Wednesday, September 27, 2006 

A real ghost town.


The once rich and prosperous ´nitrate town´ of Humberstone now lays abandoned.

Slowly crumbling into the Atacama desert it's easy to imagine how life once was. A purpose built town with a swimming pool and theatre, life was good for workers and their families.

Unfortunately for them, petrochemical fertilizers and development of more explosive substances led to the bottom falling out of the nitrate market and almost overnight Humberstone along with numerous other Atacaman nitrate towns were abandoned.


Industrial buildings used to process the nitrate and even the engineers workshops have all been left exctly as they once were including tools etc.










































The cast iron swiming pool complete with diving boards, shaded stadium seating and icecream kiost (left hand corner). This must have been packed on weekends and would be a welcome relief from the desert heat which was 37c on the day we visted.








Holes in the corrugated iron roof lit up the dance floor in the ball room probably better than the old glitter ball used to.

Wednesday, September 27, 2006 |

 

Iquique & the beach

We've enjoyed our time in the waves at Iquique.

We arrived just as Chile was on it's national holiday for independence. The beach was packed, it seemed almost everyone was flying a kite.

Feeling well rested we're now desperate to get back on the road, it feels like we've been here too long!

Wednesday, September 27, 2006 |

Monday, September 25, 2006 

Sad to be leaving Bolivia.

Crossing the border into Chile was a very informal affair. Having no border control it seems Chile prefers other methods to keep out unwanted visitors.

As the road ascends to 4700m away from Laguna Verde it splits into numerous branches and vanishes in all directions across the desert. If you choose the right road you´ll have to negotiate the minefields left over from the War of the Pacific.



Bolivia has been the best, most beautiful leg of the journey so far. 887km across dunes, deserts and volcanic badlands and the largest salt lake on the planet. We only managed to find 230km of proper roads and didn´t see another soul for 9 consecutive days, we crossed the highest passes and slept through the coldest nights.

Bolivia is a truly wild country but has hidden gems around every corner. We´re not really sure why it has such bad press, maybe it´s American propaganda as part of the war on drugs, but we experienced nothing but kindness and hospitality often from the poorest of people.

 Once we´ve negotiated the minefields we plan on heading through San Pedro de Atacama to Iquique, northern Chile´s surfing hotspot to lie on the beach for a week. We´ll then head back (by bus) to Salta (northern Argentina) to resume our original itinerary, as planned before we got distracted by Bolivia.

We´ve also resolved to stop selecting the most difficult routes we can find and stick to roads... at least for a while until we´ve made up some time.

Monday, September 25, 2006 |

 

Laguna Verde and the end of Bolivia

The snow dusted peaks on route from the theraml springs at Polques to Laguna Verde.













Volcano Lincancabur stands a few metres short of 6000m and stradles the Bolivian-Chliean border. At the foot of its slopes lies Laguna Verde a bright green lake, looking more like a small tropical sea.









Early morning mist over Laguna Verde the morning we left for Chile.

Monday, September 25, 2006 |

Thursday, September 21, 2006 

A Martian landscape


Another campsite on some salt flats at about 4500m.












Unfortunately the sun was so bright these photos haven´t turned out so well.

Small groups of vicuña would graze these high plains which seemed to be absolutely free of any vegetation whatsoever.








 The strangely eroded rocks in the distance and the perfectly uniform fields of pummice took us all morning to cycle past. The scale of the landscape is very deceptive and almost impossible to judge even when cycling accross them.








 The multicoloured pummice gave this particular group of volcanoes a wonderful marbled effect. Sarah hoped it was a giant marbled sponge cake as our food daydreams reached new proportions.

Thursday, September 21, 2006 |

Wednesday, September 20, 2006 

An even higher pass to Aqua Termales de Polques


A great day. 50km over 5.5hrs, a maximum of 50.5kmph, and an average of 8.8kmph. We climbed 1375m and descended 900m reaching a new trip high of 4905m.....almost 100m higher than Mont Blanc. (Chris if you want to go higher -Aconcagua awaits)

This fork in the road offered us a tempting escape route to Chile (5km), a beach and cold beer. We resisted.






The Sol de Mañana geyser field (campo de fumeroles) and the location for an international geothermal research project.

The fumeroles behind us can spout steam upto 200m into the freezing air (usually at dawn), surprisingly, the most striking thing was the deafening noise they make.







The long descent to Laguna Salada and the hot springs.













A martian landscape.













Finally relaxing (our first wash for too long to mention) under the stars at Aqua Termales de Polques 38C... unfortunately the pleasure was short lived as we camped close by, the temperature hit a new low of -30C!

Wednesday, September 20, 2006 |

 

Laguna Colorada

Luguna Colorada provided some welcome colour to the otherwise sun bleached volcanic landscape.












At over 4000m the winds are freezing and in the afternoons tear across the surface of the lake.












The rare James flamingo makes it´s home on Laguna Colorada.

Maybe it´s just a very vain bird and likes it because the colour of the lake matches it´s plumage.








A quebrada (Puente del Diablo) provided us with another sheltered campsite out of the howling winds.

We´d ran out of water at this point and spent most of our fuel melting snow to drink.







Wednesday, September 20, 2006 |

 

Our highest pass yet.

More sandy washboard roads from Villarmar, the town mysteriously on no maps.

It´s difficult to describe just how uncomfortable and slow these are but imagine riding a a shetland pony bareback down some stairs.....for 5 hours. (if you want to include the altitude imagine that while breathing through a snorkel).






Over this pass and down to a Borax mine where they put us up for the night. The campamento (Capina) situated at 4500m was home for 26 miners, a baker, a cook and was bitterly cold.











More great road, but the beautiful scenery and tranquility more than makes up for sore bottoms.


Wednesday, September 20, 2006 |

 

San Augustin to Alota

Leaving San Augustin we had to ford a number of streams. I finaly managed to get a photo of Sarah getting her feet wet in the icy water.

A couple of k´s up the road there were ostriches running around close to the road.








Climbing over the pass towards Alota, a very small town hidden in the badlands and our last chance to buy supplies before the national park area (Eduardo Avaroa).

Sarah is sat opening a tin of Vicuña meat which had replaced jam as our favorite cracker topping.







At this point of the trip only one vehicle had passed us in 9 days! We stopped and photographed all the rivers and streams as they broke the monotony of the desert and gave us an opportunity to fill our bottles.

We were carrying about 16 litres of water and enough crackers for about 4 days.






Small stream beds gave us a break from the wind and provided good campsites.

Wednesday, September 20, 2006 |

Tuesday, September 19, 2006 

South of the salar, towards the border.

As we passed through San Juan a little ginger spaniel seemed to get attached to us.

Gingersnap ran with us all day and guarded the tent all night, before running with us again to the next town where we took her to the health centre and asked if someone could escort her home before we were tempted to have her on crackers.






A kettle bush in full flower.

Tuesday, September 19, 2006 |

 

Salar de Uyuni

The Salar de Uyuni is the worlds largest salt lake (12,000km2) and unique in the fact that much of it´s surface is covered by pure white salt not mud and salt as many other salt lakes (salars).









The surface is as hard as concrete and in some places ideal for cycling, in others it´s not so good as we were to find out.

At least it was flat.









Food was scarce, everything, including water had to be carried with us. Our diet consisted of crackers with a variety of toppings, our favorite being jam.










The biggest sky we´ve ever seen.

The volcanoes in the distance mark the Chilean border about 80 km away.










At the time we thought this beautiful campsite was on Inca Wasi (Isla de Pescadores) but it´s really easy to get disorientated on the salar and due to a compass malfunction we´re not really sure where this was, or even where we were for the next couple of days!

Tuesday, September 19, 2006 |

 

The weird forest and meteor craters.


More desert, no more roads and lots more guess work.












The weird forest we´d seen on the map legend turned out out to be a strange area of rocks stretching a number of km´s. Great for camping.

The full moon later that night gave it the apperance of a deserted city.









A meteor crater created a lovely little oasis for llamas and vicuñas. It was perfectly circular with a perfectly circular little lagoon in the bottom.












Richard, exhausted after all the cycling and very happy to be tucked up in his favorite bedspread which he insists on taking everywhere.

Tuesday, September 19, 2006 |

 

Leaving Oruro and heading out across the desert

Leaving Oruro meant not only leaving the beautiful asphalt roads but leaving roads altogether. Often a compass bearing and following things like telegraph lines and some good guess work was all we had.









Sarah´s first set of legs were completely worn out. She discarded them at the road side and we fashioned a new pair from our spare spokes.












A welcome change to riding accross sand and an opportunity to fill our water bottles.

In the background our Swiss friends Peter and Bea, who´d set off cycling from Switzerland 3 years ago.








Our poco cucina and another feast of pasta and tinned fish.

Although the photos look as if it´s nice and warm the nights were very cold. This particular night was -18C. The nights to come got much colder as we gained altitude.

Tuesday, September 19, 2006 |