ultimately, we were happy to leave this area behind and head into the wide and isolated desert. We loaded up our bikes with over 30 pounds of extra water and headed back into the hills. There were still scattered areas that had seen flood damage, and a surprising number of huge puddles in the desert, but for the most part the next section of riding was punctuated less with sad disaster areas and more with unique desert highlights. More on that in the next update!

An alternate road we didn’t take.

Beautiful, stark camping spot in the desert.

More road damage – this is Chile’s main highway!

Beautiful semi-desert – even in the pouring rain.

This past week has been full of wonderful riding in the dry semi-desert country of Norte Chico on lovely back roads, both paved and otherwise. I have to say ‘semi-desert’, since the truly dry desert is still to our north. After a few days of enjoying the cactus-strewn ‘semi-desert’, the torrential downpours began. That’s right, downpours. In the desert! Unfortunately, it’s not all storm rainbows and desert blooms. The storm has caused the worst flooding in 80 years, and many people have died or are missing. The flooding has caused a great many roads to be covered up by landslides or swept away entirely. We feel lucky to be safe and dry, even if the floods have drastically altered our plans. Before I write more about the floods, however, there are a few tales to tell about the rest of the riding from this past week.

Bidding farewell to a faithful tent.

We spent a day riding along the rugged coast and past many a million-dollar vacation home. In the little town of Papudo we said goodbye to our faithful tent. My cousin had brought us a new one since the old one’s zippers were completely broken and the rain-fly had begun to fail. We had a little ceremony and left our tired tent where someone might find it and give it a second life as a weekend only tent.

Jason pays his respects to our old home.

Million-dollar beachfront homes.

Big shoulder on the main highway.

We left the coast and headed inland, where we had to ride for most of a day on Chile’s main highway. Surprisingly, it was just fine. All the same, we were incredibly happy when we turned off that road and turned inland towards the dry hills. There were bone dry valleys, big cacti, and winding roads up and over so so many hills.

We completed our first big dirt desert pass at this time, and it was beautiful. En route we went through the national chinchilla reservation. This is the only place in Chile where the chinchilla ((a really cute rodent) lives in in the wild. Jason was super excited about the chinchilla warning signs.

The pass topped out at 5,500’, and was a long climb that looped all over the desert hills. We spent all day going up and up and up in some of our lowest gears. At times the dust was over 3” thick and we had to push the bicycles. All the same, we were very happy as there was good scenery all day and traffic was essentially non-existent.

Desert sunrise

That night we wild camped in the desert, where we had to clear rocks away to make room for our tent. During the night our brand new tent got attacked by ants! The damage is very minor (luckily!), but for whatever reason the ants chewed through the rain-fly where small water droplets had accumulated. We were a little bit upset, but nothing that a beautiful sunrise couldn’t help.

After a day of riding through desert vineyards, we entered the big city of Ovalle. We slept in a family run hostel in a room made of plywood. In the morning we awoke to storm clouds, and as soon as we left our room the sky opened up and the thunder rang through the valley. It absolutely poured for a few hours, and we had to resort to walking the bikes to avoid the brown-colored run-off on the roads. Luckily for us, the rain let up as we rode up yet another beautiful valley towards the small town of Hurtado. It started again in the afternoon though, and by the time we reached town the road was pure mud. Because the only hostel in town was full, we managed to rent a room in an old lady’s house.

One day: severely depleted desert reservoir.

The next day: torrential downpour

You can see why we walked the bikes on the sidewalk for this section.

The street outside our window.

That night, the storm hit in force. It was pouring rain most of the night, and at times there was hail and incredibly loud thunder. We were so so grateful to have a roof over our heads. The next day dawned to… more rain. We knew we weren’t going anywhere, since the next bit of riding was over another dirt pass, which had been closed because of the flooding. We spent a whole day in the tiny town of Hurtado, enjoying the hospitality of our host and watching the rain fall down. It kept raining all day, until the evening when the clouds finally began to clear.

Main street of Hurtado.

A soggy new friend.

Big rain puddles!

The next morning was clear and crisp, so we hurried out of town on the only road. We turned towards the pass and began to climb. It was a great climb, since there were absolutely no vehicles on the road, the scenery was wonderful, and we were constantly kept interested by the damage to the road surface from the downpour. Once over the top we started to see another storm system moving in, and we hurried to get down off the mountain. As we entered the next town of Vicuna the storm hit, with thunder, lightning, and rain. It was so sad to see the farmer’s crops being ruined by the relentless water.

More storms as we approach Vicuna.

Insane mud and water flow coming into Vicuna

The road to the north has suffered severe damage.

Now we are in Vicuna for our second day. It has been a tough time for us, as all our plans must be changed. That 15,000’ pass we were so excited about? Closed because of massive mudslides. Even the primary north-south route of Chile has been closed because of mudslides and wash-outs. We have decided to go north anyways, into the driest desert on the planet. This same desert has gotten 7 years worth of rain in the past week, so maybe we’ll even see a plant or two. The cities in the north, however, were hit badly by the storm. We don’t know what to expect, and we don’t know if even basic services will be available. For this reason we have stocked up on a week’s worth of food and given the bikes a little bit of extra love and cleaning. Here are a few pictures (that we didn’t take) of the flood damage preventing us from moving forward as we planned:

The pass we planned to be riding right now.

The mudflows make the giant machinery look like toys.

If you don’t hear from us for a couple of weeks don’t get too worried, it’s just that services like internet might be unavailable as we go into the flood zone.

Now, as usual, a few more photos that didn’t make the cut for the narrative above.

Our host in Hurtado gave us a special Chilean sweet made from a fruit that is like an apple-pear. It’s called ‘membrillo’.

Our host in Hurtado also gave us grapes from her own vineyard. We ate them all.

The sign read ‘ rough and winding road next 30 km’. Perfect!

A beautiful old chapel built from mud-bricks.

Yet another wood house that caught my eye. Take note Xiomara!

One of my favorite sunglasses pictures ever!

Lots and lots of mines are here.

Moving north through Chile

You might be wondering why it has been so long since we last updated. Well, the reasons are two-fold. First, we were travelling through comparatively dull scenery and we couldn’t imagine filling an entire update with the following: Tree farms and traffic. Eventually the tree farms and traffic ended, but then we found ourselves in an internet void for many days. Now, we’re back on the interesting back roads of Chile and tonight we have internet!

Let’s see, though. Last time we updated we were just heading towards the coast. As we neared the Pacific we began to see more and more plantations of perfectly lined up Eucalyptus and Oregon Pine trees. The coastal road was rarely actually along the coast, and mostly wove through the hills a bit inland. We did spent a few nice nights in campgrounds near water, listening to the crash of the waves. The ocean here is not for swimming, but many people come here to surf.

Those trees are in perfect lines…

Way too much chaotic construction like this.

Finally, a couple trees that escaped the clear cuts.

Yep, that’s me pushing!

One of our favorite days was mostly accidental. We had planned to take the coastal road, but were low on gas for our cookstove so decided to take an inland route because we knew we’d find a gas station. We bit off more than we could chew with this route! There was a very steep, mostly unexpected hill. Even though it was paved it was still too steep to ride and we had to resort to pushing. The descent was just as steep, and we even saw a truck at the bottom with crazy smoking brakes.

We ended up at this really charming town full of artisans and government buildings. We also met a hilarious Australian kid of about 12 who was living there for a year. He told us he was taking care of his grandparents there for a year, and that the town had a lot of legends about witches. He informed us that he just tries to live his life without worrying about witches. He also wanted to know if we had been to his favorite American city of… wait for it… Miami. Obviously, this kid was a riot.

We spent a night in the surfer town of Pichilemu, which was most interesting for its super-scary grocery store donkey ride (see picture) and its 6-way intersections. It seemed that at every stoplight we could turn most anywhere, but the road straight in front would be one way the wrong way. After Pichilemu we headed back inland for a couple of days, and we were really happy we took this route. From not-so-exciting and kind of busy coastal road we went onto a beautiful, low traffic roads through arid scenery that we call ‘Scenic Western Country’.

On this beautiful road we spent one of our scariest nights of the trip. Near the end of a day’s riding we entered a valley with a forest fire. It was a pretty sparsely populated area, so there were no hotels or camping areas. We asked about a safe place to camp at the police station, and they told us to just ask a local. There was a mini-market next store, so we got permission from the family running it to camp next to their house. That night the wind changed direction after dark, and blew the fire towards us.

Left: Firefiighter blue. Right: Forest fire.

The entire neighborhood came out to watch the smoke and flames near their houses. The fire reached the hills directly behind us, within a 10 minute walk. We could hear the firefighters yelling, see the flames, and our eyes burned from the smoke. The ash fell like a bizarre snow. The young son of the family stood with us to watch the fire, and he was so sweet and scared that he talked non-stop for about an hour. Luckily for the whole neighborhood (and us!) the fire stayed up on the hill and didn’t venture into the valley. Even so, it was a restless night.

We spent a peaceful couple of days with my cousin in the surprisingly secluded valley of Tunquen. It is so secluded (and internet free) that we actually couldn’t find him! No worries, we camped on the beach, watched the sun set, and drank the bottle of wine we had brought him. The next day we headed into the big city to drop off our bikes at a shop and finally met up with my cuz. We had such a super-relaxing time that we neglected to take photos… oops!

Restful cabin where we spent a few peaceful nights.

Now, we are once again heading into the unknown. Right now we’re in the semi-desert hills and mountains to the north of Santiago. We’ve got a few more days of ‘small’ climbs (6,000′) before we’ll be tackling our first high altitude pass into Argentina. The pass is gravel, and tops out at over 15,000′. Neither of us have been that high in our entire lives, and now we’re going to pedal our bikes up that high! We’ll keep you informed – the scenery promises to be absolutely stunning.

A lot of photos didn’t make the cut for the narrative above. Here are a few: