May 2, 2016
The Post Card Image: km202 to km317.
Well let me say, I'm feeling much better this morning after a long night's rest and sleep. It is a somewhat brighter morning as the sun does its best to break through white haze. And I'm in a Copec service station two kilometres ahead of where I camped. There's a huge scream promoting the national oil company, Copec's maps, showing fabulously scenic Northern Chile on a clear blue sky sunny day. The way post cards do of places which are most days grey and rainy. The last time I was in northern Chile, a few years ago, there was battleship grey skies everyday, looking like rain. It actually rained three days in a row that time. So it makes me laugh when TV presenters say it has never rained in the Atacama desert.
The Copec coffee wasn't great, coming from a press-button machine rather than a real espresso machine. And I failed to connect to the internet for some distraction from the road, which continues like yesterday's series of steep inclines and it has become a matter of making as much distance north in the day as possible. Thought it is hard with all the climbing doing a normal hundred and ten kilometre day.
Again, food is something you take what you get. Around midday there's a sign for a hacienda, or farm shop ahead. It is a small roadside village of a few scattered houses and the sign points to the turn off for the farm shop. They sell goat cheese and avocados and serve hot freshly made cheese empanadas, which I have three of. They also have coffee, but from a machine, so I pass. I bite into the empanada and there's an explosion of hot molten cheese onto my face. It is a difficult eat and it isn't more than pastry and fermented milk and costs 3000 pesos for the three; and, I'm still hungry when finished.
Today's ride: 115 km (71 miles)
Total: 8,908 km (5,532 miles)
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