PowerCycle

09/24 I’m back in the lowlands again. After leaving the border area with Bolivia there was a bit of climbing up to 13,000 feet and then it was all downhill. OK, not quite but here I am at 7,500 feet; lower than I’ve been in 3 months.

Chile and I are not getting along well. It has to do with my wallet. It is horribly freaking expensive here!!! Lunch was $9 US for a beer, some little pieces of chopped meat, a salad (haha, it was some lettuce and 3 slices of tomatoes) and some rice. This is all local stuff–nothing needed to be imported. $9 freaking dollars! OK, then we get to the hotel. This is a big city (142,000 peeps or so). I rode to 5 places and they were all twice as much as this place. It cost me $35 US a night! It must be an amazing place for that price you say? No, it is crap. OK, it’s not that bad but it should be $9 at the most. The internet doesn’t work (I’m stealing it), the shower is so small that my shoulders hit both walls and I can’t even bend down to wash my damn feet, the paint on the walls is cracked, there are no electrical covers, there’s not enough room for my bike and the pillow cases have dried blood stains on them. I could go on.

But for $35 the infrastructure in the city must be amazing you say? No it is crap too. OK, it’s actually not bad but you can bet that $10 of that room cost isn’t going to taxes. The roads are in pretty good shape but only in the central area. Overall there’s a fairly modern, clean look to the city but that certainly doesn’t justify the cost of basic goods. The one huge negative was that I saw a lot of stupid stray dogs sleeping on the sidewalks. You would think they’d at least get rid of them so there’s not crap all over the place. Outside the city all there is to judge things by is the road and until 20 miles ago it ranked as one of the top 5 worst roads I’ve been on in almost 3 years of travel.

Why is it so expensive here? I have no idea. I did some research and couldn’t come up with a good reason. The electrical costs to industry and individual are about the same as Peru. The food I eat isn’t imported. The infrastructure isn’t any better than comparably-sized cities in Peru and those cities are much, much nicer (Cajamarca, Cusco). The value of their currency might be an issue but I’ve only been consuming local things.

Basically all this means is that there’s no way I’m staying in Chile for the ride down the 770 mile Carretera Austral like I was considering. I’ll head out of here over to Argentina and go down south that way.

The ride from the border to here was through some truly remarkable landscape. All along the border with Bolivia were massive, snow capped volcanic peaks, huge salt lakes, occasional lagoons dotted with pink flamingos and lot’s of wild vicunas (deer-like things). I even saw a lizard running around at 12,300 feet.

Finding a place to camp out was very difficult at times. The road drops down into the Atacama Desert–the driest place on Earth. Some weather stations in the desert have never received rain. The terrain is flat, sandy and devoid of any bushes/trees/old buildings to hide behind. It took me 2 1/2 days of riding to get to Calama. The first night I slept way up off the road next to a salt mining camp. The next night I slept in a dry river bed.

The notorious southwesterly winds hit full force leaving Ollague starting at 10am or so. There was no let up until 6pm which made for a tough day of riding. It was hilly as well–climbed about 2400 feet the first day (40 miles riding) and 1400 feet or so the next day (55 miles). Today, getting into Calama, was easy (900 feet @36 miles paved from a few miles before Chiu Chiu). The road was worse than the wind. It was washboard 75% of the time around the lakes near Bolivia and then it was bumpy and dirt (or occasional beat-up asphalt).

GPX track