Leg 7 - Santiago to Uyuni

Route summary: Santiago, Valparaiso, Mendoza, La Serena, Copiapo, Belen, Salta, Cachi, Cafayate, Purmamarca, Humahuaca, Yavi, Tupiza, Uyuni.
Days: 28
Zero mileage days: 9
Distance (point to point): 1,485km
Distance (driven): 4,987km
Inefficiency factor (Driven/P2P): 3.36
Avg. speed: 178km/day

Click here for detail.

It’s strange how inertia affects you. Leaving Santiago should have been no different from any of the other places I’ve left, but after a month it was almost like leaving again for the first time. Mainly because all of my kit had been unpacked at some stage and needed to get back into some semblance of order before I could go. I was also a bit jittery about leaving – would I have forgotten how to ride the bike with the weight, and I was now net heading north for the first time in the trip, the ride was heading into unchartered territory, even if it was just latitudes that began with a slightly smaller number. It was also the first time I didn’t have a clear destination in mind. From Buenos Aires it had always been south to Ushuaia down the east coast and north to Santiago along the west(ish) side. I didn’t have a clear idea where I’d go from here, would it be north through Argentina or on up the Chilean coast. How and where would I get into Bolivia, or would I skip it and head straight to Peru. These were the thoughts going through my head as I rolled into Los Andes, past a couple of kilometres of back to back trucks parked on the hard shoulder. Their presence was explained when I rode up to a police car parked at the junction up to Paso Los Libertadores. The pass was closed because of heavy snow and wasn’t expected to be open for a few days. Well, that made one decision for me and I turned the bike towards to coast and rode for Valparaiso. Then the weather turned. Another thing about being off the bike for a while is that you lose some of your routines. Normally I’d be all over the weather forecast, but after a month of  “if it rains, just sit in a coffee shop until it stops”, had made me lazy. So I got wet.

Rain, rain, go away [1]

Valparaiso is built on a crescent of hills. There are so many of them I’ve forgotten but it puts Rome’s seven to shame. And they’re steep hills – one of the attractions of the city is its collection of funiculars in varying states of repair. You don’t get funiculars on gentle hills. So, when I arrived in Valparaiso, I was soaked through and all of the accommodation I had addresses for were up on the hills. Fortunately my GPS mapping was great, but it still made for an interesting ride up and down cobbled streets that more closely resembled water-park flume rides than roads. After a few failed attempts (place didn’t exist, place had nowhere to park the bike), I found a hostel on the top of one of the hills where, as I the drips coming off me formed puddles in the reception area, they took pity on me and said I could securely park my bike in the grounds of the church across the road and dry my clothing in one of the rooms. Then it was food and I was recommended a bar, except although they had a food menu, they didn’t do any food, but they recommended a kebab place and said that I could eat it there and have a beer. It proved to be a fairly apt introduction to the city. Nothing seems to work as you’ expect it to, but people are relaxed and work around it without much fuss, and don’t see why they should change that.

Funicular - one of the not working ones

I spent some time over the next few days wandering around the city and taking some of the fabled funiculars (although some were out of action), enjoying the views and the colour of the city, visiting Pablo Neruda’s house here as well as the naval museum [2].

Graffiti on graffiti. I think one has more artistic merit than the other though 

One day I took the bike up the coast. As I was getting on the bike a random person cam up to me and started chatting (this happens a lot) and he suggested a route south which turned out to be an amazing road which twisted along the coast and dropped down to a small town and a beach. From there I worked my way back to Valparaiso along some dirt roads, before returning to the coast and riding up through Vina del Mar (Vaparaiso’s slightly more respectable neighbour) and past waterfront developments that wouldn’t look out of place on the south coast of Spain to Concon.

Terremoto - bodycount, 1

The traffic on the ride back was noticeably quieter. It was shortly before Chile’s first World Cup match (against Australia) and people were making sure they were at home or in a bar. I wanted to do the same and after securing Lena went to a bar that had been recommended to me. I’m not a football fan. I’d watched most of the Chile-Ireland game when I was in Santiago as it was on in the hostel, but before that, the last football game that I watched most of was probably in 1999 when Manchester United won the treble (one of my housemates was a fan). That said, I enjoyed the Chile-Australia match, or rather it’s probably more accurate to say I enjoyed watching that match, with that result, in that bar and by the end of it I was chanting “CHI, CHI, CHI, LE, LE, LE, VIVA CHILE!” with the rest of them. This euphoria no doubt had an effect on my choice of a terremoto later in the evening (it’s a alcoholic beverage that involves ice-cream). As the barman was making it he asked me who I was sharing it with. I was on my own and told him so. “Oh” he replied, “It comes in a litre jug”. By the time it was done, so was I and it was time for home and I didn’t leave Valparaiso as planned the next day.

A rainbow adds an (excessive) additional splash of colour to Valparaiso's already kaleidoscopic hillsides

Knowing that going over that is the only way to get to Mendoza, focuses the mind somewhat

Switchbacks in the snow

While enjoying Valparaiso I’d been keeping an eye on the weather forecast and monitoring the @CFLosLibertador twitter account. Travelling can give you some niche interests and for a few months I was an avid follower of a number of twitter accounts starting with CF, the accounts of the border police and they’d tell you whether they were open or not. If not, they’d usually attach a photo of the invariably hideous snow storm that they were working in in order to clear the route. After 1 day of being opened, the pass had closed again, but then seemed to be open again. I left Valparaiso and made my way back through Los Andes and this time had a clear run the remaining 60km to the border. However, I didn’t have a clue what the road conditions would be like and as snow became a permanent fixture beside the road as I rode above 1,300m I was becoming more nervous – the road goes to just over 3,000m before it drops down into Argentina. As it turned out the road was fine, although I wouldn’t have wanted to do it at night when the temperature would have fallen significantly. The road climbs quite steeply on the Chilean side and there’s one section with nearly 30 (numbered) switchbacks as it climbs to the pass, or rather the tunnel that takes you through the mountain under the pass.



The border is efficient and doesn’t take much time and then I’m on the long ride down into Argentina through valleys and gorges that turn red as the sun starts to set behind me.

And down, down, down, into Argentina

The house "penguin" on the right

Mendoza is a city pretty much dominated by wine - something like 80% of the country's wine comes from the city, and that production is dominated by Malbec. Many of the best bodegas are in the Lujan de Cuyo region, the only problem is that this is some way out of town, and as a result many do not normally expect visitors. Unwilling to have to arrange individual (i.e. expensive) tours and hire a taxi to go out there, wait and take me back (there was no way I was going to ride out there and not be able to sample any of their wines), I did what every backpacker did, caught a bus to Maipu and did a bicycle tour of the vineyards. It's by no means exclusive, and they may not be the best wines in the region, but it was fun. Cycling around on a mountain bike that has seen better days from vineyard to olive press to vineyard to bar was good fun, and the tours were pretty interesting, covering different aspects and different approaches, from the boutique, family vineyard that produced wines to the (occasionally unusual) palate of the owners to the larger scale wine producers who had industrialised and consolidated, but as a result had a large museum, showing how wine was made in the region going back nearly half a millenia (the Spanish brought vines to the continent as well as smallpox). On the way I met two guys, an Irishman and a Colombian and we fell in together for the rest of the afternoon, splitting a case of wine between us at one place and then going to a bar to have a flight of wines to taste. We got on well with the owner of the last place and so he gave us a couple of other wines to try, including the "penguin", his own, young, sweet and fortified wine, served chilled that was delicious, but you wouldn't want to have too much of it, and finally a local craft beer. As we were the last people in the bar he handed us some of the half drunk bottles "for the road". I don't think the other passengers on the bus were particularly impressed as we got on, clinking from bottles we'd purchased on the way round, clutching a bottle with a cork in it.

The flight of wines, most from the
Lujan de Cuyo area of Mendoza

The following day was a day of admin and a short run up to the hill in the park in town - my first run in a long time, and at altitude so I won't be bragging about the pace to anyone, but it was nice to get out. In the evening I went to a bar in town called The Vines of Mendoza where you could taste wines from around the area. I met the Irishman there and we went for the blind tasting, 5 wines (one white, four red) which we were to taste, write down our thoughts and then the sommelier would talk us through each one and reveal the grape and producer. It was a fun experiment, to see if we could remember what we'd been taught the previous day, and also to see how much was the result of suggestion ("oh, yes, I can taste grapefruit now that you've said it"). And for entertainment purposes he'd thrown in a couple of curve-balls, like the white wine that was 50% Cabernet Sauvignon and 50% Malbec (both red grapes) - which gave it a "light, slightly pink / copper tinge" (my comments, pre-reveal. I guessed one grape variety correctly (it was a malbec, so almost guaranteed to be in there but it was the only one I'd said was a malbec, so I should get some credit). A good evening and fun experience, I have to say that my appreciation for wine has increased significantly in the time I've been here.

In Mendoza I also had some route choices to make. I found out that Scotland were playing Argentina the following weekend in Cordoba which I could get to without much trouble, but apart from the question of who I should support. It was during the World Cup group stages and some Scottish friends were advocating an "Anyone but England" approach and I wasn't sure how to respond. I was also keen to go to La Serena (in Chile) but skipping between Argentina and Chile was going to become significantly tougher than further south as the Andes had become a real obstacle [3]. I then discovered that a friend of mine from the UK was going to be in Salta at the weekend, but just for the weekend. This resolved my Scotland/Argentina support problem, rather than go and watch the game I'd go and see my Scottish friend in an Argentinian city.

Look at the size of that mountain, no, not the first or second one, the third one you thought was a cloud...

Still, this decision didn't really help with the route I'd take to get there (simple route straight north, or longer route via La Serena, crossing the Andes twice) and an hour before setting off I still hadn't made my mind up. It was nearly time to toss a coin but in the end I decided that I wanted to see La Serena, and I thought that the route that way would be doable (although there were still some grey areas around getting fuel). So, back over the Los Libertador pass, except I got to see the Argentinian side in daylight this time and it was stunning, especially some of the partial (usually cloud obscured) views of Cerro Aconcagua with it's 6,962m summit.

Then it was back to the snow and up towards the pass. Just short of the border there is the Puente del Inca, a natural bridge across a fairly fast flowing small (and no doubt very cold) river. It was also the source of a hot spring, the minerals of which had created yellow and red rocks coloured rocks (out of which you could purchase a range of items at the adjacent stalls). The building in the photo was part of a hotel and hot spring complex set up by an Englishman but which was closed after (I think) a landslide.


Arriving at the Argentinian side of the border I'm told that all the formalities are on the other side of the mountain, but after a brief chat with the border officers I find out that Chile have scored twice against Spain in their second World Cup match. I want to get across to the other side to see the final score. As I pull into the Chilean border offices, I see a crowd gathered in the customs area, and some people reluctantly come out to see what I want. I tell them not to bother, that I want to see the game and join them to watch the last 20 minutes. "Happy" doesn't go anywhere near to describe the reaction after the game, with dancing and fireworks going off in the middle of the road, at nearly 3,000m.

5, 4, 3...

However, it's also getting dark and so I need to head on, down the steep side into Chile with it's 29 corners, then to the coast and up to La Serena. Once I'm down it's pretty straight and almost all on good tarmac, so relatively quick but I wonder what the scenery is like outside of the small spot that's illuminated by my front headlight - am I missing something stunning and berate myself for not leaving Mendoza earlier. The sky's amazingly clear and I pull the bike over at one point and lie by the side of the road, looking at the countless stars. It's going to be late by the time I get to La Serena so a little later isn't going to be much more of a problem. It's around 2am when I get into La Serena and find somewhere to sleep.

Not for long though, as I'm keen to go up the Elqui valley to visit a Pisco distillery and an observatory. Get a bus up and promptly fall asleep on the window (one of the benefits of not being the driver) and wake up as we're passing through some stunning scenery towards the top of the valley (I'd no doubt missed some - one of the drawbacks of being a passenger). Pisco Elqui is a nice small village at the head of the valley with a Mistral (a brand of Pisco) distillery, although it's only a small one, I think predominantly for tourism purposes. Not the most informative tour, but what I could gather was interesting enough (essentially Pisco is white wine, distilled three times and then aged for varying periods, in or outside of oak, depending on what flavour and price range you're aiming for). A tasting flight of four different Piscos with a Glaswegian girl I'd met on the tour (who was able to educate me on comparisons with the whisky process) and I have to say, it's not my favourite spirit, but I can appreciate it a bit more than I did before.

Vicuna

Then back on the bus down to Vicuna, an attractive small town where I learnt that England had effectively been knocked out of the World Cup by losing to Uruguay. I find out that the company that I was going to do the observatory tour has decided not to run it due to lack of interest (apparently when it's a bit cloudy in La Serena people panic that it's going to be the same in Vicuna and you won't see anything - that's very rarely the case). So instead I make my own way to the observatory and am part of a four-person tour in English (rather than the much larger groups in Spanish), which means a lot more time looking through the telescope. The guide is excellent, not only very knowledgable but it's apparent he's actually interested in the subject, and as well as being told about the constellations and shown the visible planets (I saw Saturn's rings for the first time not in a photo) he explained how other cultures viewed they sky and the constellations. My favourite was hearing that the Incan cultures didn't look at the constellations, but at the dark patches of sky between the constellations (I seem to remember that these are massive dust clouds that absorb the light from the stars behind). These dark constellations are named after animals, there's a mother llama and her child, that are going to drink at the river (the milky way) whilst being followed by a fox. A snake is close by and there were others that we couldn't see. Although interested in how other cultures viewed the sky, and used it as a calendar, needless to say he was entirely dismissive of astrology [4].

This wasn't the only hole...

New shoes

The next day I wanted to get up to Copiapo, which was going to be my launch point to cross the Andes back into Argentina. I had a look around La Serena in the morning and was just preparing to set off, shortly before lunchtime when I noticed my tyres... The rears had only done 8,600km (the front 19,300km) which was annoying. I wondered whether the altitude was causing the problem / wear but no one that I've spoken to before or since has suggested that this should cause any additional wear (since then I've checked tyre pressures at least daily if I'm seeing significant changes in altitude). Fortunately there's a Yamaha place in town and I go there and buy a new set of tyres (the guys at the garage blame the tyres for the wear, they seemed generally dismissive of any tyres made in Latin America) but it's just before lunch so I'm not going to get my bike back until 4pm at the earliest. Eventually get the bike back, load up and on the road with what daylight is left, until back in the dark I make my way north to Copiapo, getting there around midnight.

Do the maths: The furthest I've got on my bike
without refueling is around 350km. By the time
I got here I'd done about 60. The next petrol
station was 100km after Paso San Francisco

I had planned a pre-dawn start the next day, it was the winter solstice and I'd planned on seeing the sun rise and set over the Andes on the same (short day). However, my plan was foiled by my alarm clock having other ideas, or possibly more likely the cumulative effect of several long days and short nights on the trot. So a hurried breakfast, brim the tank at the last petrol station before leaving town and off to the mountains. The mine where the collapse and rescue of Los 33 is a little to the north of Copiapo and you could see some of the mines and processing plants on the early stage of the route. I was thankful of this as it meant roads in largely decent condition. Tarmac gave way to dirt roads, but the dirt was hard and smooth, so almost as good as tarmac in the dry environment I was driving through.



Then the road turned away from the mine tracks and started to become narrower and more noticeably work their way uphill and then you get to some plains, with ice clad volcanoes on the horizons and the frost-free hills start to take on a multi-coloured appearance. Then the road curves round a salt flat and I'm at the Chilean customs at about 3,700m, with another kilometre of altitude to gain before I'm at the pass. The border takes a bit longer than usual, but not too bad and then I'm on a short stretch of tarmac before the dirt road returns and I climb pass greenish lakes and abandoned buildings. Even just being sat on the bike you notice the altitude and lack of oxygen. While I'm still aware that I'm not thinking as quickly as normal and my reactions will be slowed and dulled by the lack of oxygen I slow down to avoid any stupid mistakes.

Fuel at 4,700m

The altitude climbs a couple of hundred metres, then drops, then we climb again as we sneak past 4,000m and I'm aware that neither Lena nor I have been at this altitude before. My GPS says the altitude peaks at 4,768 at the Argentinian side of the border and around here I wheezily call my brother to wish him a happy birthday. At the border, as I'd read elsewhere, there was fuel sold out of barrels and I buy 10 litres which should comfortably get me to the next petrol station another 100 or so kilometres away. Then immigration and customs. They seem very interested in whether I saw a particular vehicle on the road (I was asked on the way the same question), but I'd only seen one vehicle since leaving the Chilean customs. It didn't seem the most sensible place to make a break for the border, but there you go. Then customs took an age, which boiled down to him looking in the wrong place for the bike's home country [5].

Limite internacional, and the start of tarmac

With that sorted it was downhill now into Argentina with the sun setting behind me again. I have a feeling the ride would have been amazing in the daylight, with lots of sinuous bends through (I think) a series of canyons and gorges. However, it was dark by now and if I wanted to see my friend at all (delays had reduced the weekend, to an evening, to lunch and even that looked threatened now) I needed to press on. And try and make good time, but the weaving road limited your speed, bends would appear almost out of nowhere and by now I was tired. I stopped for fuel for both Lena and me, and a rest, enabling the tyres to cool so that I could check the tyre pressures and add some more air (I'd let out some air as I got higher and thought that I was going to be on ripio, so now that I was back at lower altitudes and back on tarmac I'd need to add some more). Then back onto the road. The frustrating thing about the route is that you cross the border not far south (latitude) from Salta, but the (only) road takes you south a long way before it turns back north. It's getting late now (past midnight) and I'm getting very tired and contemplating wild camping by the side of the road but keep going to the next village, Londres, which would have been nice to stay in just for amusement value, but the place is dead and end up in Belen, not much further down the road where I find a hostel to sleep in for 4 hours before getting up. It's one of those stops where almost nothing comes off the bike - I'll need a Le Mans style start in the morning if I'm to make lunch.

Up and on my way before dawn the next day which is beautiful, and freezing cold. I want to make good time (i.e. go fast when I can), but that just worsens the wind chill, even in the waterproof gloves and at one point I have to stop as I'm in danger of losing all feeling in them.



Then it warms and I'm driving up a beautiful valley past vineyards (I didn't realise they had wine here) and through a small town called Cafayate. After this I take Ruta 68 through the quebrada named after the town, which again I wasn't expecting. The most beautiful tarmac with some wide sweeping bends that then open onto some of the most amazing and surreal rock formations I'd ever seen, which threatened to make me crash with my mouth agape. After stopping a couple of times to take photos I realised that if I carried on stopping I'd never make it to Salta, so promising to return I focused on making good time.

Mission accomplished!

The amazing road eventually straightened somewhat, making for a faster road and then I hit the outskirts of Salta, found somewhere to stay in pretty much record time, unloaded, showered, changed and bolted into town, getting to lunch with my friend and two of her colleagues 15 minutes after the time we'd agreed, 2,225km after leaving Mendoza [6].

After lunch my friend heads off to the airport and I have a short walk around town (there's a big religious ceremony going on outside the cathedral), have a coffee then head back to the hostel and collapse - the ride from Mendoza had taken it out of me and Santiago had leeched away any riding conditioning which I'd gained. I ended up spending around a week in Salta. I'm not sure the city warranted that amount of time but I did some routine maintenance on the bike, looked around the city, sorted out insurance [7]. It also rained a bit which delayed me going as well, resulting in snow-capped hills surrounding the city.

I wanted to go back to the road near Cafayate but had also heard that the route to a small town called Cachi was worthwhile. It was the Brasil-Chile game the day that I left and I was keen to watch the match (although I didn't know who I wanted to win). I thought that I'd have a better chance to see the game if I did the shorter road to Cachi. As it turned out the shorter road to Cachi probably took as long. 

After a good stretch of tarmac, including through a village where a parade was going on, complete with gauchos on horseback, it turned to ripio with frozen and semi frozen streams crossing it, working its way up the right hand side of the valley in the shade. Finally it reached the pass at about 3,500m where I found Argentinian families playing in the snow.

I pushed on, across a plateau and then onto a plain with lots of cacti, where I learnt how slowly they grow so that the tallest ones are hundreds of years old and saw remnants of one of the old Incan roads before it dropped down to Cachi where I found out the result of the match, had some lunch, had a look around the museum and found somewhere to stay.

The next day I headed down ruta 40 (the same road I'd been on in Patagonia) to Cafayate and although only a short day (about 160km) it had some of the most amazing scenery, chains of spiky mountains and canyons that looked like something out of a Star Wars film. The relatively short day meant that I didn't have to worry too much about daylight and fuel, so was able to stop and walk around some of the scenery. Not for too long though, you never know what the road conditions are going to turn into, so there's always a quiet voice going "you should get moving really".

 

El Esteco bodego

Pucara at Quilmes

Into Cafayate, another attractive small town, surrounded by vineyards. An easy few days, to the wine museum (which seems to be more about the climate and grape growing conditions), to a pre-Hispanic fort (which I think was successfully defended against the Spanish for over 100 years, and given it's location you can understand why) at Quilmes and another vineyard and an asado, complete with wine out of a 5 and a bit litre bottle... In hindsight I should have spend less time in Salta and more time in Cachi and Cafayate, although maybe not a month as a friend did, although he was "waiting for a part"!

Then it was back north (or "heading in the right direction for once" as my mum, who seems to be despairing of my tendency to digress, would say) up the 68 and it's stunning scenery, although this time at a slightly more sedate pace.

One more night in Salta - I needed to go to a camera shop after dropping my helmet and breaking the GoPro mount. It turned into a night of two halves, the first half (another asado, and a late night visit to a bar decorated in homage to the Simpsons) fun, the second half (3 hours in a bed with bed-bugs before I couldn't take it any more and got up), not so much.

After leaving some of my clothes in the sun for a couple of hours [8] I then got on the road (a little later than planned) north-ish. I'd chatted to some people in Cafayate who'd recommended I head towards San Antonio de los Cobres. This followed the railway line up (El Tren a las Nubes) the valleys and through some beautiful countryside. I contemplated staying the night in San Antonio de los Cobres - I wasn't sure what the route to Purmamarca would be like - but after he first place I went to said they were full, or shut, and the second place had no sign of life, I decided to head on out of town and onto the ripio again. Fortunately it was decent quality (i.e. not too deep, rutted, corrugated etc) and I was able to enjoy the ride where you felt like you were in the middle of nowhere. I can't recall any other vehicles on the road and little sign of life at all (other than the occasional herd of llamas).
 

However, it wasn't too long before I reached the shore of the salar which the track skirted round. I wanted to have a quick look at the salar, and I was doing alright for daylight so drove on the road across it, and it's exactly how the photos look, massive flat expanse, perfectly hexagonal cells. I didn't drive onto it, I didn't know what the condition was like and I read on a board that one of the methods of salt harvesting there is to dig large holes and fill them with water - I didn't fancy driving into one of those - so I headed back east towards Purmamarca. However, before I was to get there, there was the small question of the 4,170m Jujuy pass. The sun was casting a shadow up the hill as I rode up to the pass and I raced the sun to get above the line and into the sun again.

On the other side was the Cuesta Lipan - this stunning road zig zags down the hill into Purmamarca. For the cyclists, imagine the Alpe d'Huez (which I think is 740m to 1,850m, i.e. a climb of 1,110m, in 13.8km, or 80.4m/km) but where the climb is from 2,192m in Purmamarca to 4,170m at el Abra de Potrerillos, a climb of 1,978m over 17km (or 143.3m/km), and remember, you're starting 300m higher than Alpe d"Huez finishes. 

About a month later I met a British guy who's cycling round the world - he did this climb in a touring bike with all his kit, and then camped at the top. Regardless of the other 30+ thousand kilometres he's done already, I think this deserves a donation. He's riding for Unicef and you can find his Facebook page here.

No one leaves baby in the corner

Riding down it was fun, and then it got dark and you become very aware that the headlights (which are fixed to the fairing) are not pointing where you're going... I arrived in Purmamarca after dark. A very touristy small town I wasn't holding out much hope of finding somewhere I could park the bike. The first place I stopped had a bed in a dorm. When I asked if there was somewhere I could park the bike, he pointed to the corner of the room. Sometimes there's some confusion as to whether I'm on a bicycle or a motorbike (even though I'm wearing motorcycle clothing and helmet), but I wasn't going to risk him changing his mind, so he opened the door, and I drove my bike into the front room, parking it behind the breakfast tables.

Cerro de los Siete Colores

Lower section on the Cuesta Lipan

And bright yellow hills as well

The next morning I retraced my route along the bottom of the quebrada to see what I'd missed in the dark, took a quick look at the Cerro de los Siete Colores (Hill of the seven colours) and then headed on north. I passed through Tilcara but decided that although I wanted to have a look around it felt too busy and touristy to want to stay, so pushed on north to Humahuaca.

Astride the Tropic -
sounds better than
astride a goat

On the way there's another milestone, at 23° 26' 52" S I cross the Tropic of Capricorn, where there's a monument by the side of the road which is shaped like it should directly face the sun at dawn and sunset, and cast no shadow at midday on the (southern hemisphere's) summer solstice. I was now in the Tropics.

I spend two nights in Humahuaca, after briefly bumping into a friend from Cafayate when I first arrived. This meant that I could take the panniers off Lena and do some day trips, down to Tilcara to have a look at the museum and the partially restored hilltop fort or pukara, and another ride out to have a look at the Cerro de los Catorze colores (this one had 14), a fun ride, once I found the right road (for once my GPS was wrong), and an amazing view.

Cerro de los Catorze colores - worth the ride

The ride home

The view from the Tilcara pucara

In Maimara even the cemetery has a great view

If you go the boring way...
...it was more like 12,800km for me

I'm getting closer to Bolivia and hearing mixed reports. Some talk of hideous roads and general chaos, others love it (potentially because they like hideous roads and general chaos). I'm a little nervous about the border crossing and want to get to Tupiza, about 150km north of the border the same day, and have no idea what the road's like, so I head to the border and stay just short in Yavi (having been told that La Quiaca, the Argentinian border town is what you'd expect from a border town with few, if any, redeeming features. As it turns out the border crossing, although quite long, is relatively painless (i.e. I don't have to unpack the bike). I think things were helped by the fact that for 15 minutes I gained slight celebrity status, with a steady stream of adults and children coming up and asking questions about the bike and the trip, and then wanting photos taken. After a while I think the border officers just wanted to get rid of me.

Cross the border into Bolivia, say goodbye to Argentina (and symbolically change my remaining Argentinian pesos into Bolivianos) and head on north. And the road is great, beautiful new tarmac all the way to Tupiza, although I was to learn that it was to be the last tarmac I'd see in a while.

The best cheese and marmite
sandwich in the world 

Yet another amazing quebrada,
I might have lost track of the names
but not my sense of amazement

There's a common route that people do around Uyuni, which takes in the salt flats and also a ribbon of lakes, geysers, hot springs and generally crazy scenery that runs south from the flats. Tours either do loops where you finish back where you started, or you can do trips where you start at one place and finish a another. Tupiza is at one end of one of these trips (Uyuni and San Pedro de Atacama are the other ends) and you couldn't move in town without someone asking if you want to go on a tour (usually the next day). Some poor girl asked me three times in one evening, I really hope she managed to find someone.

Tupiza was a nice enough place though with some typically weird rock formations to see in the area - accessible by tour but I decided I'd wing it and try and get to them on my bike instead, which nearly ended up with me axle deep in sand.

Bolivia's future - in safe hands

I climbed the big hill to watch the sun go down and met a group of small children (about 7 or 8 years old) who were fascinated by my binoculars (I don't think they'd seen any before) and asked me lots of questions, mostly "have you been to..." which became a little embarrassing after a while - I've been lucky enough to travel to quite a lot of places, and they taught me some Quechuan, which they learn as well as Spanish in schools. They were a lovely group of kids and a promising sign for the future with their desires to become vets and doctors, rather than pop stars and supermodels.

Just pretend I'm not here...

I'd been warned that the road from Tupiza to Uyuni, although not long (so no refueling required) was horrible and advised to give it a full day. So, fueled, with some snacks for the ride I set off. The first third was twisty, stony ripio. A little tiring to ride but not technically very difficult and not particularly uncomfortable - apart from when you go round a blind left hand corner and find a large bus coming the opposite direction at speed, and apparently unwilling to give you any space.

Trial by sand...

...washboarding...

Then it straightened out and for a short while you could get some speed up, and then sand started to appear. Not much at first, a little blown across the road, then some short dunes. I'd worried about sand for a while - I'd not come across it on the ride so far and didn't know how Lena would cope with all the weight, and my nightmare scenario was having to take off all the weight, shuttle-running bags across sand in order to be able to move the bike. Then some bigger dunes. I found that if I kept the revs high enough the bike kept going forwards, albeit slowly and with me having to paddle with my feet to ensure it kept upright. There's probably a school of thought that says "power" and I should have gone quicker, but the front wheel was very skittish and I was riding along tracks made by 4x4's and didn't like to think what would happen if the front wheel bogged down into one of the walls at speed. It probably wasn't that far, a couple of kilometres, but it felt further and I didn't know when it would end, so I was grateful when it did. Until the corrugations started. Some people call them washboard roads, but I'm not sure that does justice to the severity! If they're small, and the roads in decent condition, you can go faster and skim across the surface. However, these were too big for that and faster just felt like the bike was going to disintegrate. In sections cars had decided to head off the main road and create a parallel path, so I had a go at these. Sometimes they were okay, frequently they were as badly rutted as the main road with the added spice of sand. After a couple of goes on that I decided to suck it up and go back to the main road. So the arrival of Uyuni on the horizon came as a relief.

...and water.

 Talk to anyone about Uyuni in the rest of Bolivia and you can almost see them shiver and the goosepimples rise, but as I arrived it was sunny, warm and I found somewhere for me and Lena to stay. The ride from Tupiza was tough, but I was to learn over the next five days that there were harder days to come. Bolivia was not going to reveal it's stunning scenery without effort.

The railway graveyard at Uyuni

Notes

1. I can't really complain. This was the last time that I experienced heavy rain for over 2 months, and the last time I got rained on while I was on the bike until - not sure, still hasn't happened yet [he says, frantically touch wood]!
2. Where I learnt that it was a Royal Navy office on sabbatical who masterminded the creation of Chile’s navy and it’s successes in the fight for independence against the Spanish. They also had a large room set aside for Arturo Prat, the commander of the Esmeralda, a ship that sank in Iquique when it engaged with the much more modern Peruvian ironclad Huascar as part of the Pacific War. Arturo Prat died in the battle. You might think that dying and your ship sinking shouldn’t be a claim to fame, but the events were seized upon by the Chilean’s and mobilised the country for war. Even now the day of the battle is a national holiday (21 May) and in pretty much every city in Chile you go to you will find a street names after him, the date of the battle, or his ship.
3. I found out that the next pass north of Los Libertador was Paso del Agua Negra was closed outside of summer (it's the highest vehicle pass between Chile and Argentina that I can see at 4,779m). The next further north is Paso San Francisco (only 4,725m high) and drops you into Argentina between Salta (to the north) and Tucuman (to the south).
4. Although this is bang on... http://goodmenproject.com/moustacheclubofamerica/astrology-for-bitter-single-people-who-dont-believe-in-astrology/
5.I. love being from the UK but sometimes the variety of different names (UK, Great Britain, England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland) which are each used and recognised to varying degrees by other countries tends to create confusion at borders, and some degree of suspicion by the border authorities who tend to doubt that you're telling the truth when you say that I am from all of the UK, GB and England...
6. I've flown to Washington for a roast dinner before, but this has to be the furthest I've driven for a meal.
7.This brought home the fact that I'd been away for a while. And to think when I bought the insurance in Buenos Aires I'd thought that by this time I'd be in Peru, where the insurance would no longer cover me...
8. I'd heard in Asia that this was a good way to get rid of bed bugs and I was paranoid about taking them with me. I had not had an enjoyable night.

+1 Bolivia

Iain Beauchamp has been to: Andorra, Afghanistan, Argentina, Austria, Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Switzerland, Chile, People's Republic of China, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Fiji, France, United Kingdom, Guernsey, Greece, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Ireland, India, Iran, Italy, Jersey, Japan, Kenya, Cambodia, Luxembourg, Morocco, Monaco, Mongolia, Macao, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Sweden, Singapore, Thailand, Turkey, United States, Vatican, Vietnam, South Africa.
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Leg 6 - Santiago based

Route summary: Santiago with trips (not on bike) to Buenos Aires and Rapa Nui (aka Isla de Pascua or Easter Island).

Days: 31
Zero mileage days: 26
Distance (point to point): 0km
Distance (driven): 116km
Inefficiency factor (Driven/P2P): Infinite
Avg. speed: 4km/day

Click here for detail.


The maps really only here for consistency and amusement purposes to demonstrate two things. The first is that it took me 75 days to get to Santiago and 4 hours to get back to Buenos Aires (although the journey wasn't as interesting). The second is to demonstrate just how far away Easter Island is from Chile (and pretty much everywhere else). I could barely pick out the green pixel on the screen when I was plotting the map.


The first night in Santiago I headed out with my two Swiss friends to the Bellavista area of town. It was here that 11 years ago I had my only other night out in Santiago, which was a bit of a blur [1]. The area felt familiar but none of the bars did, although if I spent the same period of time away from London I'm sure I'd say the same thing there. A shared mixed asado, a few beers and then to another bar for live music where some friends of the Swiss siblings joined us. Not a very late night, but a fun re-introduction to the city.

I'd planned on doing some bike maintenance while I was in Santiago, but the biggest problem I was finding to start with was just somewhere to park. All the car parks were short term in nature (and therefore extortionate) and although there were supposed to be on-street bike parking areas, none of these seemed particularly secure. I was in the post office queuing up for some Poste Restante [2] mail and got chatting to two people in the queue in front of me. Turned out they were British, travelling through Latin America on a motorbike (such a cliche) and they recommended a couple of places to stay that had parking available. This conversation was to end up with me on Easter Island a fortnight later, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

I'd originally planned to do the bike maintenance myself (basically an oil change), but having driven further than planned and wanting someone to do it professionally, I found out there was a Yamaha dealership in Santiago. I was also thinking that they would also provide a secure place to leave Lena as at this point I was paying more for her accommodation than I was for my own. I rode out to the garage and they could do the service but wouldn't be able to take her until the end of the week, so although the servicing problem was solved the parking problem wasn't. So, on the way back to my hostel I looked up the address of one of the hostels the post office bikers had told me about to see if they had space. They did for me, but not for the bike. I drove 100m down the road and saw a hostel sign and what looked like an enclosed patio. I rang the bell and a guy who I later found out was called Felipe and from Colombia came to the door. We had a brief conversation but the gist was, he had a bed for me, we could park Lena on the patio (securely off the road), it was cheaper than the place I was staying and about the same distance away from my language school. I moved in the next day. I didn't know it at the time but the Makus Hostel was to be my home on and off for the next month.

The other thing I wanted to do in Santiago was take a language course. When I was originally thinking about my route I had through that Santiago or Valparaiso would be a good place to build on my Spanish because it would be about a month into the trip. It was now closer to two and a half months since arriving in Buenos Aires so it was definitely time. I ended up doing seven days of classes, 4 hours in the mornings for a week and a half which left me the afternoons for admin like taking the bike to be serviced, move hostel, post things and also have a look around town. Instead of focusing on grammar this teacher spent the lessons talking at and with me (a big thing in his approach was you need to listen before you can speak) and telling me jokes (bromas) including Youtube videos, to make me more confident in my ability to fill the gaps when I came across words I didn't know. Then we spent time on drilling responses, we'd watch a short section of a film in Spanish and then he'd ask me questions about it, frequently the same one in a very slightly different form, to get me responding using the lizard part of my brain rather than conscious response.[3]

I really like Santiago as a city, it has everything you'd expect from a capital city, museums and theatres (which unlike London's, I actually visited), some amazing restaurants, great nightlife and a lot of history (although some of it is quite depressing). The thing that still amazes me about Santiago and Chile is the degree of urbanisation. Over a third of Chile's population is in greater Santiago. To put it in another way, to have the same degree of centralisation in the UK, London would have a population of over 20 million people. I know people outside of London complain that a lot of things (media, policy) are excessively London centric. I'm not sure how Chile manages it but I never heard the same complaint where there is more reason for centralisation, but the country is three times the size (surface area) of the UK [4].

The city is surrounded by hills and usually shrouded by a layer of smog that sits on the city but after rain the sky clears and you get some great views. In winter this rain is snow at higher levels and the city is suddenly surrounded by snow-capped mountains. As well as the mountains around the city, there are a few hills close-by, Cerro Santa Lucia is in the centre of town and has the remains of a Spanish fort and some beautiful gardens while Cerro San Cristobal just to the north has a zoo, a large statue of the Virgin Mary and commanding views of the city that can be accessed by a funicular. There are a few small vineyards closer to the town centre but most are out of town. The scale of the viniculture in the area only hit home when I saw the huge area of vineyards from the air on a flight out of Santiago.

Michelle was in

Palacio de la Moneda

Culture
I ended up leaving Santiago exactly a month after I first arrived (although not all that time was spent in Santiago) and I managed to see most of the major sites. There are some fine buildings, including the Palacio de la Moneda which is the presidential building. Apparently you can go in and have a look around but both times I went it was closed (once for the rain). You can't see any evidence of the bomb damage sustained in the 1973 coup (although on of the statues in the square on the north side still has a bullet hole from the fighting). During my time in the city I also learn more about the other 11th September. To my shame this was something I knew very little about, especially as it was coming to an end when I was 12 and starting to take an interest in the broader world. It doesn't seem right to write about it in the midst of scribblings about museums, restaurants and wines so I'll write another post and link to it here.

Underneath the Palace is a cultural centre and there are a load of other museums and galleries (some of which I even went to). In the main hall when I first went there, they had a light installation which I think is a spanish translation of Shackleton's advertisement to join his Endurance expedition. About a week later I went back the installation had gone and they were setting up for Santiago fashion week. A shame in some respects as I think the juxtaposition could have been quite entertaining.

The city also has a beautiful theatre and I decided to go on one of my biannual theatre trips and went to see Los Puritanos [5]. It was an enjoyable afternoon / evening in a beautiful building, stretched my Spanish and for a fraction of the cost of similar seats at the Royal Opera House.

In Santiago at the time were my two Italian friends (one of whom was the very accomplished professional chef). While they were in town they were planning on going to Borago, recognised as being one of the top 10 restaurants in Latin America [6]. I was very keen to go, not just because the food sounded amazing, but I was also really interested to see my friends take on it. My response to every dish was likely to be along the lines of "Oh, my, god, this is amazing!" whereas I thought he might have something slightly more interesting to say. The restaurant itself was quite spare from a decor perspective, with the kitchen behind a glass wall at one end. We all decided to go for the taster menu with paired drinks (I won't say wine as one was beer - something I was very pleased about, especially as it was served in a bull's horn). The food was amazing, the presentation was stunning (one dish included soft poached quails eggs in nests within bonsai trees) and one of the nice things was that the chefs themselves came out and explained each dish. There was real pride in what they were doing, and they got the immediate feedback from us (which was invariable "wow") [7]. I've lost track of the number of dishes we had but it was around midnight when we left after arriving a around 8pm. By rights we should have rolled home to a long sleep on our backs, but Borago's last trick was a farewell mint, except this had been made using liquid nitrogen which had two effects. First it made you breathing smoke like a dragon (although only while you ate it) and secondly, afterwards everyone perked up and was "okay, where next?". Which is how we ended up in a bar 5 hours later drinking Piscola. A very decadent evening (and early morning).


Pablo Neruda's houses [8]
Pablo Neruda [9] has three houses in the Santiago area and I got the treble visiting all of them. The first I went to was Isla Negra, his house on the coast that he is buried at. For once I was able to travel to the house as a passenger, I was kindly invited to join my two Italian friends who were being taken there by some Chilean friends they'd met further south. This was particularly kind of them as we went the day after we had all gone to Borago! We went to the restaurant next door and all had Caldillo de Congrio (Congor Eel soup) and apparently Pablo Neruda's favourite dish [10] before going to the house itself. It's a rambling building with some great views of the pacific coast (enough to make the least emotional articulate person poetic) and a massive and eclectic collection including everything from ships' figureheads to rare sea shells through glass bottles and pretty much anything else you could think of. If clutter is not your thing I would advise giving it a miss. 

The second one I visited was in Santiago itself is called La Chascona it was named for his mistress and third wife[11]. She wasn't called La Chascona but that was his nickname for her (it referred to her curly red hair which he called "dishevelled" [12]). It's a relatively small building and feels more homely with a small bedroom behind a hidden door where he'd sneak off to have his afternoon nap. The whole place felt a little bit like this, hidden away at the base of Cerro San Cristobal, but then I suppose it was where he ensconced his mistress...




The final house was in Valparaiso and stood atop one of the hills with the most spectacular views of the town and the bay. The house was split with some friends and Neruda had the higher floors. Tellingly the public rooms were on his lowest floors, his bedroom above that, and at the top, with the best views, was his study. You could understand how inspiration came more easily in a place like that. That's all I'm going to say about "Valpo" as technically it was part of my next leg, on the way to Mendoza and further north.



Vineyards
I'd driven past some of Santiago's vineyards on the way in but it took a while to get back out to visit them. In the end I went to two, Cousino Macul and Concha y Toro.


Cousino Macul is to this day, family-owned. The place that I visited had a (relatively) small vineyard and some fermentation equipment but much was for display purposes and the only wine that's now fermented there is their top-of-the-range, hand-picked from hundred-year-old vines "Lota" line (they have larger locations further out of Santiago). The other thing that's on the site is the family's mansion, which you can't see (we were told by our guide that "If you're the King of Spain you'll get an invite") but apparently has more land on that plot for the house and gardens than there is for the vines and buildings. A quick tour of some of the buildings, some of which contained some of the earlier machinery, including my favourite, a 6 cylinder engine block that had been adapted to fill bottles of wine. A look at some of the newer fermentation tanks on site (for Lota), and the now unused massive fermentation barrels. Then down to the cellars, again, largely for tour and entertainment purposes (they were having a trade event that evening, much to the chagrin of the guide who wanted to watch the Chile - Ireland football match apparently an important game even though it was a friendly as it was the last pre-World Cup game). I say largely, because there was still a (very) large bottle collection in there behind heavy iron bars. This apparently was the family's collection. Afterwards we tasted three different wines, one of the most interesting being the "Gris" which was a white wine made from Cabernet Sauvignon (i.e. red) grapes, which gave it a very slightly copper colour.

Then on to the daddy of all Chilean wine manufacturers, Concha y Toro. A massive estate, although now a public corporation so the "family mansion" is now company offices. The obligatory walk through some vines where there is an attempt to show how they are distinct from others, although with few grapes left on them and the leaves dead or dying it was tough even for the guides. Out of all of the vineyards I visited I probably learnt the least about the wine production process on this tour, it seemed more about guiding you back to the (huge) gift shop. However, I got to sample some nice wines and the tour included a visit to the Casillero del Diablo where we learnt that the story that a devil haunted the cellars of the winery was essentially a rumour started to prevent people from stealing the wine.

Back to BA
After a week and a half I had to travel to have a meeting with work. This meant two things. The first was a rapid transition from "Traveller Iain" to "Business Iain", requiring the purchase of some smarter clothes (I didn't think the well-worn jeans, T-shirt and trainers would cut it) and the loss of the beard [13].

The evolution of man

Second time in BA this trip
and I still didn't tango

The second thing is that I needed to get back to Buenos Aires. Fortunately the flight back only took 4 hours, rather than the nearly 3 months that it had taken me to get to Santiago. It was strange going back, so much had changed and I arrived in Buenos Aires a lot more refreshed and relaxed than I had done back in February. I was staying in a different part of town (more convenient for the meeting) and so got to see a slightly different view of Buenos Aires so it wasn't as though I was back exactly where I started, but it still felt like a very long time ago that I was last here, right at the start of the trip worried and excited. I was right to be both but in hindsight I think both highs and lows would not come from where I was expecting.

Serendipity
Back to Santiago on the Saturday night and contemplating heading to the bar with the live music to find a party in full swing at the hostel. I'm greeted like an old friend by Arturo (the hostel owner), Felipe and some of the guests I'd already met, and a glass of rum is thrust in my hand. I'd left Buenos Aires having been told I'd get an update from work following the meeting at the end of the week, but in the meantime I was in a state of limbo. I didn't want to leave Santiago and continue my trip if I needed to come back, but didn't just want to hang around Santiago for a week twiddling my thumbs. I had a conversation with one of the new hostel guests and found out that they were going to Easter Island for a week, which reminded me that my two Italian friends were planning on heading to Easter Island around the same time. I went to bed thinking that might be an idea - a great way to get away for week. The following evening I was booking my flights and within 36 hours I was on a flight to the middle of the Pacific Ocean and Rapa Nui. So, given I wouldn't have gone if I'd been staying somewhere else, and I wouldn't have stayed there if it hadn't been for a chance meeting in a post office, Poste Restante was to blame for me going to Easter Island. I think the trip there is going to require another entry (click here) otherwise the web-page may never load because of the photos. In brief, it was amazing and I've discovered a new sport I want to have a go at.

Back to the bike
Meanwhile the Yamaha garage had been busy fixing up Lena. As well as the standard bits covered in the 20,000km service (I'd actually done 17,000km but then again it hadn't been serviced since the 1,000km service after bedding the engine in) I needed the chain and sprockets replaced (blamed on incorrect chain tension and lack of lubrication) and rear brake pad. I also had the left wing mirror replaced, my black-and-nasty repair after the drop on day 5 of the trip was falling apart. I got them to show me the correct chain tension and how to measure it. You would have thought that this would be straightforward but Yamaha themselves have two different ways of measuring it depending on whether you look at the owners manual or the one they give to the garages. In case you're interested, I was told the following:

• Put the bike on the centre stand so that the back wheel is off the ground.
• There should be 2-3 fingers clearance between the lower part of the chain and the swing-arm at the midway point between the front and rear sprockets.
• This should be at the tightest part of the chain.
• With more weight on the bike (panniers or pillion) it should be closer to 3 fingers but no more than that.

This is what I've been using but only time will tell whether it's helped. I've also been lubricating the chain separately, rather than relying on the Scottoiler.

However, after this and a bill which wouldn't be out of place at a Yamaha dealership in the UK, Lena seemed to be happier, and I was more comfortable that a professional had looked her over and hadn't found anything more that needed doing.

Now all there was to do was wait for some mail to arrive from the UK [14], send some things back to the UK and on to Lima and then head off. The only drawback was that I'd been in Santiago for so long winter had overtaken me. There was to be some cold riding ahead.

Notes:
1. I'm sure this is as a result of the intervening decade, and that the following morning I had a crystal clear recollection of exactly where we'd been. I do still seem to have the birthday of the Mexican girl I met briefly in a bar there and spoke to in my (at that stage) very limited Portuguese.
2. Talk to the majority of travellers today and they won't have the foggiest idea what Poste Restante is. I think that's a real shame. Although email, social media, instant messaging are great there's nothing like the suspense of going to a post office to see if there's anything waiting for you, and then when you have it, taking yourself off somewhere quiet and reading through letters from friends and family. Wanting to gorge on it, but not wanting to get through it too quickly, because then it will be gone. And having the letters afterwards to re-read when you're on a bus somewhere. It's an experience I think it's a shame that people don't have as much now and that no doubt soon will be discontinued as it's too expensive to maintain.
3.  I've found the whole experience of learning a new language fascinating, not only from the anticipated side of learning how it changes the way the same underlying thoughts, desires and emotions are articulated but also the learning process itself. I remember in Buenos Aires the hardest parts for me were where I was being asked to construct a sentence in Spanish but also create the answer at the same time, which frequently had to be made up. I'm not sure which neurons that was causing to fire in my head at the time but I left those sessions particularly knackered.
4. And this doesn't allow for the shape - London is closer to Kiev than Santiago is to Punta Arenas in the south (2,200km) and Arica is 1,700km away in the opposite direction.
5. It's an opera by Bellini, originally called I Puritani, in English it would be called The Puritans. The irony wasn't entirely lost on me that I was sat in Chile, watching an opera in Italian, with surtitles in Spanish about events in Plymouth - 45 minutes drive away from where my mum lives. The opera was good, although (almost as with any big city theatre production) the singers were a bit old for the characters. It was difficult to imagine the male leads going off to fight in one of the civil war battles that were meant to be going on at the time. At the end I felt sorry for the Riccardo character. It seems to be a required element in opera and ballet that there's one character, usually male who suffers from unrequited love. Although in this case at least Riccardo lives to find another love, unlike in Giselle where the Wilis get him...
6. I've now been to 2 of the top 10 in Latin America, the other being D.O.M. in Sao Paulo back in 2009. At my current rate (and assuming the list doesn't change), I should have gone to all of the top 10 by 2054!
7. My chef friend did have a lot of insightful things to say on the whole experience. They've apparently a lot in common with a Scandinavian school of cooking which looks to take it's flavour inspiration as well as its ingredients from the local area - all of the dishes here (as well as the food that sat on them) came from and was inspired by Chile. He had a lot more to say but I kept being distracted by the food in my mouth (and in front of me).
8. As a member of the Communist Party, three houses and a penchant for collecting things might seem a little inconsistent but who am I to comment.
9. One of Chile's two Nobel prize winners, both for Literature and both poets. The other was Gabriela Mistral who won it in 1945 and became Latin America's first Nobel laureate . She also encouraged Pablo Neruda while he was at school, which might count as an "assist".
10. He wrote an ode to it - and to be honest if it was anything like the dish I had, I can understand why - although he also wrote odes to Onions, Trucks and . 
11. I'm not quite sure how he managed it as I understand that divorce wasn't legalised in Chile until 2004 and I have a feeling he was survived by all his (ex-)wives.
12. The benefit of being a Nobel prize winning poet is that you can call your girl-friend dishevelled and she'll take it as a compliment, or maybe that's what he actually won the prize for.
13. If I had a beard-trimmer I might have just tidied it up, but I didn't so it went. It didn't go quietly though (click here for more).
14. Note, if you want to get something to Santiago quickly, use Fedex. If you want something to take and inordinately long time, use ParcelForce.

11th September, 1973

On the 11th September 1973 there was a military coup against the elected government of President Salvador Allende. This resulted in an armed assault on the Presidential offices (the second in 3 months) during which it was bombed and President Allende died. This presaged months of terror and disappearances where anyone associated with the left wing parties, or suspected of left wing sympathies were routinely arrested, imprisoned, interrogated (which frequently meant tortured) and in some cases killed, usually with the bodies disposed of so that their families would never see them again, hence the "desaparecidos".

Military rule would continue until 1989 with occasional periods of repression within this time, demonstrating that the ruling powers had not forgotten how they had attained power and were prepared to use the same means again.

Museo de la Memoria
y los Derechos Humanos

The 30 articles of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights are
displayed outside the museum in
copper. It's a struggle to think
of any that weren't abused by
the military junta

As part of the new constitution Pinochet put into place in 1980 (ratified by plebiscite, but one where there was no voter registration so not exactly free and fair), he would be President for an 8 year term after which there would need to be a further plebiscite in 1988 to choose whether to extend the Pinochet's rule for another 8 years, or instead to return to democracy and have the first free Presidential elections since 1970. The question was simply "Augusto Pinochet - Yes , No". In the Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos they had some of the advertising material from the two campaigns. It was interesting to see that the "positive" choice (i.e. more Pinochet) used a language of fear and some pretty soviet style motivation, while the "No" vote was all about hope and potential. The result was that, in an election where nearly 90% of those eligible (i.e. including those not registered to vote) cast a ballot, 55.98% voted "No". This initially surprised me, why would people vote for 8 more years of not having a choice, rather than being able to vote again in 5[1]? Why would you vote to keep someone in power who has used terror and violence to gain and stay in power? But nearly half the population did. Whether it was the "Yes" campaign's message of fear of change, because people genuinely believed the sacrifice of political rights was worth the (relative) economic stability / prosperity (a bit like Singapore) or because people had something to lose / fear from a return to democracy and the inevitable light that would be shed on the actions of the junta. I don't know and think myself fortunate that I've never been in a situation where I've had to make that kind of choice.

The museum in town was well put together, informative, well documented and showed the scale of the atrocities with a wall showing a photo of every person identified in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as having disappeared.

The second place I went to was very different. A road in an architecturally appealing area, and a nondescript door. Inside was a townhouse with bare walls. This was Londres 38, a detention and interrogation centre used by the junta in the early stages of the regime when the crack down was at its most brutal. Verbatim quotes from some of those incarcerated shown on the walls and a short looping film where some of the stories from the place were graphically brought to life. Some of these were recounted by the loved ones they had left behind, as the subject of the films would never be seen again. Two things struck me. One was the everyday nature of it all - people would go through the front door everyday to "come to work", while others would enter (and leave) through the garage doors, potentially never to be seen again. The other was the recency of all of this, which is why you still see protests outside the main Parliament building and elsewhere by people who still don't have the answers to the questions they have, and still feel that the people who worked in places like Londres 38 have not had to give account, let alone answer for, what they did. Outside the building, in the cobblestoned road are plaques (similar to Berlin's stolpersteins) commemorating some of those who didn't survive their visit to the building, men and women, some in their teens, likely to have been guilty of no crime other than having different political beliefs.

All of this was frankly quite depressing and if anything demonstrated the fragility of democracy. I'm glad Chile has managed to get it back and hope that it (and the rest of the world) can learn from its experiences.

Notes
1. I agree with the sentiment behind "Politicians are like diapers, they should be changed frequently and for the same reason", whether Mark Twain said it first or it came from a Robin Williams film. If you look at British politicians, after about 8 years in power, their attitude seems to change from recognising that they are the elected servant of the British people, to the person that knows best what the British people need (even if the people disagree).

Easter Island

aka Isla de Pascua aka Rapa Nui



An early start to get the first metro and hope that the bus connections work to get me to the airport in time. Everything works out okay and onto a plane that seemed to be considerably more modern than the one that brought me to Buenos Aires. we took off and flew away from the Andes and over the Cordillera on the way to the Pacific and then over seemingly endless expanses of the bluest ocean you can imagine, with white flecks that could have been small ships or monstrous waves. We fly over the island, turn around and come into land from the west and then taxi back to the terminal. Steps are brought out to the plane and I walk to the terminal, bathing in the warmth after the chill of Santiago.

Most people have accommodation organised and are welcomed at the airport with floral necklaces. My Italian friends are looking for a camping ground and I haven't decided where I'm staying (but haven't got a tent so it'll likely be a hostel), but focusing on the most important matters, we look for somewhere for lunch, and almost more importantly, a beer. 50 yards from the airport we find both. Afterwards, after another 100 yards a pick up stops and asks us if we were the people looking for the camp site. We say yes, she says jump in and she takes us there. She runs the hostel next door where I end up staying. It seems as though it's low season as I'm the only person in the dorm, so pick a bed with a view of the sea!

As my friends put up their new (enormous) tent, nicknamed the Hilton, I head into town to have a look around and buy some beer. I get my bearings (not too difficult as it's quite a small town), and see my first moai (stone heads). I go back to the ahu (stone platform with moai) for sunset and am not disappointed, the Pacific turns to fire behind the stone faces.

Afterwards I see my friend from Santiago and we head for a drink and later realise that there's a ballet on at 9, not far from where we are. We get there just in time after nearly adopting a pair of stray puppies, and at this ballet there are no tutus. There's a live band, but with modern instruments and a series of male and female dancers (think Maori or Polynesian), the men nearly naked with a mix of temporary and permanent tattoos who are undoubtedly athletic and spend most of the time leaping around and beating the floor, or themselves on the chest and legs with or without the help of a stylised short canoe. The women tend to wear something like grass skirts and sway their hips quite a mesmerising fashion. You could understand why the earliest visitors to the islands were likely excited and terrified by the local population. The dance was interesting, especially in hindsight where you could see that one of them was about the birdman competition which we were to learn about the next day. Then they asked for audience participation (fortunately not looking in my direction) and it slightly degenerated into something more akin to a mix of stag and hen dos.

The view from my room

The next day there's a little rain, which creates the first of a series of amazing rainbows that I was to see over the rest of the week. We decide to walk up the volcano at the south western corner of the island, not far from where I was staying. It's a nice, gentle walk up, through fields with lavender coloured grasses, past cows and dogs to the crater. The volcanoes that created the island are all long extinct and in the crater is a large lake.

Volcano Rano Kau. The ceremonial village of Orongo is to the left of the rim with the Birdman Island (Moto Nui) being the largest one to the three to the left

Walking back round the volcano we head to the partially restored village of Orongo. It was here that the Birdman (Tangata Manu) competition took place every year. The chief of each clan, or his designated representative would take place in the race which involved climbing down the steep cliffs from the village, swimming across the treacherous and shark-infested waters to Moto Nui, where they then had to climb up the cliffs at the other end and stay there until the migrating Sooty Tern birds returned to nest. The aim was to find the first laid egg and return with it safe to Orongo [1]. The winner was regarded as special for the following year, would live in isolation attended by servants to feed him, but no one was allowed to touch him for the year and he couldn't cut his hair. It kind of puts triathlons to shame...

AWOL in the British Museum

The other notable thing about Orongo was the absence of any moai. This is partially because when the Birdman cult was worshipped, they had partially moved away from ancestor worship in the form of moai, and partially because the one moai that had stood at Orongo is now sitting in the British Museum. As the only British person I was obviously held personally responsible for the fate of Hoa Hakananai'a (Rapa Nui for "the missing friend"). After failing to see some of the petroglyphs that were meant to be visible there we headed down the hill, back into town to a waterfront bar where we enjoyed another amazing sunset.

Another stunning sunset 

Day 3 was fun but not particularly productive. The tour we wanted to go on wasn't happening so we went to the pub, then a museum, then had lunch, a nap, back to the pub, food, club and ended up getting home at some point in the early morning.

Which made they full day tour on Day 4, starting at 9am, a bit more of a challenge, but interesting all the same. One of the highlights for me was the quarry where the moai were all carved before being transported to the ahu where they would be erected and awoken by having the eyes carved.

They're coming to get you, just very, very slowly

A high proportion of the moai's on the island are at the quarry, or on their way to the ahu's when they were abandoned. The Rapa Nui people talked of the maoi being walked from the quarry to the ahu and there is a school of thought that rather than use rollers to move them, they were transported upright, with ropes leaning it forward-left and forward-right so that they would basically walk there. The strange thing about the quarry is that there are so many of them abandoned, at various stages that it almost looks like they are walking out of the mountain themselves. 

We then went to the ahu Tongariki, that has the most number of moai, 15. And there's another one not on the ahu but near the gate [2] where all of the moais top knots (the stone carvings that represented their hair) are after having been recovered (they were partially washed away in a tsunami).

Then we went to the a beach where there was a small ahu in an idyllic setting. The maoi here looked particularly chilled.

On the way back to town we passed a pretty much perfectly shaped volcano, Mount Pui. As we passed we were told that it was the location for the Haka Pei. This is the sport I'd like to have a go at - it basically involves sliding down the side of the volcano, on a banana tree trunk, wearing only your underwear. It's the pacific island version of the Cresta Run but I don't think you get a tie if you come off [3]. You could still see the scars left in the hillside by the banana trunks - well, I hope it was the banana trunks.

An early start the next day to watch the sunrise over the Pacific from the top of the island. Initially I didn't have the feeling that I was on a small island (versus being on the coast of a larger continent) but seeing the sun rise and then set over the ocean on the same day was challenging that perception. It's not a big island, roughly shaped like an isoceles triangle with a base of no more than 25km and a height of no more than 15km [4].






Later that day we went to another ahu with seven moai. This one was special because the moai were looking out to see (all of the moai at the other platforms look inland). There was a suggestion that this ahu represented the seven islanders who first found Rapa Nui and they are looking back to the islands they came from for their friends and family to arrive. Although a nice story, the slightly more pedestrian reason that appears to be the accepted wisdom now is that the ahu and moai were arranged so that they would overlook the villages (the moai represented their dead chiefs and were thought to contain mana that protected the village). It's one of the interesting things about Rapa Nui, although a relatively recent civilisation, for a number of reasons (some pretty bad ones like slavery included) relatively little is known about them. They had writing, rongo rongo, but no one knows how to decipher it and many of the stories have been lost.

Close by was a series of caves - each village tended to have at least one cave where the women and children could shelter in case another village came marauding and a lot of these caves were made from lava vents which criss-crossed the island. Some of the villages had more extensive caves and they lived in them, and kept their animals (such as chickens) in them as well. We had a walk through one of these using our mobile phones for light and the scale was impressive. One of them leads out to the ocean but we weren't able to find that one.

Later we went to a large cave that opened out to the sea and was apparently used for ceremonies. It was here that we saw the sun end it's commute and disappear into the sea on the western side of the island.

Before the stars came out.

The next day it was up another volcano, this one (Terevaka) was the highest on the island and from the top the horizon for all 360° was the Pacific Ocean and you could see no land in any direction. Here there was no escaping the fact that you were on a (relatively small) island in the middle of a very large ocean [5].

The next day I flew back to Santiago. It was a great "break" from the trip, I was literally stuck on the island for the week, it was big enough to keep me interested but not so large that I felt rushed. And it was nice to be in the warm and wear shorts for a change (although I can't say that anyone else was particularly keen on the sight of my legs after back-to-back winters).

I'd definitely like to go back, ideally around late January, early February so I can have a go at the Haka Pei...



Notes:
1. They would carry it back in a strap that would carry it on their forehead. I have no idea whether the failure of this this strap led to the saying "egg on your face"...
2. The one on his own is the Wandering moai, so called because he was taken on an overseas tour.
3. Video - also includes dancing girls: www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5-qQybEc14
4. The lack of space was to be the island's undoing. Competing tribes and overpopulation resulted in a Malthusian crisis. There can be a tendency (in the western world) to regard a simpler lifestyle as closer perfection. What Easter Island demonstrates is that people are people, and greed and the selfish gene can make any island paradise anything but if you give it enough time.
5. There's some debate as to whether it's the most isolated island in the world or not, I'll let you google the debate and let you choose which side to agree with.