Just the next town along
Motorcycling from Arica to Iquique after disaster strikes
So, not to put too fine a point on it, Chile had not been treating us well. With the loss of Didier’s pannier the problems of the last week or so had (we hoped) come to their lowest ebb. With all three of us being engineers, each item of kit that we have taken with us had been meticulously researched before scouring the internet for the best price. When a bit of kit goes missing the pain of all those hours scrolling through endless Amazon pages is felt acutely when you realise you are going to have to settle with whatever overpriced and substandard stuff you can find in the vague hope that a) it keeps you alive and b) it fits in your luggage. It is not a happy process.
After the theft had sunk in and the inevitable series of should haves and if onlys we set about trying to replace the essential camping gear that Didier needed to survive a night on the altiplano. Our search started with possibly the best thing about Chile — Jorge, the guy who makes hard, aluminium luggage for motorbikes, speaks excellent english and exceedingly happy to help out with anything he can. He helped us find a motorbike mechanic in our first stint in Arica, and was now in a position to help Didier out with his luggage problem. Jorge first offered us some old soft luggage that he had lying around, but Didier spied two brand spanking new Motomaleta creations waiting for an owner underneath the shop counter. Naturally, Mr Motomaletas did not take much persuading to sell them to Didier, and 280000 chilean pesos worth of consumer therapy later, Didier seemed to have forgotten the despair of the morning. We left Didier’s bike at the workshop for the panniers to be fitted while we toured Arica looking for a good sleeping bag and a tent.
It seems that the people of Arica are not the cold-outdoors type. Everywhere we asked for a sleeping bag for the Altiplano we were met with the same incredulous look as if we were all totally mental. The closest we got to any sort of success was a chap in a bric-a-brac shop trying to flog a dusty old sleeping bag, pink in colour and covered in a delightful floral pattern. As lovely as it was, it would mean certain death for Didier at -15°C so we politely declined and moved on. As the day wore on the answer was becoming clear — everyone was suggesting that go to Iquique, the next town along on the coast.
In any sensible country the “next town” is probably quite near by. In Chile, with its ludicrous geography and penchant for massive, boring deserts, this phrase conjured terror in the hearts of us three amateur adventurers simply after a sleeping bag — Iquique was two Cross Triton tanks of fuel away from Arica. We steeled our nerves, packed up and tried to leave Arica, hopefully for the final time.
However, as usual, it was not so simple. Always with a keen eye for loose and missing bolts I noticed that I was missing all of the bolts in one of my rack mountings. A quick check of the bikes later and Tibet was also missing the full compliment. No problem, or so we thought — we’ll just nip down to the Sodimac, which everyone in Arica seems to know and love (but for us had been completely useless up until this point), pick up some bolts and bish-bash-bosh, we’re away again. Of course, Chile being Chile, and Sodimac being Sodimac, it’s not that simple. Three stores later it became apparent that the Chileans have a serious allergy to metric nuts. We were considering just cross threading an imperial one and adding another nut when the final ferreteria on the road loomed in the distance. After some lengthy discussion, a hobbit-like man appeared from the shadows at the back of the store having dug out some dusty bolts that were just what we needed. Hooray! Delirious with this minor triumph we swiftly headed out of Arica only to get lost, then bollocked for going through some coned-off roadworks, before finally finding the highway. The three amigos, nailing it once again in their own inimitable style.
Chile, supposedly, is a well developed country. It’s miles ahead of Peru and Bolivia and at times feels very European. As part of this, one would assume, is that they have petrol stations spaced at suitable intervals. It turns out this is not a correct assumption. We travelled 130km along the highway to a small village expecting to find some gasoline. A police officer kindly informed us that there was no fuel for another 130km!
“Oh dear oh dear, this is not a good thing”, we thought.
Up until this point we had not run our bikes dry, so 260km seemed a very risky prospect. We decided that Didier, with the most efficient bike should draft behind me to increase our chances of at least one of us making it to a gas station that day. Trying to keep in the wake behind a large truck, we spent 100km gently nursing the throttle while the sun started to dip behind the horizon. Before long, it was pitch black, but our fuel consumption was the only thing on our mind. As the miles passed by, Tibet and I switched to reserve and we reduced our speed further and further. Eventually we saw the lights of Huara on the horizon — the first town in over 260km! We rolled into the town, using up the last of our fumes. Exhausted, we found a fairly disgusting restaurant, had some raw chips and collapsed into our motel beds after sinking half a bottle of Flor de Caña.
The next morning we got up and set about paying for the hotel and buying gas.
“What do you mean no gas station?”
“What do you mean no cash point?”
“Oh dear oh dear”.
Chile strikes again.
Too poor for breakfast we decided to buy some petrol off a toothless man from what we assumed to be his living room. We could just about to pay for the hotel and 3 litres of petrol each, enough to get us to the next petrol station around 50km away. With stomachs rumbling, we got on to the highway and were promptly stopped by a bored policeman. As you’ve seen in some of the photos, the Pan-American is a very straight road, with gazillions of miles of visibility in both directions. As we joined the highway, it turns out, there was a very discreetly placed stop sign at the junction, and we had not stopped. BECAUSE THERE WERE NO BLOODY VEHICLES FOR 10 MILES. It looked for a moment as things were going to escalate, but a bit of gringo shoulder shrugging and “I can’t hablo the Español, Señor” later he realised he was Chilean, lazy, and couldn’t be arsed to do anything about it.
On the final stretch to Iquique, the promised land of camping gear, we stopped at Oficina Humberstone, an old saltpetre mining town that had been left to decay in the harsh, desert climate. There were a number of these old towns visible in the distance from the highway, all of which looked intriguing. However, we had read that some of these had had landmines placed around them during the Pinochet era, so we decided to stick to the UNESCO endorsed one for a bit of urban exploring. Expecting chaotic, abandoned houses with weathered and faded shadows of the lives that people used to eek out there, we were instead presented with what was a needlessly sterile museum. Devoid of any sense of adventure owing to the over-meddling of the curators, the site had lost much of its mystery and eery desolation. As a result, we had a quick lap around the old machinery in the intense desert sun, wondered at how such little power could be produced by such massive engines, and left, very glad that we were not professional saltpetre miners.
We rejoined the highway by mounting a pile of dirt after following an out-of-date sign, before finding ourselves on completely the wrong road. Eventually we crossed the final bit of Atacama before plunging down the dunes into Iquique itself. Didier, ever with an eye for luxury, found us a hotel in an area with a seemingly abundant and readily available supply of heroin and crystal methamphetamine. After a terrifying few minutes out on the street, we were let into the safety of the hotel car park. We unpacked and left, ready to explore the delights of Iquique on a Sunday.
If you are an avid reader of this blog, you already know that Chile, is in fact, totally shut on a Sunday. This, as if it needs emphasising, is a complete pain in the arse. We had been assured by everyone in Arica that the mystical camping paradise ‘Zofri’ in Iquique would be open at all hours, but no unsurprisingly this is not true. Settling in for another 24 hours in Chile, we consoled ourselves with some excellent Thai food and some rather strong Chilean style Pisco sours before wandering the completely deserted city centre looking for a non-existent cappuccino. A bit pissed, and disappointed with the brown tepid water we managed to procure from an underground fast food court, we headed back to our narcotics paradise to sleep the rest of the day away.
The next day was altogether more successful. After helping the hotel fix their hot water problems we had a cracking breakfast of cheesy egg thing with steak and avocado sandwiches. The food in Iquique has so far been the best of the trip! Tibet and I then went off to find a mechanic after he got jealous of all of my new clutches, while Didier went off to the Zofri — the walled-off duty-free zone created by Pinochet in the north of the city.
We start by going to Sergio, a chap on iOverlander who runs an Atacama tour company and who turns out to have been the northern Chile motocross champion. Although he couldn’t fix Tibet’s bike, he swiftly invited us into his workshop to give us GPS waypoints for the journey across the Salar de Uyuni (which he did on his bicycle a couple of years ago) before arranging for a friend to fix our bikes a few blocks away.
Upon arrival, the mechanic and all of his urinating dogs were standing outside of his closed workshop, waiting for us, keen to get going. However, his initial enthusiasm for fixing the bikes soon declined as he realised we were european, and quickly wanted to talk a lot about the Beatles and various european languages instead. While this was a nice touch, we were very keen to get on as the afternoon had started to disappear, and our target of reaching some thermal baths up near the border with Bolivia evaporated slowly before our eyes. After disassembling Tibet’s clutch, the mechanic declared that the clutch plates were in fact fine and all Tibet needed was a 10 minute oil change, but Tibet got his new clutch anyway and he’s pretended to be able to feel a difference ever since.
We got back to the hotel, Didier laden with new gear, equal parts trepidation and excitement. While the new gear looked flash, it was a specifically South American brand so we had no idea if it was up to the job or not. At least we had a new zoom lens for the camera so we could take some excellent pictures of his frostbitten corpse in the mornings from various distances.
A rapid pack up later due to some confusion over check-out time and we headed out of the city. Having forgotten Tibet’s perfectly good but used clutch discs at the mechanic, we made a hasty detour before joining the worst traffic we’ve seen in South America. With our aim of stopping at Chusmisa, Sergio’s recommended stop complete with thermal baths impossible at this point, we had no choice but to stay in Pozo Almonte, a town with the only petrol station before the border with Bolivia (and the darkest hotel in the world). A bit disappointed with the day’s progress, we got to bed early, ready to finally get to Bolivia the next day.
