The next morning I woke up in pretty heavy mist which quickly burnt off, allowing the sun to melt the ice covering the outside of my tent, it was probably around -10 degrees that night. With clearer skies I could see back up to Volcan Parinacota, an impressively symmetric and snow covered 6000 m volcano that I'd only been able to see the base of the day before. I dropped down to the positively balmy Putre at 3700 m for a hot meal and some consultation with the Conaf station who manage the national parks. It turned out that all the lodgings/food options I had been hoping for along the route were closed, so I stocked up on some extra water and food and headed back up the 800 m climb I'd just come down. From back up at about 4300 m I took a good dirt road off towards Gutlatiri, a small (and empty) village about 60 km away in the shadow of the volcano of the same name, there the only sign of life came from the carabinero post, they obiously thought I was crazy camping in those temperatures so opened up the hostel in Guatlatiri and let me sleep there for free which was a bonus.
After a good night's sleep in a bed I had a fairly short trip on more dirt roads to Salar de Surire, a small salt flat at about 4300 m right on the border, here I met more legendary carabineros who fed me a meal of bread ham and melon before declaring that it was far too cold to camp here and carting me and bike round to the other side of the Salar. This was altogether quite confusing, mostly because I couldn't understand a word of what was being said (the Chilean accent is a bit like listening to someone talk with a mouthful of ice cream) but they ended up taking me exactly where I wanted to go, a thermal spring with some protected camping spots on the other side of the Salar. Anyway as soon as we got there the carabineros stripped off a jumped straight in, the water was lovely but the wind as soon as you got out was bitingly cold. After they'd left, I was left to have a pleasant new years eve soak, sharing the thermal spring with a few flamingos watching the ring of mountains around the edge gradually turn pink, it was a pretty awesome campsite. There were a couple from Montreal camping at the same place (they'd arrived in a 4wd) who cracked open a bottle of champagne that evening, and I'd love to say we saw the new year in with style, more truthfully I was in bed by about 9.
The next morning I made a fairly early start because I knew I had a longish day, I had about 95 km of dirt road left before I got out the other side and hit tarmac again, up until now the dirt roads hadn't been too bad, but they rapidly deteriorated that day until I was climbing in loose sand and rocky tracks, after passing a watershed (there was no water anywhere in that landscape, just dried up valleys) I had a windy and heavily washboarded road to Colchane, by the time I arrived I was pretty knackered and pretty beat up from all the washboard, I was also out of food and waterm having gone 3 days without a shop or restaurant, so I was pretty annoyed to find all the restaurants and hotels in Colchane closed. Cue some more legendary Carabineros who fed me a hot meal and refilled my water bottles, managed about 10 km more that evening into a stonking headwind before finding a good outcrop to camp under.
Woke up the next morning without ice on my tent for the first time in a while, and started the descent down to the coast. Unfortunately the first 70 km of it weren't descent at all, instead a road winding over and through some pretty tortured geography, still no water and no villages to restock in. I passed over a pass at about 4200 m after that came the holy grail, 80 km of pure descent, with a pretty good air brake provided by more headwind. About 20 km before hitting the Panamericana again, I finally found an open restaurant, after about 150 km on a cereal bar and about 200 ml of water I was pretty happy to see that. By this point I was down in the Atacama desert. The headwind had built up to around 60 kph and there were regular sandstorms sweeping across the road, not really ideal cycling conditions, but I was still hopeful I'd make it to the coast to Iquique. So I stocked up on 'kola real' (it would probably have been cheaper to just buy the plant fertilizer) and cheap biscuits and cracked on. Having spent so long at altitude I was feeling pretty fit, but another 60 km of that headwind turned my legs some kind of amino acid gloop. The last 45 km into Iquique were particularly agonising, but I was rewarded with an awesome pacific sunset. Totalled about 4000 m of descent and 245 km for the day, and have learnt that cycling in the Acatama is pretty unpleasant. Got a couple of days here in Iquique because all the washboard road broke my camera and need to try and get that fixed (hence no photos) and then I'm heading up to San Pedro de Atacama, probably by bus because cycling through the desert is just painful, am very tempted to skip a lot of north Chile to avoid more desert, but not yet decided.
Anyway off to the beach now, have eaten about 10 meals in the last day and a half, and no sign of slowing down...
Now with lots of pictures.
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