7. Lagoonas And Stars
Day 143
I skipped the yesterday blog as there was nothing interesting to report. I needed to catch up with my blog so I wrote five new reports in one day. And that's pretty much was my entire work that day. It is hard to keep up if there so much to see. I get up early in the morning and I come back at midnight or in the morning if I go shooting stars. But nobody said that adventure riding is easy 🤭
Today should be an interesting day. I'm going to see the lagoons I was kicked out of three days ago. This time I have a ticket and there should be no more problems. They have the whole system set up like a military parade. My ticket is booked for 9 o'clock in the morning and I have to check in the office which is 40 km from Lagoons one hour prior, that means I have to be there at 8 o'clock. The office is at 70 km from the town so I have to leave at 7 o'clock in the morning. 6 o'clock wake up call for the morning it is.
I stopped for gas on the way out as I don't know where I end up today and this is the only gas station in the entire Atacama desert. The sun is about to appear from behind the mountains, and I move along quite nicely. Except it is cold. But I expected it and I am prepared for it. I turned on my heated jacket and the life is good. The gauge is showing 5°C. The temperature variations in the desert are huge. From the freezing overnight to unbearable in the afternoon.
It is a nice ride with little traffic all the way to the check in office. I check in with no problem. I get another paper which authorizes me to enter the lagoon area. I met another Spanish rider there, Oscar, who is riding on his Honda. I can forgive him for that. 🤭 We chat a little bit and set up for the Lagoon together. The dirt route to the lagoon seems somehow much easier to ride on today than the last time. One reason might be that I know what to expect and the other one is that I have a proper riding boots. To wear proper equipment makes a huge difference in my head.
I get to the top, the gate is closed. It is 0847. There's nobody around but me, Oscar is little bit behind. The lady at the gate told me that she cannot let me in until 9 o'clock. There is nobody around. We are at 4500 m in the middle of nowhere. And she tells me that I cannot leave my bike in front of the gate. I have to put it in the park 5 m from there. And also she keeps telling me how to park it but I've had enough and I am completely ignoring her by now. I hare stupidity. Oscar comes five minutes later and the same thing, no, you cannot go there. It is not 9 o'clock yet. Whatever. They open the gate at 0901. I should've told them that they were one minute late just to keep up with the trend. Anyway, now we have to go through the safety briefing, which consist of explanation where we can ride and how we should park our bikes. They are treating us like a preschoolers. There's only one road, you cannot mess it up here. They also tell us that we have to park facing the exit in the case one of the volcanos around erupts. Well, if this is so critical, maybe this place shouldn't be open to the public in the first place. It all seems like a make work project.
So we comply with all their requirements and head for lagoons. We park our bikes and walk around on designated trails. There are not too many of them. You are more than 200 m from the shoreline. This is advertised as a flamingo Lagoon. There's one problem, there are no flamingoes in sight. They're only handful of other birds, otherwise it feels dead. The landscape and views are pretty, but not any better than anywhere else around here. The entrance fee is pretty expensive, it is $25 to enter. Thank goodness, I can use my senior citizen discount and I pay on $20 😂 I'm done with the first lagoon and I ride another kilometre to the second one. The same thing, you can't get within 500 m of shoreline. I can see about a dozen flamingoes through my telephoto lens on my camera but that's it. There is a small herd of vicunas at the shore, but it is too far to get a decent picture. There are some signs at the viewpoints, but there are only in Spanish. With all those visitors from other countries and the money they collect, it would be worthwhile to include other languages as well. There is a ranger at the second lagoon, but she speaks only Spanish. So the whole experience was kinda underwhelming and disappointing. It feels like their main goal is extract as much $$ from tourist as they can with minimum expenditure on their part. I'm done here and I am heading out towards a place which is 45 km down the road.
I get there quickly, the road is nice and there's no need for my heated jacket to be turned on. This place is called Piedras Rojas which is Red Rocks. The rocks are situated on the shore of a huge lagoon or what it used to be a huge lagoon. It is mostly a large dry salt bed with a little bit of lagoon left. There has been a drought in Atacama desert for the past 10 years, and all the lagoons are slowly, but surely drying up. This place is busy. There are several tourist vans and there are people everywhere. What I don't like, lots of tourists. Anyway, this is a very nice place and I take bunch of nice pictures. It feels hot, but I have two T-shirts and two jackets on. The sun is blasting, but it is only 14°. The sun is very bright here with the reflection of white salt and water. This place is the last stop for tourists. There's nothing for them further down the road. This road goes to Argentina, however, you can only cross the border if you are a local. It is closed for tourists. This is perfect for exploring. There is zero traffic on the road and the views are magnificent. I stopped every kilometre to take pictures. It is a nice road and there's a blue skies and nobody around. I ride with Oscar and we have decided that will be ride as far as they let us today. After 50 km we get to the Chilean border checkpoint. We stop and Oscar start chatting with the border guards. They speak so fast I have no idea what they are talking about. I understand that this is not the border, this is just a checkpoint. But I already knew it by checking out the Google maps and satellite pictures. The actual border is 20 km down the road. And there is no Argentinian border post there either that is further 11 km. But the guards have no problem to let us go. It is a beautiful road with a zero life, except of vicunas. The views here are amazing. It is hard to describe the vastness and the remoteness of this place. It is a rugged beauty. You cannot find it at too many places. After 20 km we can see some road signs in the middle of the desert. And these signs indicate the border with Argentina. It's obvious where the border is just looking at the road. The pavement on Chilean side stops and you have nothing but bad dirt Road ahead of you. That's Argentina. I'm tracking my rides on the satellite applications, so I ride few hundred metres further into Argentina inside, just to make sure it shows on the app that I was in Argentina. Illegally, again.
Oscar is hanging around so we say goodbyes and I head home the same way I came in. It is 210 km to San Pedro. I should be home for dinner. The sky is a little bit clearer today than usually is so I pick more pictures. I set my cruise control to 120. I get home just in time for dinner in my hotel restaurant only to find out that it is closed today. Bummer, I was looking forward to their soup.
I'm tired, I rode 450 km day today with lots of walking. But it is not over yet. I have booked an astronomy tour for tonight. Unfortunately, that turned out to be a bust. There were several bus loads of tourists, at least 60 of us in the first tour and there was another behind us. They took us about 20 minutes ride out of the town to the desert. They split us in two groups. One group was taking pictures. I mean the photographer was taking pictures of every single of us 🙄. I couldn't care less about picture of me in the darkness. But it appears that everybody else liked it. The second half of the “tour” was looking at the stars through two telescopes. The guy was trying to explain a few things about the sky and stars, but there was not too much information I got out of it. Looking through the telescopes, the planets and the stars we were looking at were just bigger and brighter blobs. You had about 10 seconds to look through the telescopes before it was somebody else's turn. This experience was pretty much underwhelming as well. The buses took us home and I was the last one to be dropped off at 1 o'clock in the morning. It was a long day.
I'm taking a day off from riding tomorrow. It looks like I'm putting more kilometres on my bike when I am at one base. And I still don't know which way I'm going to head out when I'm done here. So the plan is for tomorrow to finish the blog and to catch up with the pictures. And maybe to go to take some star pictures at night.