Moto Day 4: María Elena to Pan de Azucar

Yet. Another. Day. Of Desert. But I wasn't complaining. It was gorgeous desert, its palette full of variation, its landforms never the same from one bend in the road to the next (if there was a bend). I also loved the feeling of isolation, even though it was worrisome to imagine what would happen if the moto broke down. And today was the day that it did! My three great strokes of luck were: 1) that it chose to break down in an industrial park outside Antofagasta, right next to a roadwork company with a well-stocked toolshed and affable employees, rather than in the hundreds of kilometers of completely barren desert to the north or south; 2) that it was just the chain that fell off; and 3) that I learned in Cusco how to tighten the chain. So the fix took about 15 minutes, five of which were devoted to washing the grease off my hands in the roadwork company's civilized office bathroom. A kindly roadwork administrator even handed me paper towels to dry them.

There are others who also enjoy the isolation of the desert: astronomers. Hilltop observatories like this one pepper northern Chile.
After fixing the moto I turned onto an alternate route with even less traffic than the 5--hard to do. This road angled toward the coast. At a certain point it plunged down into a sudden defile that opened in the desert floor. This valley wound down and down and down; I hadn't realized the desert floor was at such high elevation (around 4,000'). That's why last night had been so chilly! This valley was also chilly: air that felt like A/C blasted up it, accompanied by fog from the ocean. This fog sustained the first plant life I'd seen in two and a half days: cacti, mosses, and one lonely tree.
The road finally popped out at the top of a bluff and descened to a tiny fishing village on the narrow coastal plain (500 yards narrow). I rode south on the coast, passing through rich smells of salt and fish, particularly striking after the scentless desert.

Later I took another detour into the Pan de Azucar National Park. The road was listed on the map as being neither asphalt or dirt, but "stabilized with salt." This is what a road that's stabilized with salt looks like. It was great for motorcycling.
The landscape made me think of Old West outlaws. There were plenty of nooks and crannies to hide with loot.
Then it popped out on a gorgeous coast of rust-colored rock formations and a view across to the park's eponymous island. There was also a "cactarium" with representative examples of the park's main type of flora, and a whale spine.
I was just in time to set up camp and relax while the sun went down.