April 30, 2011
The jitters.
The jitters I think describes someone whom cannot make -up their mind one way or other and it perhaps best describes me. There I was fully intent on leaving Valparaiso today but I didn't sleep too well last night and consequently overslept this morning. So while I ate breakfast at 9am, I resolved to have yet another day here in which to prepare better for the final leg of this cycle-tour.
On Saturday morning the roads would've been quiet, but Sunday will be even quieter. I will follow the coast around and pass through the resort city Vina del Mar and then turn inland as I plan on ascending "Paso del Liberadores" (pass of the liberators) across the Andes to Argentina, therefrom it is about three weeks ride North to Salta where I plan on finishing off.
The alternative route North is via Northern Chile, but I rode it this time last year. To summarize of the top of my head, I followed the coast North of Vina del Mar until I joined the Pan Americana which at this point sweeps up and down over rugged country and is quiet a tough ride at times almost as far North as Serena. There's also a long climb away from Serena. The road is now reduced to a single-carriageway. By noon on the day I left Serena, the road briefly dipped down to a fishing village in a coastal cove, before climbed away again inland into the mountains where it felt like the Scottish highlands because of the low cloud and resulting coolness. Indeed the following day it drizzled rain all day and the next it poured down. Then as happens after alot of rain in the preceding days, I awoke to a day in which the sky was crystal clear and the high mountains had a white covering of fresh snow as I descended down to the capital of the Atacama Region, Copiapo. From Copiapo, the road descend to the coast at Caldera, a little place with a petrol station and a cafe and a few other houses. There followed the most memorable part of the ride, the 97km along the coast where the ocean waves crash on black rocks on the left and with cliffs on the right. It all ended too soon at the quaint coastal town of Chanaral, build as if against a cliff with very steep streets; then, it was inland to barren brown hills where the road splits. The right split is to a pass over the Andes to Argentina, "Paso San Fransisco" which is also reachable from Copiapu but at that time it was closed due to snow.
This far North the only traffic on the road are trucks but that's not a problem as the shoulder still remains and anyway it's extremely carefree cycle-touring as the road is good, there are "Posados" trucker cafes every 30-40km sometimes alot less but sometimes more with 94km being the longest stretch registered between Posados. As well as eating at these trucker cafes, it's also possible to buy snacks such as biscuits. And of coarse fill up on water not that I needed much as it was May and cool. I wouldn't recommend here in January. Other than at the Posados, or the occasional mine many of which are abandoned, the countryside is empty and therefore free camping is easy.
The desert South of Antofagasta I found to be impressive in its creamy milky coffee colour. It was here I saw the monument "El mano del Desierto" (the hand of the desert). Between Antofagasta and Iquique there is an alternative road to the Pan Am which follows the coast which is 400km of delightful cycling with the Pacific to the side. Iquique is a nice place to stop a few days where those interested in history can learn about "The War of the Pacific" (1879) in which Chile went to war with Peru and Bolivia for the Nitrate in the region which before the war belonged to Peru and Bolivia. The legacy of the era of the white gold as the large deposits of nitrate were called can be found 47km inland from Iquique at the ghost town Humberstone which had all the mod-cons of the time that a prosperous early 1900s city had, but then came the discovery of synthetic nitrates and the industry decined. From here I cycled East to Bolivia before decending down to Salta.
So today, feeling mush recovered after feeling poorly lately, I went for yet another walk and took some more photos. During my stay here, it has struck me how extremely steep some of the hills are. And how effortlessly cars drive up and down the almost vertical, which brought to mind, in the days of horsepower it most have been a truly miserable life for beasts of burden in Valparaiso.
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