24, You lucky, lucky b...

This beach was addictive, despite our constant urge to drive south we treated ourselves to a day off. Well, it wasn’t exactly a day off. Steve decided that it was a good day to pull the front half the engine apart to change the melted timing belt cover (ignoring the implications of it going wrong in the middle of nowhere almost out of water). Because we can’t just sit still. We played in rock pools, caught a huge (ish) fish that got bought into the rock pool by a wave with bare hands and then ran away from the rock pool when another wave bought in a jellyfish.

Now here is something that happened longer ago than you can believe, the miners trapped underground in Chile that was allllll over the news. 9 years ago, NINE years! 33 miners trapped 700m underground for 70 days. Since we were passing by, we swung in to take a peek at the briefly famous San Jose Mine.

Turns out that whilst the story is interesting, the place is really dull. Just a few holes in the ground. But there was the actual rescue capsule and even one of the actual real life no longer trapped miners giving the tours. Oh and also…. Actually no that’s about it.

Our desire to be productive as reached new levels, tailgating tourist busses can sometimes grant us free WiFi and improved MPG, win win.

Pisco is a drink, similar to brandy, claimed by both Peru and Chile as their own and protected in name to certain regions in both countries. The Chilean region is called the “Elqui Valley”, pronounced “Alchie”, as in “it’s 9:30am why are you drinking you bloody alchie”.

Our alarm call was four trillion goats bleating their way through the sand with several people, a few horses and half a dozen dogs trying their absolute best to keep them in check, they weren’t very successful. Horned shenanigans aplenty, it was the perfect morning pantomime.

Lured in by reports of generous sample sizes, we decided to indulge in a purely educational and partly medicinal tour of the “Capel Distillery”. It was all very nice, especially the three hours spent in the lovely shady car park with nice toilets and fast WiFi eating lunch and sobering up post tour. The most interesting thing we learnt, that we can remember anyway, is that oak barrels can only be used twice for storing the Pisco and then lose their ability to add flavour, like a tea bag. So the oak is usually crushed up but they re-use it where they can, such as the counter tops and walkways.

The valley is gorgeous with a slower paced, almost Italian feel to it. Grapes growing on every piece of land possible presumably to maintain the ability to call it “Pisco” and not “Brandy” which doesn’t sound anywhere near as fancy pants.

We learnt that when vines have to work harder, like here where they grow in crappy sand then the fruit has a better taste. So the torturing of these vines makes for a better bottle of Pisco, 6kg of traumatised grapes go into each of these bottles. Maybe that is why stressed people turn to drink, to taste the same pain as keeps them awake at night and shouting at the traffic jam.

Another claim to fame here is the clear night skies, a number of observatories litter the desert and so we cut through a bumpy backroad to see what all the fuss was about. There were indeed stars, lots and lots of stars. Some brighter, some duller, some closer to others than others and others further from the others than some others. And a few others too.

Almost out of food we couldn’t bring ourselves to leave this blissful area quite yet, so we had a dinner of lettuce and cheese. Finally some running water after weeks of arid deadness, we camped beside the lovely river where there lived 5 dogs. Very friendly dogs, running around having the best life.

Bastard dogs, traitors, sinners. Bastards.

After a very pleasant refreshing morning swim, we returned to get changed and shut the van door, no sign of dogs anywhere. 5 minutes later, just 5 frickin’ minutes later we open the door and Steve’s two week old Flip has gone. Still no sign of the dogs. Those bastard dogs.

Two hours, yes TWO hours of searching through the brush, near and far, resulted in zero success. We even used an empty bottle as bait and followed the bastard dogs to where they took it but with no success. Never has Steve wanted to punch a cute puppy right in the face before, but it was hard to resist despite the happy loving friendly eyes of the little shit bag.

Bastards.

With great reluctance we travelled on without drowning a single canine. Back to the coast to watch seals try and ride waves onto rocks quite often bouncing back down into the raging waters below, Pelicans soar past like bombers and vultures continue to be disgustingly ugly.

Since around the time of the salt flats we’ve had an engine warning code for a misfire on cylinder 2. There were no symptoms of this and so we assumed it was related to the fuel pump dying that time or salt in somewhere. Only when we went to leave the coastal carpark a severe stutter suddenly disproved this theory, it was real. We made it to a place to camp and an extremely long evening of investigations pointed towards it being an injector. It wasn’t the spark plug, it wasn’t the ignition lead, it wasn’t the compression and it didn’t seem to be the coil pack. (Yay for hoarding spares!) All this investigation possible thanks to a cheapo Bluetooth code reader from eBay, best money ever spent.

But it’s OK, we’re 60km from Santiago and in the middle there is a shop Steve has had saved on the map since before we even set off. A used Subaru parts shop. The one and only on the trip since America, 25,000km and we have just 60km to limp on three good cylinders and one intermittent cylinder. Not bad.

So we start by driving on the main highway through a long uphill tunnel with only one lane on each side, and no hard shoulder. Not so smart… We’ve a car park saved within walking distance of the parts shop but just a few blocks away in heavy traffic the engine stops. Nothing gets it going again so we push onto the driveway of an apartment block and start cursing, maybe when it’s cold it’ll run again…

And then along comes Rolando, our angel but that sounds a bit gay so we’ll say our saviour instead. He speaks perfect English and owns a VW Kombi and is about to depart for his own overlanding trip next month. He was on his way to the parts shops as it turns out there are hundreds of car parts stores on the same street, but that they all shut in the next half hour as it is Saturday. 5 minutes of walking and it’s like heaven, turns out there are a bunch of Subaru shops and the third one has a whole bin of injectors with at least 20 of the ones we need. Score!

After spraying fuel all over everything the new injector is installed and IT RUNS, IT BLOODY RUNS HOLY COW WE CAN HARDLY BELIEVE IT. And yes, that is a fire extinguisher that we didn’t need.

Rolando lives just up the road and says we’re welcome to stay with him, so we park our newly moving van up in the secure car park and spend the evening drinking his drinks.

What crazy timing. Unbelievable, and you might not believe it but it’s all true. We broke down with engine problems 5 minutes’ walk from the first shop selling exactly what we needed in over 25,000km. We then had just half an hour before the shops shut for the rest of the weekend, but Rolando came past to warn us, showed us the way, helped haggle the price down and then gave us a place to stay.

Oh and even luckier than all of this, when we first broke down Jenjen walked to the nearby shop to grab a couple of things while Steve stared and cursed at the dead engine and she found popcorn kernels for the first time in Chile, something she’s been missing in the same was Steve would miss his tools or Westy Rick was missing his second cylinder. Winning!

We spent the next day getting a tour of Santiago with our new friend, met another will be traveler soon and some statues claiming to be horse tails but looking like something else.

It all worked out, we should break down more! See you on the road Rolando, you bloody hero, thanks for looking after us.

We finally got conned. All this time and they finally got us. Chile, as a more modern and developed place, uses card more than cash. With the help of two other attendants the petrol station douchebag distracted us whilst charging us too much. Instead of the price, 41,077 pesos he typed in 52,667 which was the quantity of fuel we bought to three decimal places, the other number on the pump screen. So this is so he can be like “d’oh, wrong number” if we had noticed, but we didn’t until it was too late and we were a hundred kilometres down the road, 28 dollars poorer than we should be. Oh and the stolen flip flop. It really hasn’t all gone our way this time.

But overall we’ve done OK, ahhhh four cylinders burning cleanly. What a relief.

But oh no, a new horrible buzz from the engine. Thankfully just a massive rock wedged into the exhaust heat shield. That was a good time to have the timing belt cover back to full integrity and not patched with beer can anymore. Thank f…

And now we’re on the first road upon which we will backtrack, Santiago is nearby the port from which we will ship in two short months. So now we have to decide if we visit a place now, or on the way back up. A constant reminder of how the end is sadly closing in. But not yet, absolutely not yet.

Map. That is the link. Hey, why is it still blue? Stop it! The link is on the left, ignore this bit we don't know why it's doing this it shouldn't.

23, It's starting to get Chile

We spent the night with the roof stowed, the wind was so strong that the neck pain from crouching and the headache from forgetting every five seconds that the roof was stowed was a price worth paying for a peaceful night sleeping. Our only company the snowy peaks, llama relatives (vicuna we think..) and flamingos! What a weird crowd we made. 

Descending into the desert the scenery changed quickly; again. The road was painted atop the dunes so we rollercoastered our way into the driest place in the world, the Atacama Desert.

Despite sand being the nemesis of our overweight 2wd van, with some commitment and desperate hope we tracked along a ravine to set up in the midst of this crazy and barren landscape. Nothing lived here, the only trace of life was the thousands of tyre tracks littered across the dunes having dislodged the oxide red rocks sat atop the beige sand. We made our way up to watch the sun dip below the clouds, turn everything golden and then promptly set over the distant horizon.

As time continues, the salt will continue to be our nemesis but this battle we narrowly won. Just before it was too late Steve noticed a tiny wet patch on one front wheel bearing housing, a little seepage from a hole is nothing unusual for a van getting on in years except usually it is grease but this looked like water. It was water, salty water. A 2 hour full bearing tear down and re-grease was completed in a windy sandy desert. Where better to expose vulnerable greasy bearings than in these conditions?

Question: Should Steve and Jenjen buy a 4x4 bigger bus, like pictured below, convert it into a home on wheels and travel forever and ever and ever and ever? Also, what is this bus and where do we buy one?

We have seen tonnes of shrines beside the road, some small, some massive and all are there as a memorial to someone who lost their life on the road. But what better way to commemorate them than to include the vehicle in which they lost their life? None, there is no better way….

Deeper into the driest desert on the planet we descended, towards a town called “San Pedro de Atacama” which had just the week before been evacuated because of flooding. Hang on, what? Well apparently there’s been some crazy and unprecedented rainfall recently and things aren’t quite the way they usually are. The rains that never happen happened.

Making use of this extra water, Steve got a cheap car wash by doing it himself, only he spent an entire hour attempting to blast more salt from poor Westy Rick much to the dismay of the attendant who expected our not too dirty van to just be given a quick once over. Lucky the price was agreed upfront! Well we did leave a tip by adding to the soil collection on the ground.

Having quickly had enough of this hostel infested, puddle covered and notorious for vehicle break in town we headed to the old, but now closed, back entrance of “Valle de la Luna”, Valley of the Moon. We are still in an area rich in salt, in seeps out of the ground the same way it seeps through the metal under our van. After a battle with the road, which we will talk about on the way out, we made camp against the gate and walked up the hill admiring the spectacle all around. Looking back we had a huge sand dune on our left, a crazy mud/salt mishmash on our right and a huge sandstorm blowing in the distance with menacing storms clouds overhead.

Heading to the top of the hill the whole expanse was indeed other worldly, like a celestial body that would orbit a planet perhaps. All the rain that never happens that had happened here meant the mud was a little tricky to navigate hygienically.

It is not unusual to find us driving along with the heater on full blast and the driver’s window cranked wide open. We each have a somewhat different perception of what is nice and warm and what is friggin’ cold. This is nicely demonstrated below where Steve is wearing a vest and flip flops whilst Jenjen is wrapped up in half a dozen layers, and still cold.

We were expecting clear skies and amazing stars out here, but no such luck tonight.

The road to this spot used to be a smooth, simple and painless gravel road. But the rain that never happens had taken its toll and torn huge washouts into the mix. Big drops down into soft sand. Just what we can’t handle. Our way in was a touch easier than our way out due to the intricacies of gravity and nuances of sand.

Steve gets out the trowel and gentles the way down, and the way up. As you may be able to see in the video below, on the way across we find out we have insufficient approach angle when the nose smacks the ground, then we find out we have insufficient breakover angle when the middle smacks the ground followed by insufficient departure angle when the back smacks the ground. Wheels spinning, van bouncing, we make it across and find out what we don’t lack is commitment or a reckless disregard for our poor van’s wellbeing.

Well we do have some respect for this the poor old bugger, so it’s time to finally get the wheels pointing in the perfect direction on a true laser alignment machine, and not a teenager with a big ruler, or a couple of Bakers with a tape measure. Lacking somewhat in trust, and completely unashamed of being a complete prick Steve watches every step of the process lording over the poor workers with the workshop manual and a pencil in his gringo hands. Surprisingly the tape measure whilst lying on the road in the middle of Cusco alignment was actually within specification, Steve still insists there be some adjustment to make sure these people know who holds the biggest book and the sharpest pencil around here.

The skies are starting to clear and the sun is beating down. To find some respite we bounce on down to a river flowing through this desolate landscape. The transformation is incredible, all along the banks actual living plants grow and live their happy lives unaware of the deadness that surrounds them in every dimension except the one in which the water flows. The sun sets again and we finally get some stars in the sky.

Having had enough of living things, we return to the desert to find an abandoned ghost town, ohhhhhhhh scary. This place of which the name escapes us and the book with it written down in is out of reach was founded in 1931 and abandoned in 1996 serving as a mining community with thousands living there during the functional years.  

We swung by the football pitch on the outskirts where rusty fencing rattled spookily in the wind and the stands sat empty.

Next stop was the creepiest of all creepy ghostly scary places, the hospital. Ancient American washing appliances greeted us and thousands of patient notes still packed in bags on the floor. Well mostly packed, plenty were scattered around for casual perusal against all protocols.

Now for some spooky culture at the theatre. Putting on a show wasn’t the same without an audience but we did our best Grease Lightening.

And a school, which turned out to house the creepiest of all the creep.

Children’s toys, hanging from a tree that once would have been watered and happy with green leaves giving shade for the children, but now dead for 20 years and with the leaves gone the toys scorched by the intense desert sun are now warped, bleached and hanging from dead branches. Creepius Maximus.

We’re told that Chile’s wealth comes largely from copper mining and most of that happens up here in the north. Usually the machines are far away and look tiny. Turns out that up close they are quite substantial, not like those toy diggers you had as a kid. Be warned, there is a pretty graphic illustration of how you might hurt yourself near one of these diggers.

We reached Antofagasta, a well-developed and clean seaside town where it hasn’t rained for over 18 months and the temperature is almost always between 18 and 23 degrees. A pretty ideal climate, and right on the Tropic of Capricorn. We came to meet up with a friend of a friend, Joe, who grew up in Salmon Arm, Canada, where we were living but has been in Chile for getting on 30 years. We were spoilt. Even Westy Rick made it into the garage for safe keeping and vacuumed out for the first time in 6 months! We were treated to our first BBQ since Canada, fed beer and had great chats till 3am. Two nights flew by and despite feeling at home, we reluctantly we had to leave to continue our travels with our water tanks full and our laundry finally clean.  Thanks again Joe, see you back in Canada soon.

For some reason someone built a concrete hand in the desert, and for some reason everyone takes a photo next to it. So we did too.

Cutting back to the coast for the scenic drive we carved down through a canyon aware that we still don’t really like beaches, but it’s more photogenic than dead desert so we’re doing this just for you. You’re welcome.

And photogenic it was, a gorgeous deep blue ocean filled with jellyfish crashing against rugged rocks with no-one in sight. Well not until some kind French overlanders showed up to join us. But they asked first, we said “oui” because we are basically trilingual now.

Not much lives down here on this shore, a number of ramshackle shacks are scattered along the coast housing fishermen or kelp gatherers. And these aren’t snow-capped mountains jutting out into the sea, they are shit covered mountains but the effect is much the same. From afar.

We are still not exactly beach people, but we did find one we warmed up to just a little. Ok, well it was coastline perfection the type which would contain millions of deck chairs and screaming children were it where you live. We set ourselves up high above this perfection in a campsite dubbed “Wild Love” on our iOverlander app. Some artful types had tastefully decorated the area with inspiring messages on rocks, spiral pathways to nowhere and a collection of sticks and bones. We could feel the energy mannnnn.

We explored.

The sun set on this paradise, and we only had two fishermen to share it with who conveniently added to the photogenicism.

Our time in Chile thus far has been extremely comfortable. It is kind of like the Goldilocks of countries, perfectly hot in the day and refreshingly cool at night. Minimal litter, friendly people and almost no flies/mosquitoes/pests of any kind. The scenery is gorgeous, the roads smooth and we have never been more relaxed. Sometimes we wake up, look out the window at miles of sand dunes, or waves rolling in on the clear waters of the pacific and wonder how will we EVER be content to live a normal life? We’ll see.

Map link.