May 11, 2016
Garden of the Atacama: km643 to km769.
The cloud had closed in this morning and it very much looked like rain, but there was a glimmer of bright sky to the north, at the end of a narrow valley the road passes through where I'd camped down the bank alongside the roadside fence. Though not long after getting on the road at nine, the cloud starts breaking up and it turns out a fine sunny day.
The first hour is a straight downhill into a wide east west valley, a stripe of greenery irrigated by a small river from the Andes to the Pacific: the location of the next town, Vallenar. A large scattered settlement, not so much a town but low houses built all the way along the valley reaching out on either side of the road. I turn off down into town on a strip of tarmac running parallel to 5. Most side streets off this are unpaved and this seems to be the centre, which comprises of both a Copec and Petrobras petrol station opposite each other with wide apron frontal areas for truck parking.
The valley itself is called "Huasco", which I learn from a calendar in the shop at Petrobras. The calendar is turned to the month "Mayo" and has a postcard like floral desert image with inscription "Vallenar. La Jardin de Atacama". The garden of the Atacama? More like the dump, as the rest of the main drag is either shabby painted clapboard houses, or tent dwellings, what look to be old small circus tents, and rubbish strewn everywhere.
Beside the Copec petrol station opposite is a roadside restaurant, the only diner I can see where I search out possible breakfast. There's no one about and it looks not to be open when I approach the door, until a young indigenous woman appears in the doorway of a backroom behind the counter. I ask for toast and coffee and while waiting a tall slim girl in shawl walks across the rough apron in front, uncharacteristic with the mainly indigenous inhabitants who are short and thick built. later I would see the same girl beg for money by the petrol station. The toast come and is how I like it with butter melting, though the coffee is instant.
After breakfast I need to replenish my water supple. There is no water-tap at Copec next door, nor at Petrobras across the way. Things look desperate as it is 145km to the next town, Copiapo. The woman in the coffee shop sends me round the corner to the workshop where a Toyota Hilux is jacked up having new tyres fitted. The mechanic chatting to the vehicle owner sends me into the office, where the young woman behind the desk very reluctantly fills one of my 1 1/2 litre bottles from a 5 litre office drinking water dispenser.
It remains easy going today and I manage to rack up a 120 kilometre day leaving me nicely positioned to arrive in Copiapo midmorning tomorrow.
This evening I come to a halt at a layby with a bank down, the bottom of which level and the bank hiding my tent from the road.
Today's ride: 122 km (76 miles)
Total: 9,360 km (5,813 miles)
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