We are sitting on the ground in the midday shade of a palm tree. My girl gets up and walks back to the road to get something from the bikes.I watch her every step as in a slow motion sepia film. The light angle is ideal. The wind is still. There is no sound. Her every step feels heavy, intent, deliberate. A small puff of dust every time her boots lift up from the soil. There is something elemental in that dust. It's plain and it's honest. It's a sign that a human being has been there.

I watch the trail of small puffs of dust and am half mesmerised. I smile and shut my eyes, wishing to keep that image in my mind forever.Leaving behind Lorraine and Bob we hit the Panamericana (Ruta 5)

with its sometimes ridiculously long trucks...

and did some serious pedalling northwards.

We would cycle all day, find some half-hidden stealth camping spot, a beach or a defunct camping site and spend the night there, then in the morning pack up and hit the road again.

Stealth camping is sort of necessary in such areas, where all the land
around the highway is fenced and marked as private. There are very few
to no other options for travelling cyclists. Some say you can camp (and shower) in
petrol stations...

or stay in highway motels (there are very few), but what if you find such a motel at noon? No more travelling that day? Doesn´t really work for cycling.

So stealth camping it was. We would pedal for most of the day and when
we were ready to stop we would spend 10-20 minutes scouting the place
and we would always find something suitable.

After three days on the highway averaging 70km a day and travelling at
break-neck speeds

we reached sleepy Tongoy.

Tongoy is a small fishing village south of Coquimbo. We camped in an organised camping (which by that time was a sort of luxury, with running, if cold, water and all that...) and spent a full day in the Ciber (Internet cafe) of the village catching up with you, our favourite readers, and generally tending to our online lives. (Ping asked me to give you the precise number: we spent 7 hours on the keyboards)

Leaving Tongoy

... we quickly reached Coquimbo which is quite nondescript,
apart from a lovely beach stretch of 8km which we cycled. It included
a burning stranded ship

as well as lots and lots of now shut bars and
restaurants (because it´s not a tourist season at the moment), all the way to La Serena with its colourful malls and yummy fast food options:

(luckily NOT really representative of La Serena)

In La Serena we were hosted by Michal, who was kind enough
to have us for a couple of days. We weren´t planning to stay as long,
but he threw a homewarming party that weekend. His colleagues were a
rather select crowd:

A French biologist explained to us how the tonnes of oestrogen that
reach the rivers and seas (eg from contraception pills and through the
human body) affect marine organisms and even leading to massive scale
sex changes, disturbing the natural balance of entire species.
Apparently a very few countries have invested in biological filters
for human waste before it reaches the water supply (eg by cultivating
microorganisms that feed on oestrogen-like hormones) but these are the
exception rather than the rule.

An Argentinian paleoecologist explained to us how they study the last
20.000 years of climate change in trying to predict the future of
Earth's climate, adjusting for the major human distrurbance to the
natural climate cycle since the Industrial Revolution. They "core" the
bottom of lakes or the desert (ie they drill deep in the ground and
retrieve samples of material like fossilised pollen). The deeper you
dig, the further back in time you can look by analysing the material
retrieved.

A Polish glacierologist explained to us the practical applications of
knowing how human activity affects glaciers. What are the effects of
expanding a mining facility in the Andes?

...and so on. The night went on and on with conversations during which
we usually had our mouths open while listening to the hardcore
scientists describing their research and interests.

After such a party and the ensuing sleep deprivation we just had to
rest for a day. We got some cool clip-on sunglasses for Ping

...visited the very cool archaelogical museum of La Serena

...and then headed east to the Elqui Valley and the small town of Vicuña.

It was a 60km ride which was easy enough to do in a day, gently
gaining us 600m of elevation from seaside La Serena to Vicuña.

TRAVELLERS ROUTINE:

At this point I realise we haven´t described a typical day, so here´s
something to give you an idea:

Wake up around 09:00, have breakfast (cereal with milk or sandwiches or bread with butter and honey) and pack up (tent, mattresses, sleeping bags etc).
We are usually ready to ride around 11:00. We usually ride till 18:30
unless we have reached our destination earlier. We take breaks to rest before/after/during particularly bad uphills and usually a quick snack break
and a less quick lunch break.

Lunch consists of sandwiches prepared on the spot. Bread,
butter/avocado, some sort of meat, some cheese, perhaps a tomato,
perhaps some fruit and cookies or honey.

(representative sandwich with the improved & healthier avocado alternative follows)

Snack is usually a cereal bar and/or cookies or fruit.

When we get to our camping spot for the night we first set up the tent
together, then Ping starts chopping things for dinner and I do the
bedding in the tent (mattresses to pump up etc). Then I get the petrol
stove going, boil the water for rice/pasta etc.

Ping prepares the meal while I potter around the tent, lock bikes, filter water, polish my nails and generally do anything that needs doing.

(lots of water bottles to fill every day)

We then eat (usually sitting in the tent´s porch), then wash the
dishes (if we have enough water, otherwise I attack the leftovers with
bread or sand or paper of anything at hand), then do our teeth and
then get in the tent. Usually a bit of reading is all we can muster
before falling into a deep slumber.

== END OF ROUTINE==

In Vicuña we visited the excellent Observatorio Astronomico Mamalluca.
You get there at night (after 9pm) using a cool airport runway-like
approach with LEDs in which all cars turn off their lights to minimise
light pollution and then if you´re lucky get a great tour of the night
sky in English by Señor Luis Traslaviña. His enthusiasm was contagious
and he taught us much about reading the sky. Well worth the visit.

Picture of the moon on that very night with my compact camera through a telescope:

Next day we took a day trip (for the first time!) - we left our
panniers behind in the campsite in Vicuña and with feather-light bikes
we cycled to Pisco Elqui, a supposedly quaint little village at 1200m
elevation in the Elqui Valley.

Suffice it to say that the village is not worth visiting and the ride there was the best part of the 80km round trip.

The next day we returned to La Serena and stayed with Michal once
more. We ate like lions for dinner (three hearty mains between Ping
and myself!) and slept very well.

Leaving La Serena behind we headed north on the Panamericana.
Interestingly it´s not a motorway any longer, just a regular
single-lane country road really. Which meant it was easy to spot a
lovely field of desert flowers and just hop off the Panamericana...

...and camp there for two nights because it was, well, so lovely!

By "desert flowers" we refer to the phenomenon of patches of desert
(we´re talking proper sand, cacti, vultures etc) bursting with the
prettiest, most colourful little flowers. In thousands and
thousands... This happens once every few years when the season has
been very wet. So we´re particularly lucky because we have had no rain
to speak of (only one day in Valparaiso) and we get the benefits of
the past rain (the beauty of a flowering desert).

Carrying on north we visited the Humboldt Penguin Nature Reserve (a
group of islands with interesting fauna), which hit me as a not
particularly pleasant experience because of the whole haggling and
negotiating involved to arrange the "boat tour". In any case, we were
lucky enough to be flanked by a group of dolphins

and we saw some sea lions that were even less active than those outside Valparaiso. Apparently they hunt at night and sleep in the day.

After a beautiful seaside morning walk in which we witnessed little guys thriving against all odds

we left our expensive camping behind. "We" then decided that we should take a shortcut. Instead of going out all the way to the Panamericana (east, then north, then west), we should "just go north" from the secondary (tertiary, really) roads that looked to connect Punta de Choros (where we were) to Huasco (where we
wanted to be).

We thus entered Region de Atacama.

The road was lovely at first...

and the camping spots so beautiful it was difficult to pick one...

Little did we know that it would become a two-day mini Odyssey, with
serious constant off-road

...punishing uphills

followed by broken tarmac & sand downhills.

We found ourselves pushing the bikes uphill in the midday sun, with
legs and arms shaking with tiredness.

We ran out of water and food and
had to ask for supplies at the few houses and mining settlements we
found.

It was by the end of the 2nd day, in the mining settlement of
Quebradita...

... that we stopped to ask for some water and the road ahead,
after having been repeatedly let down by both paper and digital maps
of the area (maps versus reality did not work to our favour - the dark red semi-circle did not exist on the map as we discovered)

... that we met Señor German Gomez. After filling our water tanks he was about
to leave the site and had begun to drive off when I asked whether we
could buy any food there. He said no, gave me the characteristic "hang
on, I´ll sort this out" gesture and disappeared.

After a couple of minutes we noticed someone in full chef attire rushing across the misty mining settlement into a building with the sign "casino" outside. German then said get in there and there will be food, bid his farewell and left.

We walked in and to our surprise were treated to freshly prepared
sandwiches, fruit juice, tea, coffee AND dessert to fill us up and warm us. We
needed it at the time because even though the mountains had been very
hot and we had been swimming in our sweat all day long...

... as one approaches the ocean the fog gathers and creates very cool and wet
areas and our last hour of riding had been thus. When we got up and
asked to pay, we were given two plastic bags with even more food
(sandwitches, fruit, biscuits, juice) and told we couldn´t pay
anything because it was all taken care of by Señor German.

What can I say? We just left a token note of thanks with our names and
this blog address, hoping that he will someday look at it and get
someone to translate this part to Spanish.

Señor German, muchos gracias!

With our hearts swelling with the warmth of human kindness we pedalled on to
the C-526 road, camped in a field for the night, not quite having a full
dinner as we were now overly cautious with our supplies and didn´t
know how different the road ahead would be compared to what we could see on
the map, and went to bed.

The next day we arrived in Huasco to find that we were out of money,
and after three days of free camping in the mountains and serious
pedalling we needed a warm shower and to wash our clothes... But the
single local bank´s ATM is not compatible with the Visa or Mastercard
network, so we could not take out any money.

We checked in to our first hotel of the trip and with some of our last
pesos I bought a bus ticket to Vallenar, the biggest city one hour´s
drive away. I found a compatible ATM, got out money, did some shopping
and headed back to Huasco. That night we had an expensive (by our
standards) meal in a proper restaurant in Huasco. There were many
expats there. It was busy and noisy. The food was relatively elaborate
and quite expensive. Children were screaming. Customers were
demanding. The sole waitress was under a lot of stress. We sat there,
looking around us... it just felt wrong. After three days in the
mountains, after refilling our water bladders from people´s water
reservoirs, after being given food for the road, after being slightly
lost, very dusty and tired, after having rationed our food and water
consumption to ensure we could make it, this rough landing back to
"civilisation" just felt... wrong.

I am writing this in an Internet cafe in Huasco. Beat music is
blaring, people are walking past, the neon light is keeping the place
lit. I miss the simplicity of our tent. I miss the inevitability of
stopping to rest, anywhere on the mountain, of cooking essential food
and focusing on the fundamentals: Our health, our psychology,
protection from the sun and the cold and having water, food and fuel
supplies.

I look forward to jumping back in this simplicity, as we will travel
through Region III of Chile: Region de Atacama.

We might be a while before we can spend an entire day in an Internet
cafe again, but we should be able to use email in areas with cell
phone coverage. I hope the pictures and whatever short stories we
manage to put down with words under our constant time pressure make
your wait a worthwhile one.

´Til soon.

==
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