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Release

By Chris Thompson - 2009-06-21

The desert was the release from civilization. After we passed through the town of La Serena, the fences disappeared. Those barbed wire fences had been alongside the highway ever since we rolled out of Ushuaia, 4000 km back. Between towns, or small desert outposts, hundreds of empty barren kilometers could roll past. Decaying truck stops, dilapidated shacks, dust blown and fading, became oases, giving us water and food in the vast expanse of wasteland.

Mike and I were trying to cross the Atacama desert, starting from La Serena, a few hundred kilometers north of Santiago. We had 14 days to make it across the 1000 km of desert highway that would lead us to the mining town of Calama. Our friend Gabe, from the US, would be in town for 4 four day, speaking at a conference. So with an unusual (for us) time restriction, we set out to quickly cross the desert.

Of course, things never go like you plan. We were overloaded with food and water for the long stretches of nothing. What we thought would be miles of highway across high desert pampas turned out to be climbs and descents across a series of ranges that separated the coast and the desert south of the Atacama. Climbing through the desert, we came across the small town of Copiapo. We had some contacts there to stay the night. A night of rest and a hot shower turned into an invitation to stay three days for the labor day weekend. The "beat-the-clock" mentality that we had a week earlier south of Santiago was gone. The desert had worked her magic on us, and we were back to the relaxed pace of a bike tour again. We left Copiapo, and our friends Amelie, Jose Miguel, and their two daughters, we headed back into the wilderness.

In the end, how fast we went didn’t matter. Our last two days of biking were terrible. After leaving Copiapo, we descended towards the Pacific Ocean one last time. Leaving the sea, we climbed over 1800 meters in one day of biking, up into the desert pampas. An assault of never-ending high altitude climbs began, and halfway through the day, the familiar pampas winds began. It was heart-wrenching to slowly climb up a hill at 8 km/hr on smooth pavement. Even worse was the fact that we had to peddle downhill, battling the hot desert wind.

In the mid-afternoon of our second day in the pampas, disaster struck. Mike pulled up and said "There’s something wrong with my rack."...