New Year - It's All In The Stars - 3 Jan 2003
Berthaís boxer engine gets a Boxing Day break
Onto and Into Antofagasta
Hippy unhappy
Boring old farts yet again
North End of Chile (as far as we go)
Why do we keep doing this?
B O Fís
South? I thought we were heading for Canada
Pop into Copiapo
Star tours
Berthaís boxer engine gets a Boxing Day break
While the Hot Rockers managed to get up and off for 9:00 on Boxing Day morning, we lay around and chilled. We had to make our minds up whether to join the Rockers in their hoon north to San Pedro for New Year. There were plusses and minuses to consider. We werenít all that interested in seeing more desert ñ itís not our favourite environment. A trip up to San Pedro would be a 2000-mile detour simply to go up and back to Santiago to meet our mate Esther. Esther had said that she was keen to go north and see the desert and we were feeling a bit guilty that we would get to see it but she wouldnít. On the other hand, weíd spent New Years very much on our own last year and its not that great. This was going to be our last time of seeing the Rockers who have been such great company and help to us at times.
We tossed a coin.
It came up south.
So we went north to San Pedro. Itís a funny old world.
I think to be honest that was probably my fault. I had really enjoyed catching up with the Hot Rockers now and again. Now and again? We, the readers, think you live with them [webmaster] To talk to people who know you and not have to explain the whole journey to them. And move into more normal conversations, catch up on a little truck gossip and move on. It may have been our last chance to see them , now that they are heading north and we going south, we will probably remain out of synch. So I felt it would be nice to be with friends for New Year.
We set off with high hopes that the Atacama Desert would be more inspiring than the others we had seen. After about 200 miles, everything became very samey. We decided to press on for as far as we could and then pull up for the night for a rough camp in the desert leaving just enough time to set up the tent and cook before the light failed.
By the time we had 600 km on the clock we were done for and by an enormous stroke of luck we pulled up by the perfect camp spot. Decent bit of track off the main road, flat bit of ground and privacy. Just the job.
What I really like about the desert, is not the desert itself but the fact that you can just pitch a tent in the middle of nowhere and be completely alone, with the silence, the starry nights and watch the sun go down and hazy sunrise without the distraction of the edifices of mankind to spoil the scene. Well that isnít exactly true, we had managed to pick a rubbish tip for a campsite where lorry drivers came to dump tyres and the road builders had dumped tarmac, which was a shame.
This desert seemed even more desolate than the other deserts we had encountered on the way. Even the Sahara had the odd shrub here and there, this was more like a long strech of slag heaps of beige gravel for 1000s of km. One thing that I could not understand was the grasshopper jumping around; there was no grass, not a tuft or a blade in sight for 100s of km. What was the thing living on? And even more incomprehensible was a silvery fox that run across the road in front of us that day. Now forgive me if I am wrong but with no plants there are no herbivores, with no herbivores what does a self-respecting fox live on?
We watched the sun go down and the stars come up and enjoyed the tranquillity. Once the sun was low in the sky, things got an awful lot better. Dusky pinks appeared, shapes became more interesting altogether better.
A pleasant evening led to another hoon. This time the scenery really did not change at all all day. It was a bit of a relief when the sea and Antofagasta appeared on the skyline. Finding a campsite was not such of an easygoing experience. For some reason the good burgers of Antofagasta seem to think that they can charge twice as much as anyone else. In the end we had to settle on a camp that did not have a complete fence around it and no hot water. Still, the weather was pretty scorching and so the idea of a cold shower was not altogether unappealing. When we discovered that there was an extra charge for the privilege of taking a cold shower we were pretty gobsmacked to say the least.
For some reason, I was not a happy chicken. Whether it was rip-off Chile, Rip-off seems a little harsh. The internal market and the strength of their currency dictate the prices in every country. Generally speaking the more expensive things get the more affluent the citizens. We should rejoice for the Chileans [webmaster] the fact that I missed my friends in England or it may just have been PMT, but whatever it was I was generally fed up. I fed up with backpackers who leave their dishes in the sink, fed up with living out of little bags. I wanted to chat to friends face to face, to have my clothes laid out in drawers, to garden, to cook on a cooker where all the rings work and not have to fight with other backpackers for space in the kitchen, to know what all the coinage is in my purse without thinking and to watch mindless chat shows on the TV on the sofa.
I know what you are going to say, ëShe doesn¥t know how lucky she is? We all have work to look forward to tomorrow. But in truth at that precise moment I would have traded to freedom, the lack of responsibility for a slice of normality. (Maybe not a particular year 10 class).
We spent a day internetting and stuff in town and got to bed early for yet another hoon. The wind had picked up and families on the beach were having some serious problems with their tents. Itís a curious thing (or so it seems at first) but all Chileans take a tent to the beach with them. At first we thought that they were as fed up as we with the campsite charges, but as dusk appeared, they packed up their nylon jellyfishes and headed home. It seems sensible though with a bit of hindsight. As I gaze down at my sunburn, I realise that a bit of shelter at midday in the tropics is fairly practical.
We figured that it was best to get away from here before things got any worse.
Too late.
As I went for a pee at about 11:00 before getting off to kip, I was surprised to find a couple of blokes with a Transit-sized van lugging sound gear out of the back. What followed beggars belief. A rave. A bloody rave. Cars started arriving form all over with groups of kids from obviously pretty well heeled backgrounds. I gave it the usual 3:00 deadline before seeing the camp manager with the now standard ìis this a campsite or a discoî comment. He regretted to inform me that he could not do anything about it.
We sat up and played cards ëtil about 4:30 and then managed to get some shuteye with benefit of our earplugs. The party finally finished in time for us to have a peaceful breakfast. Oh joy.
North End of Chile (as far as we go)
Final hoon to San Pedro. Lovely little village with beautiful simple adode houses and twisty dirt streets rahter than the uniform streets of the rest of the majority of town.
New Yearís Eve
A stroll around the town, the church was fascinating, due to the lack of local iron for making nails, the rafters are literally sewn together by leather thread. Even the huge wooden doors were sewn up. We smiled at the saintly icons in the church, with trilbys on their heads. I love the way that churches round the world have their own way of adapting the scenery, style and attire in the bible stories. Even the arrangement for the navity had clear Latin American feel with the odd alapaca making an appearance.
A trip into an impressive museum of pre-inca culture in the area. It was the 12m-display case of all manner of cocaine consuming materials was quite revealing. All we need to do is to convince all the coke takers in the UK that in fact its pretty old hat, maybe what they are doing is out of date, and maybe we can change its image.
In my ignorance I was unaware of how agressively the Incas had forced other cultures to adopt their ways. Maybe it was justice that they themselves were attack. Unfortunately it is a bit of a shame that nations never learn from history and seem to enjoy repeating it. Itís a pity that I am not likely to see the next powerful culture bully Americanisation out of the world.
There was a route south to see some salt flats and a lake or two. But the dilemma was that poor Bertha had a leaking seal on the shock absorber and a crack in the frame. Possibly not the time to take her unnecssarily on dirt roads. On the other hand, it seemed a bit daft to travel 2400km of a round trip to not see the local sites.
I persuaded Pat to brave the trip. The salt flat was weird it was like walking on compacted snow, through chinks in the salt crust, you could see the glistening of water only a couple of inches below. I now know at least how Jesus did it. Most peculiar the feeling that you are walking on water. The crunchiness of the crystallised salt did nothing to help you creep up on flamingos though. They could hear one coming a mile off, and sauntered off, just out of decent photo reach. Obviously they like their privacy more than your Tanzanian variety.
The road was OK and we decided to head down to the lake further south. The road rose and rose, passed a village saying 3200m, then rose and rose some more.....There was a dirt turn off to the lake, we started down it, it was so badly corrugated the poor bike was shaking. After no more than a couple of 100 meters Pat turned back. Then he rethought and figured how bad can 5km be anyway, and went for it. I was desparately trying not to bump up and down too much and keep my weight off the side of the frame that was cracked (I should point out that itsís just where the foot peg mounts rather than the whole frame that is at risk!), as we shook along the road.
It continued to rise and rise, then the road narrowed to a rocky track. Poor Bertha was beginning to struggle with the height. The uneven track didnít help by acting like a constant set of sleeping policemen. There were two main problems. In order to keep enough power, the engine had to be kept in a narrow rev range between 2500 and 3500 revs. Above and below this the power trailed off dramatically. To complicate matters, the gearbox had now started jumping in and out of first gear as the dogs (sic) are worn on the first gear. Riding on the ìtechnicalî bits meant slowing right down to avoid the bigger obstacles. Starting to get going again proved nasty. Turn on the gas and the gears started jumping. Not enough and an upward change got the bike coughing in second gear. Hmm. As we reached the brow of the hill, she coughed her way to the top, at about 4300m. Sheís an old girl and she did so well!
The view was pretty, but a little of a disappointment for the risk to the bike. We had been expecting crystal reflections of snow-capped mountains. The lake and snowy mountains were there but no reflections
In some senses the way down was better, because at least gravity was in our favour and we allowed Bertha a little rest and free wheeled down the track (We managed to freewheel for 20 miles, which is a pretty fair indication of how high we had climbed up from the level of the saltpan. I was thinking all the time that the saving in petrol may go towards fixing Bertha). But from my point of view it was worse, to prevent me sliding forward too much, I was holding on like grim death to the grab rail, and tensing my thigh and bum muscles to stop myself putting avoidable strain on the shocks and the frame. I was now feeling very guilty that I had put Bertha through this, and maybe Patís first instinct to turn around was correct. I was discovering muscles in my legs and arms that many years ago had withered through lack of use, as the cramp set in.
As I got onto the main road, I looked down to where our map and map bag should by in betwen Pat and I, and it was not. The maps had been lost on some point down hill, while I had been concentrating on staying on. Rightly Pat stated that there was no way we were going back up, and risking more damage to the bike. I could hear the tone in his voice,î it was your idea to do this, to bring the map ñ now youíve lost itî. I apologised profusely, he apologised. All three of us were tired.
So we wanted to just head back on the main road. Little did we know that the ëmain roadí was under construction. The route into Argentina=trucks=corrugations. Our favourite ñnot. The bike and us rattled over 100km till we re-hit tarmac. Sorry Bertha, I know it was all my idea. You are so forgiving. It was so annoying. The route ìoff roadî along the saltpan had been smooth and fast with only tiddly corrugations and this was the full monty. The frustration in these situations is that they tend not to have ìRoad Works next 100 kmî signs and so one never knows when it would be sensible to turn back asnd take the other route. We noticed as we came off the end of the rough stuff a couple of tour buses that weíd seen up on the top earlier but had obviously taken the other route and overtaken us. Clever sods. We caught them up eventually but they had not seen our map case up on the top.
By now Hippy had added blistered hands from hanging on to the aching thighs. (If you see what I mean ñ punctuation lessons gladly received). Trooper.
Back to the room to spruce up for the evening and meet up with the Hot Rockers. Me in my only frock and Pat in his new shirt. No-one there.... we waited. We heard noise in the street and sure enough the Hot Rockers were approaching, Mel in the lead, videoing their arrival. A motley crew of dress-wearing men, sequins and fluorescent wigs approached. Fi could have told us that it was fancy dress ñ when is a Hot Rock do not fancy dress though.
Itís getting pretty obvious to us that we are not ravers. Hippy used to have her moments by all reports. I have always been sometrhing of a lean on the bar and watch the others dancing type. On occasions like this, one cannot lean on on the bar and watch the dancing for the dancing is on the bar. The owners of the gaff did not seem to mind too much. The locals looking in at the door were fascinated. Iím not sure that scenes like this have been seen before in San Pedro. There was no fighting, no lewd behaviour or anything to complain about at all just a bunch of hyperactive dudes getting it on.
We stood by the door with Aine who had brought baby Kira out for the evening. She slept through it all. As 12:00 came and went, so did we. The revelry didnít even stop for abit of ìauld langî or anything. I guess weíre a bit old fashioned, maybe, but the hugging and stuff that goes on at midnight means a lot to us.
Outside, the locals were combining a couple of Brit festivals with a bit of guy burning. (Fawkes type guys that is) We didnít get to the bottom of the tradition, but we guess itís all about getting rid of bad spirits or some such. Our walk back to the hostel was witnessed by a series of smouldering figures. By morning there was only a collection of shoe ends left in the road
South? I thought we were heading for Canada
We started to retrace our steps back to Santiago and so the first port of call was Calama. This really has little to offer on a cultural level. Itís entry in the guide books tells us that there are huge numbers of beer houses and not much of cultural significance. The campsite was pretty much deserted, totally in fact but for an odd jobber who was something of an older version of Norman Bates. Seemingly the promised hordes of January holidaymakers had not shrugged off their hangovers yet and hitched up the trailer and kids.
Once again, the pull of a 400 metre deep open cast copper mine could not draw us into an industrial bit of sight seeing. Reading up on this mine worried me a little. If the Lonely Planet is to be believed (it is often not) this mine creates 25 per cent of the foreign earnings for Chile. This seems something of an eggs and baskets scenario and I hope that neither a) the bottom drops out of the copper market, or b) the ore ceases to be of the anticipated quality.
Weíd decided to do a bit more rough camping on the way back down to Santiago not simply to be as tight as gnatís chuffs but also to enjoy the tranquillity and solitude of our own little patch in the middle of nowhere. We went out shopping to get the necessary dried foods to ward of hunger in the desert. Back at the campsite we were amazed to find other campers and more amazed still that the campers were a pair of, seemingly newly retired, Germans who had a camper van with them. This is the first foreign (i.e. foreign to here) vehicle that we have come across that is not a motorbike. They apologised for having encroached on our patch but we were all agreed that the small piece of shade that was available should be shared by as many as possible.
As we hooned down the road I was amazed about how much of the route I had forgotten ñ or at least hadnít really registered at all. Usually, as Helen will testify grudgingly, I only have to visit a place once and then I can find my way around it again from memory any time in the future. OK there was the one time trying to find Helen Atkinsonís house in Nottingham but we wonít go into that. No, this was so strange to me that I kept thinking that our previous camp was just round the corner. In fact, 200 miles or so later, we happened upon the same place again just as we were beginning to get tired. As I see it, there are several possible reasons for my loss of memory; the scenery is so drab I had simply shut off all interest and simply ridden gazing at the tarmac in front of us, I am in fact beginning to lose my memory owing to advancing years or I was still a bit tipsy three days after Christmas on the way up.
All that having been said, obviously we were back at our own private little camping spot and other than not being able to find the tent peg holes that I had bored into the living rock on the previous occasion everything was perfect. It would be nice to have a bit of water to wash in such situations, but it really makes you feel in touch with your environment ñ every time you rub your eyes and the grit on your face makes itself obvious. Maybe we should get some wet wipes.
The next obvious stop on the route south was Copiapo which is a fair sized town established after the discovery of silver in the area. Way back then it was a boomtown and boasted a fair collection of firsts; railways and electricity, to name two. Now it is a convenient place to fill up on the route north or, indeed, south. We found a reasonable hotel with a car park next door at reasonable rates. It was an odd kind of a place. All the rooms were on long passages without roofs running back from the street front giving it the feel of an urban Butlins. Outside our door was a shrine. Which is nice. From a trellis stretching between lines of ìchaletsî were suspended bags of water similar to those one would win at a fairground win-a-goldfish stall; only there were no goldfish in them. Answers please on a postcard. We ate, slept and moved on.
Hippy had mentioned the observatories of Atacama a few times and Iíd got to thinking that sheíd suddenly developed a fascination with stargazing. In fact she intended to give me the opportunity to go and see the observatories thinking that I would be fascinated. She was right and I was wrong. We howled down the road again for another day to take us to VicuÒa a town that has a number of observatories around it.
We were tired on arrival and it seemed that the observatory visits were a bit pricey. Of course, thinking that Hippy was mad keen to go, I booked us in any way. Back at the hotel Hippy started to get a bit strange about the night visit that was planned and started of talking of not going. I was gob smacked until we each explained our motives.. Anyway, it was all booked now and so we decided to make the most of it.
The prerequisite conditions for celestial observations are clear skies at night. Blindingly obvious, I know. The observatory books all of their tours in town and so there is a choice of going from there, up the hill, either in ones own car or by forking out more cash and going in a minibus. ìCan we go on the bikeî Once again, illogicality dictated, no. Much as we argued, we were forced onto the bus.
The bus of course was on manana time. You can get lulled into a false sense of security in Chile and Argentina their overt sophistication make you think that everything is running on European style efficiency. Then occasionally you are reminded with a metaphorical slap in the face that this place still runs on relaxed time. We waited and waited; no one seemed on a rush to move on. Eventually, the bus trundled off and we headed up a road which was completely traversable by bike, I fact it was a good surface all the way. I felt a little conned.
Our English-speaking guide was a sweetie and showed us all manner of things, closed and open clusters, Saturn, Jupiter, and the Magellanic Clouds. In my ignorance I thought that clouds were precipitous things, but these are actually baby galaxies. Itís hard to put over, but the European skies really do not do the sky justice, it is simply so filled with stars that the skies here are more like a full galaxy fire work display.
This then poses its own problems, when our guide was trying to point out constellations, and says ëthe triangle belowí. Now every 3 stars in the maelstrom above could make a triangle so it was impossible to make out which bit he was pointing to. Whereas in the star deprived Europe only the brightest stars are seen and the constellations are easy to see set against a dark background. Here it was impossible. In the end we pretended to make out the Sirius constellation when in fact I hadnít a clue which triangle of the infinite number was meant to be itís head. Of course it doesnít help that all the arrangements were named by a bunch of Greeks in the Northern hemisphere so that everything is upside down here.
For those of you that are astrological buffs get yourselveís here for the 27th of August (as far as we remember ñ it might be wise to check dates) which is when Mars is the closest to earth that it has been for a couple of millennia or something. The advantge of this is that it looks bigger than usual. Get a bigger telescope and look at it any time you like, I say.
You cannot help but be filled with awe by it all, and you leave with a warm feeling that in all those stars and planets there hopefully is life, only bacterial maybe, but the chance that in a few more millennia of millennia Call me a pedant butÖ You can have a million millennia but a millennia of millennia? [webmaster] a planet may do a better job of it than ourselves. And if people here continue to destroy the planet itís not so bad there are billions more. Little earth is hardly important in the scheme of things. That was a party political broadcast on behalf of the Intergallactic Green Party.