South America: 5 June 2010

Hola!

Mmmm, Saturday. My first free weekend in Copiapo. What to do with myself? Sleep in? Definitely! Woke up at 8AM. Apparently this is still early for Chilenos on workdays, let alone weekends. Probably explains why when I left my apartment at 9AM, the streets were still nearly deserted.

I thought I'd take the opportunity to check out the local motorbike shops and see what they have to offer. I know of two so far, each in the opposite direction from my place. Given that the shop was not expected to open before 10AM, I walked to it. On the way I learned that riding a bicycle along the footpaths will be challenging due to the locally broken / bent and generally damaged paving. Most of the paths are OK, but the other bits will challenge all but serious off-road riders. There appear to be plenty of people riding bikes, so I'll just have to pay more attention to where they ride.

The bike shop featured mostly new bikes. For those in the know, I'll consider a Suzuki VStorm DL650 or Yamaha XT660R from this place. They also had a couple of second-hand KTM Adventure 990's, but at twice the cost of the others, it'd be a big decision to go that way. I've got some time to think, as it seems I'll need to have my work visa organised before I could buy my own vehicle.

After my dodgy Spanish attempts in the bike shop, I headed back to the office to get the work ute, which I was allowed to borrow for the weekend. It is a Nissan Navarra, with a 6 speed manual gearbox. For those of you who have driven on the "wrong" side of the road, you'll appreciate how different everything seems. It is very hard to judge the width of the vehicle when (for example) driving through a gate! Not that I've hit anything, I'm just saying that it is a bit nerve-wracking. Then there's the complication of using the gears with the other hand. The physical layout of the gears is the same (to the left and forward for first gear, and so on), but again, requires concentration to get right.

Anyway, I collected the car, navigated my way through the narrow, one-way streets to the highway and headed north out of town. I was fortunate to be able to follow a fairly slow truck, which took all of the pressure off me being the one who was holding up the traffic heading in the same direction. With a few deep breaths, I was out of town and able to relax a bit more on the open road. The bright blue sky made for a beautiful day, however there was the usual low level haze obscuring the mountains and making photography fairly unrewarding. It seemed that the obscuring agent of today was dust. The more of the countryside I see, the more wind-blown sand/dust I notice on the hills. My sense of direction is still not great, but it seems like the south sides of the hills are the ones that are covered, some to the extent that they look like very large sand dunes. I'm tempted by the idea of some sand skiing, although this is tempered by the likely unforgiving nature of the "buried moguls" (rocks), so I might think a bit more about that first...

Heading north on the road, my objectives for the day were the towns of Caldera and its "sister resort" of Bahia Inglesa. My Lonely Planet guide describes them as "... Region III's most popular seaside retreats. While Caldera is hugely popular with vacationing Chileans, most foreign visitors will find neighbouring Bahia Inglesa to be more welcoming...". Yep, sounds OK and I was looking forward to seeing what they had to offer.

From the outskirts of Caldera, the vista it presents could best be described as "unattractive". Not looking good. As a result, I thought I'd keep heading north to see if I could find the Sanctuario de la Naturaleza Granito Orbicular. Beautiful rocks and something I've never seen "in the wild" before.

Of course, I then managed to drive straight past it without noticing it, but that simply presented the opportunity to find Puerta Punta Totoralillo, which is an isolated ship loading port. OK, ship loaders and ships are not particularly attractive, but the opportunity to get out and have a wander along a local beach was a good one.

Very different beach rocks to those you find in Australia, nicely rounded and all very serene (if you didn't look at the shiploader. Closed eyes, sun on my face and listening to the waves...

Snapped back to reality by a rumbly tummy (just like Pooh), I headed back towards Caldera for lunch and managed to find the very small sign indicating the Sanctuaria. The outcrop of the Granite covers only a few hundred square metres right on the beach, but is spectacular nonetheless.

The orbs/orbicules/nodules/"round bits" are up to about 7cm in diameter and fascinating. My memory is that nobody really understands why they form this way. Anyway, it was great to be able to see and appreciate the outcrop!

Caldera turned out to be better appreciated from within town than from the outside. It is clearly a tourist/holiday town, and this being well outside tourist season, virtually empty. The bay is quite pleasant (when viewed from the right angle), somewhat let down by the commercial fishing fleet parked in it and alongside the large jetty that juts out into the bay. The Lonely Planet also notes "... beach is slightly contaminated by gasoline from the nearby dock.", hence no swimming for me, although several foolish souls were braving the hydrocarbons and low temperatures.

There was also a fairly pleasant promenade and shopfront behind the beach, which it is easy to imagine being full of people slurping icecreams during summer holidays.

Lunch was a surprisingly good affair at the Restaurante el Teatro - greek salad and chips, although I still don't appreciate olives! The best bit was the entertainment. Javier de la Rosa is (apparently) "El troubador de Atacama" and something of a guitar maestro, according to the blurb on the back of his album that he peddled after one of his sets (A$6.50 - how could I go wrong?). Born in 1926, he is still going strong, strumming away and crooning(? - perhaps mumbling is a better description of it) into his microphone in 15 minute bursts. His breaks were punctuated by 1980's and 1990's rock "classics" in English. Odd.

My other entertainment was a pair of boys kicking a miniature soccer ball to each other just outside my window. Their objectives seemed to be to kick the ball as hard as possible at each other, hoping for a strike in either the head or the goolies (it's hard to effectively protect both at the same time!).

So, on to Bahia Inglesa after lunch and to be honest, I can't see that it was too much more attractive than Caldera. The bay was nice, but appeared to have a large fish/seafood processing plant on the edge of it, just around the corner from the main tourist part. I don't imagine their effluent going anywhere than back into the bay, so swimming would be out (again) for me. The promenade and beachfront was again fairly pleasant, but as it was getting late in the day and cloudier, not somewhere to hang out. It was also fairly deserted by tourists, however the locals manning their craft stalls were still mostly there. Shell jewellery seems to be the primary stuff being sold at these stalls, with smaller amounts of other South American jewellery and kitsch.