Great sleep, at last. Breakfast and on our
bikes. We rode up the coastline which was an amazing area really, extremely
dry, sand dunes coming from up high down to the rocky shore with waves crashing
in, and small fishing boats hooking out the local fish life. If we didn’t
realise this is a desert-dominated area we do now. Once again an excellent road
with heaps of fun corners and a great surface. How they get it to hold on to
the steep sand dune lord only knows. Speaking of Lord, this is clearly a
Catholic dominated culture as there are numerous shrines along the roadside
presumably remembering people who have been killed on the road, or celebrating
some miracle or other, often with Mother Mary as part of the shrine. Harry’s
hand guard came loose and started to cause his clutch to slip, so we stopped
and fixed it and did some sand watching. Passed a large number of Olive tree
plantations in the sand, they grow everywhere. Stopped and took photos, will
need to ask Alison my accountant if this means I can claim the trip as a farm
expense? Headed further along the coast to Tacna where we braved the typical
traffic to get to the train station where Geert had to do some paperwork for
our transition to Chile. Going into Tacna we went from desolate country to
desperate, with the typical, it seems, huts on a patch of dirt (sand and rock)
surrounded by increasing amounts of rubbish the closer we got to town, not
particularly salubrious. We got a coffee while Geert did his stuff. Coffeed and
papered up, we mounted and rode out of town Geert waved us through once out of
town and we took of at the usual ignore the speed limit pace that Geert has
counseled us on (Apparently no one in Peru takes any notice of the limits and
no one gets ticketed for this). We tested this theory immediately by passing a
police car that was doing the speed limit of 60, we were doing 90, and I saw no
flashing lights in my mirrors. Mind you the police car was pretty old and
probably could only achieve a speed of 60 max.
Across the flat sandy patch there were a few
twisters in the distance picking up sand, as the day was now pretty warm. We
arrived at the Border. They have fought over this border in the past and you do
wonder why looking at it, it is just sand, and where would you draw the line
anyway. I guess you have to draw a line in the sand somewhere. Exiting Peru
took Geert a bit of effort to get clearance for the vehicles to leave the
country, so we had some lunch and rested on some grass in the shade of a palm
tree, the only one for miles. Off we went to the Chile side through no mans
land (there are land mines in this strip that a taxi driver who wanted to avoid
the performance found out to his terminal disappointment recently). Chile
required another set of paper chasing. Migration - no worries - look, frown,
rip, stamp, “next”. Customs - a performance. The vehicles needed a piece of
paper with five stamps from various people on it before we could proceed, then
the bags all needed to be put through a scanner, we took the bags out of the
vehicle into a building, through the scanner and out the other side of the
building, then walked back around the outside of the building and put the bags
back in the vehicle. A bit Mickey Mouse. Friendly staff though, Geert did warn
us not to make any jokes, as they have no sense of humor (where did he get the
idea we would do that, I learned my lesson in France, trust me. Although I did
get through Heathrow customs once after impulsively answering to the customs
officer when he asked me if I had anything to declare? “Nothing, unless you
count 1 kg of uncut heroin”. Now children never do that, I narrowly missed a
cavity search) Total time to get through to Chile from Peru, about 2 hours.
Then we headed for the hills.
About 10 km after the border we took a left
hand turn and rode up the valley which was growing with good fertility thanks
to the river flowing down it, just out of the river bed it turned to rock and
sand once again, so was really a thin strip of green in the desert. The road gradually
climbed up to about 500m then mounted the side of the valley and climbed
steadily up and up. By this time the road was populated wholly with trucks
running hot engines up the hill and hot breaks down. This is a trading corridor
for Bolivia where Bolivia gets all of its external supplies. 1000m, 1500m,
2000m, 2500m we stopped for a photo, and a look at some cacti as vegetation had
now started. Geert later told us that he stopped at another ford to reflect on
his last experience there where he had a group of 7 riders who go caught up in
a flash flood. They stopped at the approach to the ford as there was a little
water in it, Geert stopped his truck just above them on dry ground, and put his
feet out into ankle within a minute it was waste deep and they had lost one of
the BMW bikes to the flow while trying to get the other bikes out. Then he saw
a rider floating down the gutter beside his truck and rushed forward, just
managing to grab the shoulders of his riding jacket. He called for help from
another rider standing on the truck but he wouldn't come due to having a sore
leg. Geert couldn’t pull him out due to the power of the water, and couldn’t
hold him for any longer, the man was too weak to get his hands up to help and
said to Geert “I understand” as Geert lost his grip and watched him swept down
the gutter into the river to his presumed death. Miraculously a few hundred
meters downstream he was washed out of the main flow and swept onto the road on
dry land and survived. Glad he didn’t tell us that story before, I would have
sped through the fords and probably broken the suspension. 3000m then 3500m
before we descended into Putre at 3300m. Putre is a pretty rough place on first
glance with a lot of shanty type buildings but then on closer inspection it has
a cobbled street system, numerous charming little cottages, and numerous houses
spotted among the tumble down ones where people have fixed them up and clearly
take real pride in their property. There is a nice little town square with a
restaurant that looked good, so after dark we headed back there for a feed of
Alpaca pizza and Chile Red wine, followed by crepes with a local caramel style
jam. Very nice. Man alive did it cool down after dark. Home, type, bed.
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