An ice cold arrival late night

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Geo: -22.9058, -68.1951

That morning as I have left Iquique, I did not know how extreme that leg will turn...

A nice early morning ride up onto the Ruta 5,, from Iquique on sea-level up to 2,600 metres within a very short distance...being part of the Pan-American Higway system that comes from Alaska all the way down to the deep south of Chile.

First I did make the turn towards Arica, the border town to Peru...My initial plan was to go to Peru and cross over the mountains towards Cusco and into the Amazon region onto Ruta interoceánica Brasil-Perú but for some reason not entirely clear to me, I decided after 50 km driving, to simply turn round and cross into the high altitude border crossing between Chile and Argentina...not sure if I missed anything, I can only say it was an equally beautiful choice (I will take the other route another day).

I got into strong winds high up there on Ruta 5...The route is already very isolated on that stretch...Once I turned towards San Pedro de Atacama and towards the Mining town of Chuquicamata, the isolated stretch got indeed lonely, very lonely and I felt a bit danger as I saw a big sand storm on the horizon i had to go through...I simply did not thin about problem that could arise if my motorbike simply stops going...There as absolutely not one soul on the street for about 250 km...

Anyway, I went quickly to the mining town to see the largest copper pit in the world, quite amazing indeed.

Anyway I wnt through Calama, quite a nice town being in the middle of nowhere...It was past 7pm but I pressed forward onto the most difficult part towards San Pedro de Atamaca...another 100 km, being high up in th mountains and the sun is down, it tured dark and cold immediately...I arrived in San Pedro de Atacam around 10pm and just found a quick hostel for the night...It was aabsolutely freezing...

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Photos

Let's get started...Paso Jama...the unexpected...
The weather was already bd for day p in the high mountains but I simply decided one day to move ahead, I was tired of such depressing winter like weather...On the other side of the mountains in Argentina is high summer right now and I wanna be part of it...I came into freezing icy snowfall...

Up on the plateau in 4000+ meters...Chile...
Funny story...The photo you are just seeing is the famous Licancabur, a volcaoo many people in the orld trying to get an close-up view...I just accidently took the pic while riding through with m motorbike...Upon arrival in different places I showed the pictures taken to others and almost everybody said...hey, that's the famous volcano, how was it? My answer just was, how was what...? Just a quick glimpse t the famous over 6000 meters high volcano, looks pretty unimpressing if you take the picure out of a height of roughly 4400 meters