Studly Biker... giving it loads in the sand!
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When I got to Calama I found a stretch of road I drove last year, its compacted sandy gravel stuff and I used it back then to help drive out some demons about riding on that type of surface. I was just driving on the road and then it appeared, once I saw it I remembered it perfectly but up until I saw it I'd no recollection of it being here... a bit weird that.
I did about forty minutes out and forty minutes back and in keeping with being a studly biker.. I didn't fall off. To be honest when I look at some of the other pictures of lads riding on beaches and through the desert I know in biker terms I'm a mohair cardigan...but I still felt like I was in the Dakar, or on that desert speeder that Luke skywalker had in the first star wars... the whole time I was on it... I was humming the star wars music to myself.... Jedi biker...with Studly tendencies!
From there I went to San Pedro the Atacama, a lovely little town parked in the middle of a Mars type landscape. Its really nice, but its expensive as fuck. A bit of nose bag that you'd throw down your neck back home for a tenner, will cost you double that here.
Tonight is my last night in Chile, and I think the last night in the desert. I'm pretty sure once I cross the Andes everything goes pissy rain with lots of green stuff.... but I've no idea... I guess thats one of the cool things about a trip like this... not having a bulls notion of whats coming the next day. I've also no idea how good the surface is on the Ruta 40 up north, I know from last year down south its as rough as a boxing day sale.
If I'm to keep to my schedule I'll need to do 500km a day which allowing for a day to ride up to the start of the road at the Bolivia border should see me arriving in Rio Gallegos for the 18th, thats allowing 2 days for Tores del paine, and the perito Moreno glacier.
Anyway... we'll see how we go...see you in Argentina...
Over and out
Stud Muffin