The Adventures of a Rally Roadie

Chile is on still on Daylight Savings time and that combined with the high mountains to east makes for a very late dawn. Dawn does even begin until 7:30 and even on a clear morning, not common on the coast in our experience, the sun does shine until 8:30 or later in the south. As we head north, the sun will come up earlier. The result of all this is that we don’t get moving until after 8:00 and that makes for a long day.

We start north on Ruta 5 and drive along the coast for a ways before turning inland. The coast is remarkably barren. Some cacti and very small weeds but nothing else. The coast is rocky and sandy coves are rare. The landscape looks like, and probably is, an ancient lava field. The plain the the road runs along is quite narrow with the ocean to the west and high hills immediately to the west.

We start to climb up through the coastal hills as soon as the road turns east. In a few km we’re at more than 3,000 feet elevations when the road finally flattens out. We’re officially in the Atacama Desert.

The Atacama runs north for about 400 miles and in this southern part it looks a lot like the Mojave Desert in California. The Atacama is renown for its lack of rains with parts of the desert not getting any rain at all for years at a time. The parts that do occasionally get rain don’t get much but the small amounts do support a very small amount of vegetation. We can see some tracks on the hill sides that indicate that there are some animals here but other than one small deer, we don’t see any. There can’t be many to be seen.

We continue on toward Copiapo with the lanscape getting more and more barren. There are few villages and only signs indicate side roads that lead to mines behind the hills the we can see from the road. One can only guess how remote those mines must feel. No driving into town for a quick beer.

The road is now two lane but the surface is excellent and appears to be well taken care of. There’s very little traffic and most of the traffic that we do see are 18 wheelers carrying gear to the mines or carrying ore from the mines. Frequent rest areas dot the endless straights. Cross a ridge and look out at the next 10 kms of dead straight highway.

At Copiapo, we turn back toward the west and the the road drops back down to the coastal plain. At Caldera, we get close to the ocean again. The road travels through the ancient lava fields and passes through occasional small fishing villages some with facilities for handling ore from the Atacama mines. There’s a small surf and some of the coves have gorgeous sandy beaches. But though the villages look deserted, it’s probably just the season. Summer is over and winter is coming.

We turn inland again at Chanaral. Once again, the road climbs and climbs through the coastal hills. The going is slowed by the trucks and occasional construction. But at the top of the climb we again look into the expanse of the Atacama. Here, though hard to believe, it is even more barren than the southern Atacama.

There is absolutely no vegetation. No so much as a weed. Sand, rock and mountains. The sides of the mountains have what look like beige glaciers which are actually sand dunes that the wind has blown over the mountains like sand. Some of te hills actually are sand dunes and not hills. The barrenness is so complete that I’m sure that on some stretches on the road the only living organisms are the people driving the vehicles and there are damned few of us.

We go north through the desert for nearly 500 miles. As we get closer to Antofagasta where we are planning to spend the night, the air starts to get very dusty. The dust is from the mineral processing plants that are fed by the mines. Big equipment, ugly processing plants and debris and detritus along the road. Just charming.

We miss the turn off for the south entrance to Antofagasta while we’re fooling with the GPS. When we do finally ask it to lead us to a hotel, instead of turning us around, it sends us to the north entrance. The final result is that we’re entering the second largest city in Chile in the dark in Saturday night traffic.

We follow the rather convoluted route through the waterfront area and after a couple of false turns, we find the hotel, another Ibis. We check in and go up to the 7th floor to our room. Open the door and look into exactly the same room as we stayed in in the Santiago Ibis. I guess if the formula works, you gotta stick with it.

A quick wash. Check email. A good dinner with a bland watery wine. (Just what the hell is a carmenere, anyway?) Back to the room and bed.

Obi-wan