Chile or the contrast between civilization and wilderness

I reach the Chilean border just before the sunset, exactly at the summit. It’s just a political border; there is absolutely nobody or nothing in here. The wind starts to blow and the temperature drop as the sun disappear. I try to cycle further to find a good spot but it’s almost dark and I’m exhausted. I pick up my tent behind a kind of sand dune. All night long, the wind will blow like crazy. Sometimes I feel my tent’s roof on my legs and I start to think that it could really blow up my tent. I finish the night with my feet in the air pushing my tent against the wind. In a way a beautiful night at the top of the Andes but not a very good rest… But the lack of rest will be forgotten quickly because when I start during the first early hours of cycling. In the front of me, one of the most beautiful landscape I’ve ever seen: a huge lake and the typical beautiful mountains you find in the Andes. I wasn’t aware of the presence of this lake, nothing on my map and nobody told me about it, that’s why I’m so surprised and amazed. The colors are amazing and the road is just spectacular. It goes along the mountain, sliding along the cliff with about 400 meters chasm without protection. A real wild dirt road as I love it! I meet the carabineros in a 4x4 completely amazed. They ask me what I’m doing here and explain me that the road is supposed to be closed and is very demanding even for their 4x4. Then they realize that I’m not on a bike, but really on a bicycle. They definitively believe I’m crazy, get out of the car and then they all shake my hand. Welcome to Chile!

When you are cycling, you struggle to climb a hill and at the top you feel happy, released to be on the top and think the worse is done. You “just” have to cycle down.. But on a dirt road, It’s nothing like that:
You will have to break all the time, to avoid taking speed and especially to avoid the uncovered stones but anticipate on the covered one. You can break your rims, have a lot of punctures or kill yourselves falling down the cliff. I end up the day with cramps and 3 punctures, could have been worse…

I arrive in a veterinary check-point and get my 4th punctures the same day. Not a bad one really because I receive a big meal and cold beer but the 5th one, in the middle of nowhere starts to make me really angry… Anyway, I’m cycling through canyons and amazing roads on the edge of cliffs. There’s a condor’s sanctuary but I’ll have to wait for more “Andes” to see them. I enjoy my last pure and wild camping spots for a long time. To sleep hearing the wind in the relative safety of my tent is like a dream. I reach the border, the customs officers look at me with open mouth and I get my visa quickly but have to struggle to leave because they want know all my story. I leave my beautiful dirt road to join a good asphalt road, a better one… for my bottom. The people look at me strangely. I’m very dirty and I look very wild on my heavy bicycle. There is 3 weeks that I’m  living in the wild. I met mostly gauchos or people living in remote farms. The rest of the time, I was alone, cooking on my wooden fire, my kitchen always under the open sky, spending hours cycling through wild landscape. I was talking to horses or to my dear Lucie (my bicycle). It’s a fact, I’m wild, I need to learn to socialize again. It’s not the first time it’s happen to me, I have to adapt me to the civilization again, start to talk to the people and not to my bike or any random animals I meet…

My first impression with the Chilean is not so good. Nobody greats me, probably because I look like Robinson Crusoe (version “the Andes”), but I realize how big is the difference between Argentineans and Chileans. They look very shy, reserved and not as smily as Argentineans. The worse problem for me is that since I reach the asphalt and even I find myself in “villages-area”, it’s overpopulated and nowhere I find a place to camp, just fences and nobody want talk to me. It’s getting dark and, angry, I decide to play offensive. I see a lot of people talking in a house so I stop and enter in the place. The talks stop, everybody look at me and in my best Spanish, I said something like: Ladies and gentleman, I’m a Swiss cyclist traveling through the world in quest of a little place to pitch my tent, I ask your generosity to help me. Silence, the people look at me and my dirty appearance with big open eyes. Then a man stands up and tells me that I’m welcome in his place. The night will be great. I will get a room, a wonderful diner and a very welcome shower (after 9 days). All the neighbors come, one after the other, with beer to have a chat with the stranger. I change my mind about the Chileans people and I feel ashamed to have thoughts like that. As traveler you can’t criticize people or culture. You can have an opinion but you have to remain open-minded all the time.

I start cycling the next day with a much better mood and on my way, people will invite me to eat or drink something and I will even have a race with a race cyclist. Of course, I cannot win against a race bicycle when he don’t have any luggage but he didn’t win either. He leave me with a lot of respect and me with a lot of respect for the Chilean’s people in general. I spend the 3 first days in Chile without needing money. In fact, I don’t even have money because nobody wants my Argentinean’s Pesos and there is no ATM along the way.   In Tacna, I realize that I can’t afford any hotel in Chile. There are completely out of my budget but on the famous highway Pan Americana, there is a lot of petrol station, the ones for truck drivers where I find shower and relative safety. When I can, I share a bit of my meal with any random street dog and he will sleep beside my tent. It works very good as security-guard; each time somebody come closer to the tent, the dog start to bark and wake me up. I’ve to meet my father and sister in Santiago de Chile and I almost manage to arrive at time for the flight but get punctures after punctures (they are carrying new tires for me, random gears for the bicycle, a new Ipod and a lot of good food, as Swiss cheese and chocolate). I find myself in the suburb of Santiago de Chile and I start being crazy again. My pump gives up and I’ve no more tubes to fix the punctures. Everything is closed and I want to welcome my family at the airport, too late… After thousand of kilometers cycling through the Andes, deserts, the Pampa, after having survived in remote places against the wind, the cold, I’m stuck a few kilometers to my destination! Quiet a frustrating feeling but when I was really down (it doesn’t happen a lot to me, but I’m not Superman either), somebody comes and help me. A man very well dressed come back to his house and see me while i’m standing with my flat tire and a broken pump in the hand. He will invites me home, give me some fresh drinks and with his contacts, in 30 minutes I get everything fixed. My family arrives an hour ago in the backpacker, at the end, it’s just an hour delay but thank to the help of this man. For me, those small things, small help, simple conversation and random meetings are at the end, the most beautiful ones.

I live one more week in an apartment sharing a room with my sister and then live finally the big city. Well a day later because I lost the key of my lock and I realize then how strong is my lock… Only a metal worker manages to open it but I finally leave another of this huge city and crazy traffic. I have to cycle fast to avoid the rainy season. When I will reach the north, I’ll find myself in the Atacama desert, the world driest desert so I know that there I will keep dry. All the way to the Atacama is boring, nothing special to see or to do. The Pan-Americana is quiet dangerous and deadly straight, so boring. The road is not that bright and only get one lane by side. Often I’ve to jump out of the road to avoid two buses or trucks crossing. More I cycle, more I’m getting into the desert again. The mines are more or less my only contact with the civilization. They always have shops, bars and sometimes the workers invite me to spend the night in the workers dormitory, which include always a nice shower and full-board (and they are like me, they need a lot of food).

Before Antofagasta, I decide to take another quiet road via the Mina Escondida. I’m more than tired of the Pan-Americana. I cycle hard and fast and suddently start to feel a bit sick and tire. I wonder why. Then a truck stop, give me some water and tell me that I climbed up to 3’200 meters, yesterday I was close to the sea level…. I understand why I feel like I do now and psychologically it’s help me to get better. I rest a bit and continue, 300 kilometers in the driest desert of the world without meeting a village. Fortunately on the way, I find a water pump and fill-up my reserves. I will meet 2 foxes alive, 1 dead…. That would be the only wildlife I will meet during the crossing. I’m not completely alone because there is a few cars working for the few mines in the area and they always stop to have a chat with me. But in reality, I spend most of the day alone, under a very heavy sun. When I cross the salar of Atacama (a dry salty lake), I get lost. I meet a “no entry” sign and get into the company extracting the salt. I know that there is a way out and there is no way I cycle 40 kilometers more just to avoid them. I have almost no more water! They send me in the front of the big boss and he receives me like a king with food and cold mineral water! Sometimes in life, you cannot always win, but this time I did… The night, I sleep 50 kilometers away and I meet again the workers of the salt’s company. They recognize, invites me and I stay in a nice and big room with 2 other workers. 

I cycle through Atacama, one of the biggest touristic place in Chile and I don’t even feel like having a stop. The place look fake to me and I’m not in the mood to meet any tourists (even I’m more than aware to be a tourist myself). I cycle along the moon landscape and find myself in another complete arid place, one more time. I arrive in Calama without water and no more food, I thought I did the worse… never underestimate the route, another good lesson….

When I ask the people about my last stretch to the Bolivian border, they all look squared and all warn me to NOT take this road, but the touristic one back in San Pedro de Atacama. Apparently the road is bad, there is nothing but a lot of drug dealers crossing illegally the border. I learn that there is a lot of mines and don’t believe much in the “drug dealer killers”. If there are drug dealers, I’m sure that they will busy enough to care about crossing the border quietly and I don’t think a cyclist can help them or make them richer. I always ask the people about the places I want to go but sometimes the reaction are a bit extreme and decide to go for it.

I start cycling, I believe the road flat and one more time, I feel a bit sick and tired. I lay down on the side of the (very) dirt road. A big truck pass by, ask me if I want to be picked up and before he leaves I ask him at what altitude we are now: 3’900 meters! I can’t believe it. Except the 4 punctures I got to come here, the ride was kind of easy. The nights in the area are just like in a dream. It’s getting quiet cold and I’ve to pack out my warmest clothes for the evening while cooking in the tent. But what I love before all, it’s this absolute calmness. I cross my first real salar, a small place completely covered by salt, beside a beautiful mountain. I reach the top of the pass, 4’250 meters, a new record. Honestly, it doesn’t mean much for me in fact, because I know that I will spend the next times around 4’000 meters. I see a basketball field at more than 4’000 meters and I wonder if they really plays a lot in here. Later on, I realize that they do and many times, I will find myself playing football with Bolivian people.

I will not meet any drug dealers but in many places, there is warnings about mines. A few times I’ll see cars and trucks completely destroyed, on the side of the road. The carabinieros destroy them each times they catch them with drugs. For me, they are often the only protection I can get against the wind and they are very practical for my campsite: I can push the bike against, I can sit on or in it, help me to cook in a better position and protect my tent against the wind.

The road is in very bad condition, but what can I ask more, I cross amazing salars after salars, the colors of the mountains are beautiful and many vicuñas walk freely, like in a surrealistic painting. Very few times in my life, I had the feeling to be in such intact and wild area. There is no words to describe the amazing landscapes I’m crossing. I’ve never see such colors around the world. I leave Chile the happiest man on the world, I’m not cycling, I’m flying on another world!

Not much happened to me during my brazilian journey because I stayed all the time on this very busy asphalt coastal road and like I already said, all the area is very populated. But I really enjoyed the typical Brazilian atmosphere, the music and “alegria” (joy) in the air. The safety was a major problem and everybody warned me all the time but never I found myself in a bad situation or simply felt insecurity. The food, the climate, the bikinis, the football, Brazil is definitively a great place to be. I love it in here and later on I will seek for more adventure in the north where it’s wilder. But for sure, I’m not yet done with Brazil.