Deane's Motorcycle Trip In SOUTH AMERICA
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Deane's Motorcycle Trip In SOUTH AMERICA |
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May 1 - Antofagasta, Chile Calama to Antofagasta - 142 miles |
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Today was a short day, originally set up to allow us to have a small tour of the largest open-pit copper mine in the world, at Calama. This mine is the reason for the town of Calama to exist out in the Atacama Desert. Unfortunately, we didn't get to visit it because today is the Chilean equivalent of Labor Day, and the tour guide wasn't available. (I'm sure the big shovels and trucks are still running, but probably non-essential operations people got the day off.) I took the next photo because the lighting was really interesting this morning on the desert mountain as I rode along. (It may be too subtle to see on a PC screen.)
As it turns out, yesterday we rode about one hundred miles due East from the coast, into the interior of the Atacama Desert, from the coastal city of Tocopilla, and today we rode about 140 miles West to get back to the coastal city of Antofagasta. Incidentally, deciding which way is North and which way is South has been sort of disorienting here, because we are in the southern hemisphere. I found that the other riders have the same feeling, in that we have well-formed habits of directions in the North American continent, but that seems upside down here at times. At our hotel in Antofagasta, we again have a beautiful view of the ocean, in a little bay, so our tour guide selected well.
On a different subject, I've been meaning to write a little about the custom of having headlights on or off while driving in South America. In all four countries we've ridden, the locals seem determined to teach us NOT to drive with our headlights on in the daytime. As they approach us, and we have our motorcycle headlights on, they flash their lights on and off, sometimes three or four times, at each of us. I guess they want us to drive with our headlights off, like they do. The ironic thing is that on all motorcycles sold in most of the world, the motorcycles headlights are hard-wired to be ON all of the time that the motorcycle is running, and, this has been true for 20-25 years!! I guess there are few enough motorcycles traveling the roads that the car drivers don't understand the need for headlights on motorcycles for visibility. Today I got the stitches taken out of my cut on the face from my crash on the loose gravel road, and the healing cut looks quite good. One of my riding buddies said a good scar would make me look quite rakish, and I could tell lots of good stories about where and how I got it. I've reported before that our photographer Henry gets into all sorts of positions to get excellent photos. Here is one of his favorite positions for photographing motorcycles and their riders in motion. Note that Henry is standing on the foot pegs of his motorcycle while riding quite fast, with no hands on the handlebars, and turned around almost backward to take a photo of another moving motorcycle!! Henry is quite a guy! (He has published seven photo books of all kinds of subjects, and is a well known master. - "Google" him at Henry von Wartenberg - The site is in Spanish, but you can see some of the work he's done.)
We are nearing the end of our journey, with only three riding days left. Then we put the motorcycles into the container to be shipped back to Houston, while we fly home to our separate homes. |
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