Elysian Atacama

Día 58: Dodging borax, spotting flamingos and channelling my inner Mulan (110km)

Part of Chapter 7 Flirting with the Atacama

Post #49

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Volcán Poruña to Ollagüe (GPX 110km, 1,320m climbing)

Elysian - relating to or characteristic of heaven or paradise.

There’s no sign of Jake, but with the sunlight already glancing off the volcano top, a plan starts to form in my head. I’ll climb up the rim for a better view to spot his camp. It’s only a lil volcano after all, he has to be near here somewhere.

It’s a sharp cold, one that makes it hard to remember that warmth ever existed. I pull on a fleece and puffa jacket as well as thick gloves, a buff and a wooly hat. Remembering my lack of a square meal last night, I stash a juice box and a muffin in my pocket and set off in the last of the morning’s shade.

The going is difficult. The loose gravel makes it near impossible to gain a clean foothold. I slide back down if I step too firmly, like the Chinese conscripts attempting to climb the wooden beam in the 1998 Disney film Mulan. A tide of stones washes over my feet and fills my shoes with a crowd of unwanted piedritas. Soon I’m wiping sweat from my brow with the effort and one by one the layers are peeled off. I can’t bare to have them on anymore, the exertion is firing up my nervous system.

After 40 minutes of inching progress I’m sat atop the mound. I should be basking in the sun like Mulan herself when she succeeded in summiting the pole at dawn. The difference between her moment of faux cartoon perfection and mine is that I’m having to repeatedly eject the contents of my nose into a tissue and squint out at the desert through puffy eyes. Even then, I can’t underplay the beauty of the moment as the light changes and darkness is banished from the Atacama for another 12 hours. It’s a climate of the most jaw-dropping extremes.

I choose a song to fit the scene. Bonobo’s track Elysian fills my ears with synths and strings that stir something ephemeral within me. In preparing for the album, arguably the artist’s masterpiece, Simon Green sought refuge on solo adventures in nature, away from the shutdowns and wildfires and into the blazing Californian desert. His songs ‘capture a world in flux [but they] glow with hope.’ Atop my glorious perch, gazing at one of the world’s great wildernesses, I can’t help but agree.

Despite my tranquility, Jake is not, in fact, visible. He isn’t in the crater, which is probably for the best (I take that as confirmation that wherever he is, he still retains possession of his senses. Even though the volcano appears defunct, no-one in their right mind would set up camp within its jagged walls). Nor is he responding to my morning shouts. Maybe he’s having his own quiet moment of transcendence with earphones in.

I slip and slide back down and pack up my things, which takes longer than usual with such a groggy head. Eventually I struggle up to the road and what should I see riding towards me in the morning light? A mullleted Englishman!

The anger over our navigation mixup last night doesn’t erupt as forcefully as I’d imagined.

“I just took the first path at the volcano and assumed you’d do the same.”

“Jake, there are twenty paths. How would I know which one you took?”

“I was exhausted by the time I got there, I thought you’d take the first one you saw. You sound awful by the way.”

“Yeah I know. I feel like shit.”

At dusk he’d been out on his bike looking for me but it I must have already passed by. He’d been irritated by the one unhelpful message he received from me, the only one my signal would permit me to send. Seems like we both had reason for frustration.

The good news is, we’re back together and able to continue. We cook a pasta breakfast on the floor instead of arguing. I had the stove in my bag which meant Jake couldn’t cook last night. Having eaten only bread, we’re both keen for something more substantial.

It’s another day with no shop or water source till the end so we hope to make our 12 combined litres (now reduced to half that) last the daylight hours. It’s a 3-hour climb to the pass. Fortunately, it’s another glorious day, sunny yet bracingly cold. Here a steep incline will coax off your layers in minutes but a rustle of wind will reverse the process shortly after.

We ride over the lip of the Puna and see a train passing Estaciòn Ascotan on perhaps the most solitary route of the continent. It’s a now abandoned British funded borax mine, a toxic substance commonly used as a cleaning product or as a pesticide that destroys the stomachs and nervous systems of insects. Charming.

A lonely train drags of tens of huge iron pots of salt towards one of Chile’s most inaccesible corners. We feel strong to have reached this point by leg-power alone. Below the pass, a tiny salt mining town with a church and a garishly colored children’s playground sits on the edge of the flats. I wonder if parents sit and gaze out across this terrain, questioning what brought them here whilst their kids scoot down red plastic slides and ride wobbly blue sharks on an ocean of salt.

As we wolf down our remaining pot noodles in the bus stop, the workers return from shift and shuffle off one by one to small huts whilst the bus pulls in to have the brine washed off. There’s no shop here and luxuries are clearly few and far between. There’s not even water to buy which means we can’t restock.

I’m ready to hitchhike this afternoon to spare my complaining body, but barely a pickup passes by so I push on; there’s nothing else to be done without access to food or water. 75 kilometers remain between here and Ollagüe. I have one muffin as sustenance. I hope the roads are smooth.

The afternoon is salt-vicuña-flamingo-repeat. Despite the man flu, I can appreciate the astounding views. Free from tourist cars and barely any vehicles beyond truckers, these vistas are nothing short of David Attenborough’s Planet Earth in the flesh. The vicuñas seem content to stand around in the barraging winds with no discernible food source, whilst pink flamingos dip their heads beneath the surface of the shallow waters. The colours are faded crimsons, tangerines and peach sheltering the grubby white flats. Tufts of grass dot the valley floor, defiant in this inhospitable biosphere.

The smoking peak of Volcán Ollagüe alerts us to another active death threat. The white vapor drifts into a bright blue sky in search of cooler lodgings. An escape sign, advising what to do in case of an eruption, points to an open area to the right of the road. It seems somewhat fanciful that a short walk away from the tarmac would guarantee safety from a molten lava flow. As far as I’m aware, that substance doesn’t tend to discriminate in its path of destruction.

Two magical descents follow, the second coming after an unexpected climb to a ridgeline above the border town. The settlement itself is god-blasted collection of rusting train wrecks and battered store fronts. Most windows and doors are closed and many are boarded up.

Jake looks likely to set up camp outside but this time I refuse to comply. I don’t care if it’s £25 for the night (which it is), I have to be inside. The room is both expensive and toasty warm. The latter is all I can pay attention to by this point. I collapse in bed and pull the covers over all my clothes. Safety tonight, and the mystery of socialist Bolivia ahead.

I think it’s fair to say that was a day for the ages. On this trip, they don’t seem to be getting any worse.

End of Chapter 7.

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The story so far

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7

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Odometer: 58 Tours. 291 hours. 4,875km. 49,160 climbing

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