Southern Exposure

Saturday, February 21 – Villa Mar to San Pedro de Atacama

We woke up at 7 am anticipating the day to be much longer and harder than yesterday. After a cup of instant coffee and a few power bars for breakfast we loaded the bikes, suited up and headed out. A lustrous morning light was illuminating the valley and spotlighting the nearby meadow where a large herd of different colored llamas was grazing. I’ve never seen so many llamas casually roaming around in one place. It was an enchanting sight.

Our destination was Laguna Colorada. The first part of the road took us through a mountain pass. Although the road was very rocky and bumpy and the bike was slipping off the large rocks, the scenery was amazingly rewarding, with smooth reddish-brown colored peaks in the distance, and semi dessert grassland with silky patches of bushes sprinkled all around.

We then passed a couple half frozen algae-rich salt lakes stained in a wide variety of hues by microorganisms and mineral deposts. We marveled at the range of colors from white to bright red, to green and deep brown.

After an hour of mountainous landscape we descended down to the altiplano flats and back to the sandy corrugated roads and dry grasslands with scant vegetation.

Matt was leading and had his first soft crash of the day in the unexpected deep sand. We lifted up the bike and kept on going.

To our surprise we reached Laguna Colorada by 12 noon, much earlier than we anticipated. We stopped at the entrance to the park for a quick snack and engaged in a conversation with two French bicyclists. They were coming from the south on the same roads we were going to take, and gave us invaluable advice on taking alternative roads to avoid deep sand.

We paid our park entrance fee and headed closer to the lake to check out the colonies of pink flamingos. This area has the largest population of the rare James flamingo in the world. There were hundreds of them picking their long necks in and out of the water, and covering the lake surface like a pink velvety blanket.

After marveling at the sight for a while we continued down the road. We knew that once we passed the laguna, there would be no places to stay for the night and we would have to cross into Chile that evening.

We did prior research on the aduana which for some strange reason was located in the park 25 miles north of the border crossing. We did the 5 km detour off the main road to the aduana, located at over 16,000 ft, and the process took less than 3 minutes. Happy to have dealt with that so painlessly we were back on the road heading to Laguna Verde.

This stretch of the road was probably the most startling scenery we have seen on this trip and maybe ever in our lives. Snowcapped volcanic peaks were looming in the distance as we were passing through brightly red and intensely brown colored high altitude desert fields and mountains.

We decided to stop for 10 minutes to admire the strange rock outcrops scoured by the unremitting wind into Dali-esque formations. It is hard to describe the otherworldy majestic beauty of this place, and photographs certainly can not relay the intensity of color and the grandeur of the landscape. We felt absolutely stunned, humbled and in awe of the surroundings. This is what we worked so hard for!

The landscape felt like an archetype, engraved in my memory, may be from the surrealist paintings of Dali, or possibly my dreams or visions, or the images of Mars… something about the experience of being there was very familiar, very human, but very raw and wild at the same time.

We felt attracted to that place like to a magnet and wanted to stay there longer but we knew we had only a few hours of light left and we still had a lot of ground to cover.

Our next destination was Laguna Verde. I have seen pictures of this beautiful turquoise lake and was excited to see it in person. It was not as impressive as I anticipated. I think may be because the sun was not in a good angle and the color of the lake was not as intense blue as on the pictures I have seen. Nevertheless, we enjoyed half an hour at the lake and headed south towards the border.

We exited the park and the immigration office was already in our sight when Matt had a pretty nasty crash. The road was freshly graded (the grading machine was ahead of us) and perfectly flat, but unexpectedly Matt’s front wheel dug into the sand and he was thrown into the shoulder. The bike’s upper fairing was cracked, the low beam bulb went out and the right box got smooshed.

To leave Bolivia we had to pay about $5 each (that’s on top of the $135 per person to enter!) and tired, exhausted and bit down we were finally on Chilean territory and on pavement. After 50 km on a smooth as a butter road and some stunning sunset scenery we reached San Pedro de Atacama. The aduana process was painless but by the time we were done with it it was 9 pm and pitch black.

We set out to find a hotel. Little did we know that it was the Carnaval weekend and everything in this stupid overpriced town was booked. We tried five hotels with no luck. One had a room for $200 a night (thanks, but no thanks!), but nothing else was available. We almost considered going to another town, but decided to give one last hostel a try. Yes, they had a “superior” room – for $90! Trust me, there was nothing superior about that room, not for that price. We had no other choice but to take it. We hurried up to take a shower before they shut off water and electricity at 11 pm. The shower lifted our spirits and calmed us down a bit after the strenuous day, but overall we felt physically and mentally spent and fell asleep instantly.