Jan 6th – Over the Andes by road.

From Fiambala in Argentina to Copiapo in Chile should have been a 500km ride with about half on unmade roads. But the day before we left there had been a huge storm; Fiambala normally gets 10cm of rain a year and this time it got 10cm in one day. As a result we added a 140km detour, all on dirt roads because our planned route in Chile was totally washed out and everyone had to move in a convoy on a new, hastily assembled, route.

We left at dawn and climbed up to 16,000 feet to cross the Paso de San Francisco into Chile. The road to this point had been very well maintained tarmac but, as you can see in the photo of the summit, the tarmac ended at the border. Riding along with all the other vehicles overtaking and ploughing up dust, was interesting when there was then no visibility.

The drive is spectacular to say the least; climbing through the dramatic rock formations, across a plateau at around 11,000 feet with views of mountaintops all around and wild Vicuna moving through, into Chile then the challenge of wide but unpredictable dirt roads, the Green Lagoon where we stopped for lunch along with a bike competitor who grabbed a nap and told us he hadn’t slept for 29 hours, down amazing swithbacks that dropped a couple of thousand feet in a very short distance. Every turn was breathtaking.

We then arrived at Copiapo, late and bedraggled, after crossing the southernmost end of the Atacama Desert; a place where it has not rained in recorded history. We rode about 150km in this area and there is no life to be seen; no grass, lichen, cactus, tress, not a living thing. Well I didn’t look for bacteria.