Photos from WVNY '12/'12

Hop over to facebook to check out photos from my trip with Andrew around Patagonia:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.563423288092.2046520.4100369&type=1

Moto Day 9: Pucón to El Bolsón, Argentina

I had a lot of kilometers to cover on my last day of motorcycling (New Year's Eve! What a time to complete a trip!), and not much time to cover them, since I hung around my friend Marie's WWOOF farm until 2pm making pancakes. I set out into the national park around Lanin Volcano. Lush mountains and lakes gave way to drier territory as soon as I crossed the border into the Argentine rain shadow. A long descent led me into a vast, glaring wasteland cut through by a giant blue river. The air got hazier and hazier until I realized it was a cloud of volcanic ash from Puyehue Volcano turning the air into milk. You can hardly tell the shimmer at the bottom of the cloudy photo below is the giant river. After stopping for a quick snack in Bariloche I pressed on into the evening toward El Bolsón, and encountered a few more famous-year kilometer posts. In the town I asked directions to the Río Azul, where Alex's farm is. I found it, eight km outside town, by hook and by crook. It was almost 11pm when I arrived, and quiet--no New Year's Eve party here. As I set up my hammock in a tree (not wanting to disturb Alex) I heard distant fireworks. Early the next morning I crawled out of my cocoon for a joyful reunion with my old friend, an auspicious beginning to 2012.

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.