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Salt Roads

By Chris Thompson - 2009-09-28

The red ball of the sun was dropping low towards the horizon as we left the dust of Calama behind us. Pushing out into the Atacama for one last ride in the great desert, we were loaded down, ready for days of nothing. We camped to the west of Chukicamata, the huge gaping pit in the earth. Even late at night, the mine was lit up like a Christmas tree, and spewing smoke; a bast that never sleeps. The next day we continued the slow climb through the blasted desert, passing the sleepy towns of Chiu-Chiu and Lasana. Chiu-Chiu, sleepy in the hot sun, and Lasana, hidden in it’s deep, cool, canyon. The slow freight train from Calama to Ollague passed us in the heat, pushing it’s way north towards Bolivia. We felt akin to the train, heavy laden, slowly and steadily pushing ourselves onward.

At a mining control station along the road, we stopped for directions and water. The workers took down our names and emergency information ‘in case anything happens to us’. After filling up with at least 10 liters of water each, we left the smooth paved mining road for a dirt track, and crossed the canyon that had been winding along our left for the last 40 kilometers. Encountering a rickety old iron bridge with signs warning us not to cross, we paused for a moment. After a test walk across, we figured it could carry a few more bikes, and headed across. Waiting for us on the other side where the twin volcanoes, San Pedro and San Pablo, guarding our path, waiting for us patiently. As the sun set, we made camp at their feet in the desert, as the temperature dropped.

The next morning, we set off down the road. The hard packed mix of salt and earth road surface sped us upward smoothly. We stopped for breakfast between what Daniel called a "cinder cone", a red-brown volcanic cone emerging from the ground to the west of the road, and San Pedro, towering 3,000 meters above us, to the east. A quick 300 meter scramble up the loose, bouldery side of our cinder cone, and we had a fantastic view of the valley. Huge lava flows cascaded from the slopes of San Pedro, down into the valley below framed our view. To the north east lay the mysterious land of Bolivia.

We slid, scrambled, and ran down our little volcano and mounted up. We had a long way to go, a long way to climb, and three days to do it. The climb up from the Atacama Pampas to the Andean Alti-Plano was long and arduous. A seemingly unending grade lay in front of us. Halfway up, we decided to stop riding, chase llamas around, and throw rocks at beer bottle targets. After an hour we decided there wasn’t much future in this line of work, and returned to the bikes.

We crossed onto a rolling plain east of San Pablo, and began to roll up and down the hills, flirting with 4,000 meters of elevation, until we rolled into the control station at Ascotan. Looking down onto the salt flat of Ascotan, or "Salar de Ascotan" we could see into Bolivia. Still, nearly two days of hard riding remained. We ate lunch outside the control station, sheltered from the wind that was whipping through the mountain pass. Bolivian truck drivers shivered next to their big-rigs, waiting to pass the police check point. The caribineros took care of us one last time, filling up our water bottles, nearly twenty five liters of water, and letting us relax inside the barracks for a while.

We descended into the Salar de Ascotan down a bumping, rutted, dirt road. I smelled my brakes burning the whole way down. I stopped to let them cool, and after five minutes of freezing wind, I tried the reliable ‘finger test’ to check on their condition. The pattern of cooling holes from my brake rotor were branded on my finger tip. We finally made it to the salar, an old lake bed, dried to a hard salty crust. The salar was a horrible place. The road cutting through the salt lake was a path for excavators and truckloads of workers, going to excavate the salar. The trucks kicked up thick clouds of blinding salt dust, burning our eyes. We covered our mouths and noses as best we could, and moved north. We rolled by workers encampments, piles of salt, and borax mines. A train rumbled by as we searched for a campsite on the shores of the salt lake.

The next morning we awoke to discover a new phenomenon. Our water had frozen in the night! The temperature had dropped below -16 degrees Celsius. (3 deg. F). We struck camp and took a short cut across a frozen track crossing one the wet areas of the salar. Lunch was outside of the mining settlement for Cebollar. The tiny group of adobe huts was surrounded by the rubbish of what must have been a much larger town 100 years ago, during the "salt-peter rush". An old broken down cemetery attested to the history of the place. In the rubbish piles, we found the refuse of lives past. Broken bottles, tea cups, children’s shoes, and wooden thread spools. Leaving the salar, we began climbing San Martin pass, our last climb before the border. Flamingos looked on from the salar, and small herds of Guanacos galloped easily across the rocky slope.

Over the next two days, we pushed towards Bolivia. We ran into dry salt lakes, roads made of pure sand, and eventually, with a whoop of jubilation, a long easy downhill into the small town of Ollague. Three abreast, we rode into town like cow-hands coming back to town from a long cattle drive. As we rode into town, I knew the adventure was just about to begin.

Check out the route

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=calama,+Chile&daddr=-22.216649,-68.610992+to:ollague,+Chile&hl=en&geocode=&mra=dpe&mrcr=0&mrsp=1&sz=10&via=1&sll=-22.22809,-68.716736&sspn=0.405525,0.883026&ie=UTF8&ll=-22.156883,-68.729095&spn=0.202865,0.441513&z=11