There was once upon a time an eccentric Englishman called Wilfred Thesiger who, in the early 20th century traveled Arabia and Central Asia exploring places not well known to Europeans. He was much taken by marsh Arabs who used to live in the deltas of Iraq and he made heroic camel crossings of the least populated parts of Saudi Arabia, a place so devoid of life it was known as the Empty Quarter.
We have been driving the desert since southern Ecuador three months ago and before we came here I had no clue how empty and arid and devoid of life this long Pacific coastline would be but we are drawing to a close. By Monday night we hope to be in Valparaiso where we are assured greenery is abundant, and I feel it’s about time.
Sitting at the wheel of the Promaster in relative comfort watching the sand flow by at fifty or sixty miles per hour I cannot in any way compare myself to the pioneer desert traveler to whom I referred to above. If you read his books you’ll understand why I am in awe of his strength and self confidence; we follow the smooth black ribbon through a land that is certainly desolate but reasonably well traveled.
However it’s impossible not to think of the great explorers who came before especially when the romance of travel inspired you to leave home and explore for self places unknown to you. I’m certainly not the first here but this is my first time here and no matter how indirectly my reading of the stories of Wilfred Thesiger, Dame Freya Starke, Sir Richard Burton and Gertrude Bell have inspired me. I think of them in their wildness and aloneness and mad faith in their ability to persevere and it gives me in my comfortable van, pleasure to be in an empty arid beige place, like them but not among them. I am not a pioneer.
I am nothing if not a paradox so it was with a little sadness I saw signs of life at last in the sand. But first we had one last day of pure Atacama.
I am very fond of the frequent rest areas, simple rectangles of asphalt at intervals on both sides of the PanAmerican Highway and equipped with nothing more than trash barrels but they are an excellent place to pull over and stretch your legs.
Layne slept on in bed as Rusty and I explored the surface of Mars.
You can see why NASA comes here to test space exploration vehicles. The photograph above was inspired very loosely by this one below, firmly down on Earth:
There are no clouds in the sky to speak of here, except as you close with the coast and see the cold ocean air mix with the warm desert air to create the usual Pacific Ocean marine inversion seen all along this coast of the Americas. Here we have a study in brown, a beige van in a beige desert.
Then at last we crossed what had once been the southern border of Bolivia. This was the northern edge of Chile before the Pacific War of 1879. Now it is the edge of the Atacama Region of Chile which hardly corresponds to the size of the Atacama Desert itself.
And slowly green stuff appeared, mostly in washes where there were signs of some moisture once.
It was still a long drive to Bahía Inglesa where we hoped to find a decent campground. I have been unable to discover why it is called English Bay but I do know it has a population of a few hundred in the village and it has a reputation for crystal clear waters, white sand and good swimming as well as all the usual water sports.
But first more desert.
We got our first glimpse of the ocean at Chañaral another of those mysterious place names I’d never heard of as I had no knowledge of Chile’s geography before driving through it.
And then we had an hour of Big Sur type swooping and winding along a roiling Pacific Ocean crashing on volcanic black rocks just beneath us.
This is low season, Spring has just sprung in the southern hemisphere and these summer homes are not in use at the moment. Summer vacations start around Christmas.
Home sweet home for the night, cold sandy and windy, an almost empty vast campground. $15 for hot showers and a picnic table with power outlets and even a barbecue grill. It was a normal campground at last.
In a few weeks when summer hits this place will be packed. As it was we found one intrepid traveler last seen in Arequipa Peru.
Jurg and Anya and their four wheel drive Ford Ranger were trying to cross the Andes to Argentina to meet some friends but late snowstorms have closed almost all the passes across the mountains. Their choice after their first failed attempt was to wait or make a 1200 mile detour through Bolivia so here they were. Surprise surprise! The photo is the one I took in Peru at Las Mercedes.
The sun set, the wind was cold so we all did gathered in a sitting area behind a wall and with alcohol to warm us we got up to date on each others’ travels. Jurg has lots of experience driving South America so he scared the pants off us talking about Patagonia the fearsome exposed plains of the southernmost tip of South America.
We braced ourselves for endless strong winds to come, cold slashing rain, gravel roads, no fresh food and miles between gas stations. It sounds like Alaska on steroids. I did notice the watering for the palms here just to remove me this oasis is in a very dry desert.
Jurg left early to see if the Carabineros (Chile’s national police) had opened the pass, hoping snow ploughs had done their work while we shuffled around taking hot showers and so forth.
It was warm in the sun but cold in the breeze off the ocean. It was hard to remember this place is a fancy summer resort with sun tanned bodies, swimming and frolicking in salt water and so forth.
We got going for La Serena a seaside town hopefully on the edge of this interminable desert. Friday was another long drive hence the delay in posting on this page. It’s been tiring.
We passed this well known resort called Domo for obvious reasons and I got the feeling traveling in a comfortable van is decidedly the way to go for me.
More desert with a four lane highway…
We had one last cock up when we accidentally passed the last gas station for 180 miles and found ourselves drifting into the last dozen miles on fumes. I hate doing that but once again we got away with it and arrived at El Huerto (The Garden) an hour before dark. The young Germans preceded us as they never stop for lunch or to admire art…
…or to buy locally grown olives.
Google Maps took us through the rather run down beach town of La Serena to its smaller and more fancy neighbor of Coquimbo, where our campground was located.
And this is why I’ll never be an explorer like Thesiger. A full service campground, $30 a night with hot showers, potable water faucets (I love Chile) and a spacious shaded campsite to ourselves. As usual it was just us and Florian and Cora.
I have high hopes we will see more greenery on our way to Valparaiso on Monday.
