I set off from San Pedro de
Atacama with some 15 liters of
water in my trailer and a map of the
altiplano in my back pocket. This
is the far north of Chile, where the
mountain peaks climb to heights
of 24,000 feet or so-- and the 'alti-
plano is what they call the 10,000-
foot plains that spread across
Bolivia and beyond.

On the way to Tocanao, I saw shepards with their flocks of sheep under the sparse, broad trees along the side of the road, seeking shelter from the afternoon sun. Then I came across two llamas ambling in my direction, and I stopped to pet one. Next thing, I was fending a very heavy and stinky llama who had taken a liking to my leg, and was rescued by an old lady who emerged from a tree with a stick in her hand.

After a remarkable sunset, I spent
the night in front of the 'carabin-
eros' (state police) station. In the
morning I was offered a big tub of
mayonaise by one of the officers.
While I was trying to explain that
I already had some (it's a Chilean
staple), his dog Satan was burrow-
ing a hole in my tent
screen, but I discovered
these activities before
Satan got any of my food.

I followed an unpaved road along the edge of the Salar de Atacama-- a huge dry lake bed said to be the driest desert in the world, with periods of up to 40 years with no measurable precipitation. Then I came across another road project, with glorious pavement as the road began its ascent.

In the afternoon I came across an Argentine guy
sitting next to his broken down Ford Falcon. He
had been there for hours, and he had no water,
so I gave him a bottle. He had sent his brother
for help in the next town, Socaire. I spent the
afternoon there, with the Argentine (he got a tow)
and his brother, who worked with the local jack-
of-all-trades to fashion a new engine fan out of
scraps of metal and plastic-- "Made in Socaire",
the Argentine pointed out, adding "the Japanese
are not the only clever ones."

I passed the afternoon swatting flies in the Socaire plaza, next to the new Catholic church. It took all the energy I could muster to get back on the bike again, but I hit the road again, and as I gained altitude the landscape trans-formed from a barren desert to a sea of gold punctuated by purple
mountains. I set up camp by
the side of the road just be-
fore sunset.

The next morning as I was
breaking camp the blue
Ford Falcon zoomed past,
the homemade engine fan
whirling around inside. I con-
tinued up the dirt road, past
a deep gorge and over a
modern canal that diverted
all water from the gorge. At
about midday, I veered onto a
side road to Lagunas Miniques
and Miscanti.

This road segment was the most
challenging of my trip, rutted, sandy,
steep and rising to an elevation of
13,750 feet before traversing the
ridge to the basins with the lagunas.
As I approached the ridge, I was
stopping every hundred meters or
so just to breath. I wondered if this
is what it feels like to be asthmatic.

It was only about 3 p.m.
when I got to my camp site,
and the temperature must
been about 95 degrees F.
At first I tried to set up camp
inside an ancient stone cattle
pen constructed by the men
who used to bring cattle from
the Argentine side to the
men working in the nitrate
mines on the Chilean side,
but moved because there
was tourist waste all over the place.

By the time I set up my tent,
I was so exhausted from the
heat and the altitude it was all
I could do to just lay down in
my tent and listen to the BBC
on my shortwave radio until the
sun started to set, when I
ventured out in time to see a
lone flamingo taking off over
one of the lagunas, which
are a flamingo breeding ground
at other times of the year.

I spent the next 24 hours
up there in the altitude,
just me and the clouds and
a herd of vicunia (a kind of
spindly miniature llama). I
never did go swimming in
either of the lagunas, I
was too wasted to spend the
energy to do so. I did test
the water but it was way too
salty to drink. When I left
I had about a 2-day supply
left.

The ride back down the
altiplano was surprisingly
easy, and before I knew it
I was back on the flatness
of the Salar de Atacama.
This time I headed straight
into the middle of it, into
a warren of dirt roads going
this way and that, with no
directional signs to be
found anywhere.

In fact, the only sign of human hab-itation was the occasional roadside
shrine, often containing the license plates of the cars that hit each other,
or some other reference to the lone-liness of the desert. Not encouraging.
I there were also some mining imple-
ments, and eventually I came across
a traler settlement where some miners were able to point me in the direction of Piene, the town I was trying to reach.

After a few more
hours on the Martian
landscape of the
Salar de Atacama...

I was at the Piene
bus stop, and on a
bus back to San
Pedro.