Mountain, man!
Trip Start
Oct 23, 2006
1
177
228
Trip End
Apr 15, 2009
Susques,
Argentina
Thursday, May 15, 2008
We visited Pica a little oases famous for growing the pica limes an ingredient in the famous pisco sour. Pisco grapes grown only in Peru and Chile are used to make the liqeur which tastes like whisky but is more often mixed into a pisco sour. I'm sure tourists visit here but we found it quiet which has been our good luck lately. High tourist season also brings higher prices. We have seen prices more than double for less than what is normally offered. Our travel style brings us in at a different facet of tourism because we stay longer, use different services and see the same things via our own means but we still get trapped into the elevated prices in high season.
Sun is setting, and we're still not there.
Along this route south are remains of ancient peoples who once lived here. Now that we are here it is most difficult to imagine people living in this place where not even a bug exists. If plants don't grow here then animals and bugs could not either.We drove off the main road into a moonscape in search of geoglyphs but with the sun already low in the sky we decided to call it a day and let Eve roll off into a comfortable spot for the night and have a closer look at the geoglyphs in the morning. We spent a very quiet warm night with the nearly full moon light illuminating the hills and ground around us. In the morning we discovered hillsides full of geoglyphs highlighted by the morning sun and we walked and took photos.
Chuquicamata the worlds largest open copper mine, not really a town but an expansive work site . We were dwarfed by the towering neatly piled mounds of debris with puffing equipment working in the open pit. Everything about this place is big. Just fifteen kilometers south is Calama a well supplied and serviced city obviously for and because of the mine. Just about every truck in town had a logo on it of some business involved with the mine. It is a well kept colonial city with too many car dealerships.
On our approach to the borders with Chile, Bolivia and Argentina we spent some time looking in and around San Pedro de Atacama, situated at the northern edge of the Salar de Atacama (2300mts)
Up and up, we go.
. We particularly enjoyed driving through the narrow canyons of the salt mountains. We drove to the Valle de Luna(valley of the moon), ah so.......we are on the moon after all......it wasn't our imagination. The town itself is totally built of adobe bricks with narrow streets, very cute and not surprising that we found tourists here, riding bikes and hiking. On our way out of town we had to go through border procedures here which surprised us because we were still about 166 kms from the border. Who are we to wonder about such things, so off we go with ideas that we will camp along the way. We were aware of potential high altitudes as we skimmed along the edge of Bolivia with volcano Licancabur beside us but never dreamed we'd climb to such heights and if we knew in advance we may have crossed somewhere else and now we know why the border formalities happened at the bottom.
The views of the salars(salt lakes.) and the atacama were absolutely breathtaking and the volvano beside us was behaving its self. We stopped very often for more views and to give Eve rests. It was getting very cool and after sunset we were fully dressed in our winter gear and the idea of sleeping along the way was not as appealing. Before sunset and before the last views of Chile disappeared we opened a bottle of sparkling apple juice and toasted Chile with very fond memories then emptied the rest on the ground because we were not sure of the effects of bubbly on us in high altitudes
Getting flatter now.
. Now this sounds like a great spot to go to sleep and wake up in the morning and have another adventure but....not us....onon. I have not mentioned how high yet. We had thought maybe sleeping at 3600mts but felt too pumped so continued. We were fine but Eve struggled and needed to stop with moments of no power, the engine was not over heating but something was bothering....could it be altitude sickness, anyway Dom thought possibly the fuel pump. As long as we took it easy and stopped for rest she could push forward. We reached a high of 4837 mts then coasted to 4200 mts at the actual border at 8:30 pm, dark and cold with Argentina officials wondering around with hooded parkas. A scan of their map which showed a side view of the area eased our feelings that the worst was over with still 160 klms more o to the nearest serviced town......gas anyone... it has been a long trek without services from the last town in Chile to the first town in Argentina. It was a good thing we could coast most of the way down to Susques, Argentina. It was a clear starry night and the moon bright above us and no signs of civilization anywhere. Around 10:30 we reached Susques a small adobe village closed for the night, no street lights, kind of creepy but comforting in a sense because it was the someplace we were aiming for because we could not go any further without gas. A drive through eventually ended with the sight of a gas station. After a look at their antiquated pumps we thought "oh my, in the morning everything will have a new look" and we parked at the out of the way gas station for the night. While walking Gillie before bed a man approached and asked what we needed and Dom answered "in the morning we will need gas, but we need to sleep now". The man who was the owner of the station said we would be safe there for the night, and we were.
