Day 38 – 29th December. Into the Atacama Desert.

The old sand/dirt road shadowed the new surfaced road.


La Serena – Copiapo 348 kms

Total Distance So Far: 9,356 kms

After a excellent breakfast whilst watching the beach crowd wander about we headed north. Our dual carriageway turned into a two-lane road which suffered some huge pot-holed big enough to swallow the front wheel with ease. This must have been caused by the regular amount of heavy trucks using the road.

After a few kilometers we passed the sign ‘Region de Atacama Desertio’ and the views became more yellows and reds with distance sand coloured mountains. Really it was very nice to travel through. The old road which was just sand and dirt followed the new surfaced road never straying from it by more than a few hundred meters. We decided to give it a go, although I am sure the other passing vehicles thought we must be mad. Our speed dropped to about 40kms from the 120 kms we could do on asphalt, so we quickly moved back. It was a good test to make sure we could tackle the ‘old’ roads two-up as we were going to hit these roads a couple of days later. The only problem we did have was when we hit a patch of sand we just sunk. Luckily it was only a 100 meters long and we could push the bike over it, or head back to the asphalt. Pushing the bike through sand though required some effort and could only be done for short distances. Later on meeting such an obstacle would be more difficult without the luxury of a bit of back-up tarmac road!

Coming into Copiapo we were again treated to the sight of lines of distant mountains all glowing pinky-red in the evening sun.

Copiapo itself was a sprawling town set up on the back of Chile’s mining wealth, like most large towns in the north. It had a lovely town centre though. After ‘grabbing’ most of the current northern Chile from Bolivia in the War of The Pacifiic in 1875-79 nobody at that time knew just how fortunate Chile would become. The north now accounts for the majority of Chile’s income. It is a mining mega-centre. It is the biggest copper ore exporter, and just it’s two largest mines produce almost 10% of the worlds supply. It mines for many materials, it’s other most important ones being nitrate used in fertalizer, weapons and rocket fuel, silver, iron, steel materials and has also 40% of the worlds known supply of Lithium.

I have to say it was very interesting to see the majority of other guests in our hotel in Copiapo were Chinese businessmen. I did read some time ago that the Chinese State had agreed to buy a whole mountain rich in copper and iron in Northern Chile. That they would import Chinese, Chilean and Peruvian labour and create a new town of 50,000 people in order to mine the mountain over a 50 years period. Perhaps these were associated to that, or just other material purchases.

We enjoyed a local tradition of a selection of meats – lamb, chops, steak, black pudding, sausages and chicken, served atop a large pan full hot coals. It went down well and afterwards we just chilled in a bar in the main square.

I have to say at this point it’s hot during the day about 30-35, but drops to 10-15 at night due to air without any humidity.





First dunes.



Copiapo's church one side the central plaza.




The ring of mountains that surround Copiapo glowed red in the evening sun.