The Atacama Again

From foggy La Serena to the driest desert in the world we spent Wednesday on the road. 

It started with a dog walk and ended with a dog walk, with a few in between. 

We free camped in a quarry off the PanAmerican Highway, had ramen for dinner and passed out. 10 hours on the road will do that to you. 

We got to within 120 miles of Antofagasta where we seek a Bolivian visa at the consulate. We impose a visa on Bolivians so American tourists have to have a visa for Bolivia. Same story for Brazil.

The cold pacific marine inversion was heavy. It’s the same as the  US west coast where cold ocean air rolls up against warmer inland air and produces low lying  cloudiness. 

And here we have the same rocky coast with Pacific rollers crashing in the rocky coastline.  

Top quality pavement all the way allowing us to cruise at 60 miles an hour. Except on the hilly bits where I don’t push GANNET2. 

The freeway looks very European in its signage 

Tourist signs in brown and the classic European exit countdown showing 200 meters to the next exit. 

Emergency phones with pull outs. All very reassuring. 

Public art. It looks like kelp to me but I don’t know what it is. It’s memorable as I remember seeing it on our way south last November. 

Truck stops and rest areas. 

Many have free or low cost (75 cent) hot showers for men and women with an attendant to keep the showers clean. There is also an ambulance on stand by at many truck stops ready to respond to car accidents.  Chile is very organized and I love it.  

Heavy truck traffic up and down Highway 5, the PanAmerican. 

The Atacama Desert, the driest place on earth. 

Nicely landscaped gas stations, also with free showers, convenience stores and fast food restaurants.  And the cleanest toilets you’ve seen at a gas station. Travel here is easy and civilized. It’s not what you think of when you think of Latin American chaos and color. 

Lots of overnight parking and completely safe if you are worried. We prefer wild camping but you can stay here overnight no problems. 

We are going to come back to this area if fascinating black volcanic rock next year, after the summer travel season ends and wild camping on the coast here. 

The problem with Totoralillo is it’s on the road to other places but this area is riddled with tracks through the rocks with hundreds of places to park within hearing of the waves crashing on shore and it’s worth a stop. We will next year I keep promising  myself. 

And then the inland driest of the dry places. 

Keeping Rusty hydrated he gets water every stop. 

iOverlander led us to a quarry off Highway 5 overlooking the desert. 

We arrived just before dark, snapped a couple of pictures while Rusty stretched his legs. 

And we slept in the darkest night under the most brilliant stars with occasional trucks rumbling by in the highway below. 

It was a long day. Antofagasta is next. And bureaucracy. Oh joy. 

Last Day In La Serena

I made a mess yesterday morning programming my post to appear May 1st, not April 1st and I hadn’t  noticed before Bruce sent me a note complaining.  So I put that right and I wasn’t even too annoyed at myself as we had had a great morning.  I hate messing up my planned publishing times on this page. Apologies. 

Rusty and I went for a walk on the beach and left Layne putting groceries away back at home and organizing things so when we get to Bolivia we will be able to live our normal middle class on the road life. 

Then we went looking for a transmission shop to change the fluid in the Promaster’s automatic transmission. The factory says the 62TE gearbox should get five and a half quarts of fresh fluid every 60,000 miles. We last had it done in Ohio 30,000 miles ago but I was thinking we had stressed the gears quite a bit despite my careful driving coming down the Andes. 

We had the new filter from the Jeep dealer but dealing with an automatic gearbox was perplexing to local mechanics. 

We drove to a couple and then we hunted in iOverlander and found a recommendation in the app. 

When in doubt ask iOverlander. And as noted it’s an out of town mechanic’s shop.

From a distance it looks more like a farm building. 

I explained what I needed to Giorgio and his two mechs it’s and they were fascinated by my Fiat Ducato van with a sideways V6 Jeep engine. Pull it in because we’ll check it out but I have lots of work today. Oh well we thought bracing ourselves to come back the next day.

They had it all buttoned up by noon. $300 for oil and labor and we were delighted. Giorgio and I chatted (in Spanish) about his Italian grandmother who emigrated from Trento in Northern Italy. My Italian accented Spanish gives me away. 

So, we now have new tires and a fresh load of lubricant in the transmission… now what? Go to the beach of course and catch our breaths. 

We parked by the lighthouse, more a monument than an aid to navigation. It’s built on a street corner that reminds me of South Roosevelt and Bertha on the south side of Key West. The coast road just ends and turns inland here. 

It was built in 1950, decommissioned in 1985 and serves as a tourist attraction. 

And we are tourists. 

What a beach all to ourselves. 

It seemed like a good time to test our gearbox and the overlanders we had met the day before had recommended a waterfront eatery 45 minutes up the coast. The perfect test drive.

This is Highway 5 the PanAmerican which we will be driving up to Antofagasta on Wednesday. For now we were bowling along at 60 mph toward lunch. 

The gearbox felt smoother and less noticeable now we had changed the fluid but that could have been my imagination. The back road to the restaurant put our new tires to the test and I love my KO2s. 

I took a wrong turn to explore the village and we found ourselves scrabbling across ditches and dips. 

It looked good. 

They are pet friendly on the terrace but we left Rusty napping aboard. There were a number of local dogs around and he wasn’t happy. 

Our waitress was a moron. Or possibly she was just scared of foreigners. We received our first course, a bowl of shrimp and cheese to share. 

Delicious but nothing else appeared. And that includes our imbecile waitress so Layne went looking to find her crab and my cod. “Oh” she said, “did you want another course?”

We paid and left. 

Layne made a chicken salad sandwich at the campground and that was that. It was the worst experience we’ve had in a restaurant and we never have trouble making ourselves understood. Who knows what the glitch was but even the view couldn’t hold us. 

The plan now is to take a couple of days to drive north to Antofagasta and see what it takes to get a visa at the Bolivian consulate there. We can get a visa at the border but they charge $320 to two Americans, so we will check in with consulates on the way and see if we can get one ahead of time.

Our route more or less via Antofagasta, San Pedro de Atacama and the Jama Pass (15,900 feet on asphalt) into Argentina. Then from Salta east and north into Bolivia near the border with Paraguay. Our friends plan to enter Bolivia from Paraguay and together we travel the country for a couple of weeks. Bolivia is a mess so the company will be welcome.