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Published: December 16th 2012
Douglas checking the fish situation
From the window of the Yellow House, ValparaisoWe’ve found Lonely Planet to be a mixed bag. First it’s full of lots of useful facts and figures and gives you the feel for places. It also gives you a good idea of some places to stay and eat. The Yellow House in Valparaiso was one of those, being the writer’s favourite choice and we really enjoyed being there. It’s got character and soul. That’s what makes or breaks an overnight stop for me.
In terms of maps for navigating the country….forget it! The maps conveniently omit or add roads at will. It reminds me of the time we drove across Europe using just the map in the back of my Dad’s diary. But it adds an extra dimension in meeting the locals. Argentinian’s are really friendly and always willing to help and give directions. Often with lots of details. Usually more than you want when you’re feeling quite stressed and really just wanting to get on the right road for the next 6 hours. Andrea and Joe think the Chileans are even more friendly…but I’m not wanting to hear that.
At least we’ve got a map of Chile. When Andrea was stocking up for the trip in
Cochabamba she found Lonely Planet, Chile and Argentina, but only road maps of Chile (all in “The Spitting Llama”). So now at least we can see where we’re going overall: always on Route 5, Chile’s amazing Pan American Highway. In central Chile Route 5 is like a UK motorway with very little traffic. You can see for miles, make good progress and it’s really really smooth, but with some pedestrians and animals to watch out for. The downside is the tolls, which are costing us about US$25 a day. But I guess that’s how they’re funding this amazing road.
The road map of Chile is interesting the way they’ve put it together. There are two or three strips of map on each side of the map sheet. Really thin and really long. Maybe they should have taken the toilet roll approach to printing the map?
Overnight stops are a challenge as we need to get off Route 5 with just a black dot on the map and a name next to it. Until this trip I don’t think I’ve realised how stressed it makes me feel to be driving somewhere really not knowing where I’m going, which happens
each time we get into a city or town to look for a place to spend the night. The effect amplified after 8 or 10 hours driving.
Finding our way back to Route 5 in the morning is equally challenging. We’ve now agreed on a plan, that we just retrace our steps, regardless of how sure we are that “the route is this way and much quicker”.
Today was no exception. We’ve got 500 miles stretching out in front of us and it’s taken us 2 hours to find our way back from the Yellow House to Route 5. A rather unecessary tour around Valparaiso suburbia.
I saw something today I’ve never seen in real life, only in films. It was a big artic truck all locked up with smoke pouring off the tyres. A horse decided the grass was greener on the other side of the road and sauntered across not seeing the 18 wheeler bearing down on him. It really looked as though the horse was going to end up “a la Godfather”, but at the very last second turned back. The lorry driver peeled his foot off his brake pedal and normality resumed. Joe
turned to me and said the lorry driver would have an uncomfortable journey now with those flat spots on his tyres.
The rest of our journey today was uneventful and a bit boring really. That’s the way I’ve started to see Chile really. There’s nothing wrong with it. It seems to be quite a long way ahead of other South American Countries we’ve been to in development and infrastructure (or behind, depending how you see "progress") and even has a Space Program (see photos). All the people we’ve me have been friendly too. Just nothing that really endears it to me and lots of fish.
The problems are Argentina and Bolivia. Having lived in Bolivia 10 years there’s so much about it that’s interesting and quirky as well as hard work. Argentina’s where the love affair started for me 22 years ago and so it has an unfair advantage too. It’s big, seems very secure in its identity, has steak, huge open spaces, farms and is really hot in the North and Centre and has a strong affinity with motor sports as well as police that are friendly and don’t seem interested in enforcing speed limits.
The
interesting part of today was starting on the Atacama Desert. The driest place on earth and I think I’m right in saying that in some parts it has never ever rained. Extremes in life fascinate me.
Amazingly Route 5 just keeps on going through the Desert. Petrol stations become more and more spread out and we need to start thinking more carefully about how fast we’re going in order to make the tank last. That combined with the climbing temperature adds the air con into the equation and how much fuel that uses. Driving at 100mph saw fuel consumption drop to 14mpg. Now we’re getting 21mpg by doing 70-80mph. I’ve started to think like an F1 strategist: do we go faster but have to stop more often and lose time filling up, or go slower and for longer?
Whilst we were going South through Argentina it took us 4 days to claw back the mileage we lost during the border fiasco. The very good roads in Chile have taken some pressure off in terms of hours spent in the car each day. We’re now ahead of our schedule. Joe and Andrea worked out our route before we left
Snuggles getting another blow dry
This has been Nady's favourite actiity the whole trip and possibly keeps her sane Cochabamba and we knew that the last day before Arica in Chile was going to be a big mileage day. We’re now reducing that down by going a bit further than anticipated the past few days.
We’re a few hundred US Dollars ahead of our financial budget too. That’s thanks to a quirk of the Argentinian economy that means if you change US$ in cash within Argentina you get about a 30% better exchange rate than the official. We brought lots of US$ in cash having been tipped off beforehand (thanks Suzanne). We’re needing that buffer now as Chile is more expensive. Petrol’s getting cheaper as we go North though and we’re not needing to keep up such high average speeds as in Argentina.
Eventually the road turned towards the coast just before Caldera and we started looking for the Campsite we’d read about in the book. It turns out that when Chileans use the word “Camping” it means “collection of garden sheds with beds in that you can pay for to sleep in”. So we agreed a price, dumped our stuff and went in search of food.
Bahia Inglesa was just as deserted as other coastal
areas we've been to as Chile doesn’t really start its holidays until the end of December. We found a restaurant and enjoyed chicken and steak.
It’s interesting how people’s moods change during the day and how your perspective on the journey can change after a good meal or even a brew by the side of the road. This was one of the things I was looking forward to; the whole journey with its changing emotions and perspectives. I love journeys. Getting there can be a bit of an anti-climax. A good friend of mine often quotes “the inner journey is the only one that counts”.
Gray/dad
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Liz
non-member comment
I\'m very intrigued at the shadow photo! Is it an elephant? Rhino? Hippo? It\'s interesting that you mentioned Sarah Connor. I\'d been thinking about her with all your descriptions of the desert etc. Technically she was living in a secure mental hospital at the start of T2! But yes, that photo did look like the place where she brought up John/went back to! Did you find \"no fate\" scratched into a wooden table?