Moto Day 8: Cauquenes to Pucón

Today was the day I realized I'd arrived in my home latitudes. Mixed deciduous and evergreen forests, grassy fields with Queen Anne's Lace in the ditches, summery sunshine in a place that obviously also has real winters (check out the firewood in the Nissan)...a good feeling.

Moto Day 7: Valparaiso to Cauquenes

Wine country day! The landscape looked like Napa, except the towns were shabbier and more adorable. Life in these little vineyard towns felt slow-paced and friendly. I took windy back roads, which were a lot of fun to drive. They twisted up and down scrubby hills and moseyed along hot valleys full of vineyards. Some were small, some were industrial-size, probably producing wines we see in grocery stores in the States. I kept an eye out for a Concha y Toro sign, but saw only unfamiliar brand names.
By the time I got to the end of my day I'd reached lumber country. Pine plantations covered the low inland mountains with shade and the rich scent of pine straw. This was the best relief from the desert yet. I camped in the edge of one of these forests, just out of sight of the road. There seemed to be no risk of rain so I slept tarpless, gazing at the unfamiliar constellations until my eyes drifted shut.

Moto Day 6: La Serena to Valparaiso

For the morning the moto was in the shop getting the chain changed. The day before I'd run into a German-Kiwi motorcyclist riding a machine that cost perhaps 15 times what mine did, and he'd invited me to a delicious gas station espresso (only in Chile). After hearing about my chain's loosening habit he recommended I change it as soon as I could. So I did. I didn't want to worry about it again in remote territory.

The maintenance meant I couldn't leave before early afternoon, and I had a date to meet some Angeleno traveller friends from Colombia, so I booked it down the 5, stopping little and only taking photos of a windfarm on the coast.
How appropriate that the sign for the windfarm (parque eólico) had blown down.
The drive was interesting principally for the gradual increase in vegetation. The first stretch was a regression to pure inland desert, but coming back to the coast, the cacti and tumbleweed-y shrubs I'd begun to see the day before were now accompanied by dry grasses and a few shrunken trees. Farther south, more trees asserted themselves, and more towns too, until I felt like I was actually in a country where people can go about their lives normally rather than fight against the desert.

Valparaiso was funky and charming, with quirky grafitti and run-down but charismatic architecture. The neighborhood where I stayed, Cerro Concepción, sits up on a hill with a great view of seagulls wheeling over ships at anchor. Motley crowds populated the streets until very late, which I know because we stayed out salsa dancing (mostly watching excellent salsa dancers, actually) until 3am. I wished I could spend more time in this bohemian, laid-back city.

Moto Day 5: Pan de Azucar to La Serena

My campsite from above. There was a nuclear family camped next to me. Oh Chile. So first world.
The road to the south.
The frequency of roadside shrines in Chile was overwhelming. This one included a grave, which had been amply supplied with jugs of water.
First flowers in who knows how long.
This view towards the coast shows San Francisco-style fog doing its best to creep over the mountains into the desert. There was much fog and chill along the coast, a far cry from the bright aridity just inland.

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.

Moto Day 3: Arica to María Elena

Christmas morning in Arica was as quiet as the night before had been busy. Waking up at eight to a recently risen sun was disorienting; Chile's clocks were two hours ahead of Peru's. And not only was the Chilean time zone closer to Europe--it was everything. Home supply stores with treated lumber, nuclear families in sedans, men in shorts, two-ply restaurant napkins, receipts for everything... Throughout my time in Chile I was to be shocked and (let's be honest) delighted by its comfortable modernity.

The morning took me through deep desert canyons with snaking green lines of vegetation in the bottoms. It had been a mystery to me, looking at the map, why the road south of Arica made a big zig zag. Now I knew: it didn't bother with small-scale switchbacks, it just angled down for ten or twenty kilometers until the bottom, then turned and went back up the other side going the other way.
Today was a good day for variety of desert surfaces. Here we have the classic cracked mudpan look, always a classic.
...and here is a salt flat. I felt like I was walking around on antlers. At one point I broke off a chunk and the inside was pure solid white salt. Roadside geoglyphs.
I ate dinner at a tiny restaurant in María Elena which catered to long-haul truckers and the workers in the salt factory, the only industry in this one-horse town. The family who ran the place was very sweet to me, boosting my already high opinion of Chileans. The man was curious about my motorcycle ride and peppered me with questions like, Do your arms get tired in the wind? (They didn't. It was really just my butt that objected to the long hours in the saddle. I have way more sympathy for cowboys now.) After dinner I set out to look for a private spot in the desert to camp.

There's car camping, and then there's this:
Some parts of the Atacama haven't seen rain in thousands of years (it's the driest desert in the world), but not the part I was in. I felt raindrops in the evening and heard thunder in the distance, so I set up my tarp. Unnecessary, as it turned out, but it was a pretty cool setup. The great thing about tarps over tents is the way they necessitate invention. My night in the desert was cold, scentless, uncannily quiet, and cozy.

What Nerds Do When They Travel by Motorcycle

Right after crossing the border of Chile there was a sign: "Santiago 2081." A few kilometers later, another: "Santiago 2085." Can't catch a break in this long long country!

When I spied the kilometer post 1983 on an 11-km descent into a canyon, I started seeing the signs as years instead of kilometers. (1983 is my year, by the way, the boar.) And so I spent the long hours pondering what famous dates I could take photos of.
Chile's flag may be red, white, and blue, but this is just un-American!!
This may not be a particularly famous date, but it IS a beer.
Gotta give a nod to William the Conquerer.
...let's see, for 1945, 1918, and 1864 I wasn't yet on my historical nerding-out game; I spaced out at 1812; there was no 1607 or 1492; and apart from that I struggled to think of super-famous dates. It showed me my limitations. When was Mohammed born, for instance? That would have been a good one.

Fortunately there were other opportunities for nerdy motorcyclists. I drove up the road to one of the famous Chilean desert observatories and, although they wouldn't let me in the gate to look around, there was this awesome sign.
And finally, this may have been the most exciting sign I've seen yet! A nonpariel landmark.