May 19, 2016
Desert Coast: Antofagasta to near junction of route B500 and route 5.
I really don't feel like getting going today. Ah the thought of riding out of the city. Oh and I found out that the clocks went back on Sunday, so now the sun rises about 7.15, meaning an earlier start for me from now on. Not that it makes a difference as it'll be dark an hour earlier in the evening. Its more feel good than anything else. It feels good to be out on the road early.
Its a slow job packing, everything out of the panniers, strewn over the bed during the day off here.
I leave at nine. My first call is the bank, hoping there's cash in the machine today. Two banks I tried yesterday were empty. There is. Then, I have the calamity finding my way on the one-way street system from the plaza to the supermercado. The taxis, or collectivos as they're called here are a law on til themselves, as are the buses which drive as if I am not there, passing me very close and cutting in in front of me at stops.
I stock up on cereal and a few 200ml cartons of longlife milk and enough pasta to do three or four days. There should be posadas on the way that I can lunch at. Then return to the pedestrian street café for a descent coffee before leaving.
I head north along the ocean upon footpath to begin with. The road being too busy. Further there's a cycle lane. The city sprawls north with rubbish strewn wasteland fronting rough tenement blocks backed by barren coastal hills on the inland side. And temporary shanty tenements on the beach a little further. Felipe, the walking tour guild in Santiago said, after Brazil, Chile has the biggest gap between rich and poor in South America, and is 16th in the world in terms of inequality.
Eventually the cycle path ends and I ride up a ramp and crossover a footbridge and down the ramp the other side to join the road, which now has less traffic and is dual-carriageway with a wide shoulder. The coast road north to Iquique, which I had ridden in 2010. This time I am aiming to re-join the Pan Americana (route 5) and so at km24, where there's a split with the right split turning inland, I take. By this time it is early afternoon and I stop a few kilometres in to lunch while listening to the distant murmur of a very long freight train that I saw pass a little earlier.
The road on in the shorter afternoon now the time has changed, is a gradual uphill all the way, until nearing dusk where I cross the summit and stop to don my jacket against the cold on the ensuing steep downhill into a broad valley, where I can see the line of route 5 pass along the bottom. I thought this would be a good point to halt before joining 5, so when I come to an open gate in the roadside fence. I wheel the bike off the road through the gate and off over a black gritty hillside, over a hummock, behind which I find a level spot to pitch the tent. The train I heard earlier I still hear murmur away as it gets dark.
Today's ride: 71 km (44 miles)
Total: 10,045 km (6,238 miles)
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