Not a whole lot to write about today, but I'll give it a shot anyways. We woke up this morning in Patillo Chile, earlier than usual, were trying to adjust to the 2 hour time change we got when we crossed the border. Breakfast was the standard fare for the area, instant coffee, bread, sliced cheese and sandwich meats. It actually works out pretty good for us, don't need to eat a whole lot when all your going to do all day is hold onto a set of handlebars. The three Brazilian bikers were loading up their bikes before breakfast, and we all posed for group photos before they headed off into the unknown. Unknown because they told us, in Portuguese. We spent most of the morning catching up the blog while we had the chance, and a comfortable couch to work from. Eventually we loaded and headed out to the local gas station for our bikes diet of gas and oil. Petroleum products down here are not cheap, a tank of gas and a quart of oil set us back about $30 US each. For as nice as the roads are here, its sure going to throw off the daily budget. There are plenty of street dogs here that love to chase my motorcycle, and Ive had to result to the boot and throttle to prevent them from tying to take me out.
We rode down along the coast for a while on a narrow strip of land between the ocean, and where the mountains sweep steeply up to almost 3000ft. Passing through one of the last towns we would see for a while, we gassed up again, and hunted down some Wd-40 for our chains. We've used several other kinds of motorcycle specific chain lubes, and I haven't seen much difference for our situation, other than price. Lider is the WalMart of South America and as I watched the bikes, Chip went inside for wd, and a new headlight bulb to replace the led one that burned out already.
With freshly lubes chains and full tanks of gas, we rolled on down the coast. After a while the road turned inland, and we climbed up and out into the desert. The Atacama desert is the driest non-polar desert in the world, and it is empty. Sand, rocks, and mountains are pretty much the only thing there besides the road and power line. There is one thing there that stands out, a giant hand sculpture that stands 36ft tall. Mano del Desierto is its name, and it was placed there as a monument to the emptiness of the land. Kinda cool, since Ive seen pictures of it before, we did the photo thing as well before taking off on down the road. The Atacama desert it famous for its wind, and we got to experience it first hand. One section of wind basically took away my top two gears for a bit, just not enough power to push through it at the speeds we wanted. Oh well, duck down and hang on and just hope it doesn't last too long. We made it to the next gas station ok, Chip had switched to reserve a few miles before, and was just a bit worried about being able to make it. So the third fill up of the day, top off the oil and head the last 100 miles to the beach where we hoped to camp.
Just outside of Chanaral I stopped and waited for Chip, who had stopped earlier to put the liner in his jacket, it had cooled off quite a bit up there. I put in my liner as well while I waited. We stopped in town and grabbed some water, then went to see if we could find a suitable campsite. No such luck as the beach was very rocky, and we had pushed the limit of daylight, arriving just after sunset, I guess we should start before 11:30am next time if we want to make big miles and find a place to camp, We covered just under 600 kilometers today, not bad for small bikes on a late start. With camping crossed off the list, we came back into town and found a place for the night. Nothing fancy, but they are remodeling it, we just got here too soon to enjoy it.
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| Sunset overlooking the ocean |
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| Hand of the Desert, talk to it |
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| Racing the sunset to the beach |
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