Trans Americas 2009 - The Blog

With today being a relatively long riding day of some 290 miles and also the border crossing into Chile, it was another early start... Kevin set off at 6am in order to stop in Tacna for the forms needed for the temporary importation of vehicles – apparently these are not available in bulk at the border and have to be obtained from the taxi office in the bus station (taxis frequently crossing the border, hence they have a stash of forms). The rest of us ate breakfast and started to roll out of the hotel's underground garage just after 7am. I rode out with Aaron, Nick and Al, once again making use of the maps Aaron had bought in Columbia for his GPS (they'd not been able to load them into mine in time). Once clear of the town and back on the Pan-American, the pace was too slow for me, so I passed the others and set off at a slightly higher pace (75mph as opposed to 65mph), determined to make good time in getting to the border, some 250 miles away. Riding up into desert-like mountains rising through the early morning mist and into the sunshine above, then dropping back into the mist again was great fun, the scenery more like the surface of some long-abandoned planet than mother earth. Once we'd dropped from the mountains onto the plateau, the desert extended as far as the eye could see either side of the narrow strip of black tarmac, the sand bright beige in the sunshine, but the temperature quite cool. I stopped to put on my outer jacket and Nick did the same, Aaron and Al continuing ahead. Once on the move the desert started showing signs of some bizarre human practices... in the absolute middle of nowhere, with no signs of habitation or life for miles, the desert had been marked out with straight lines of stones creating huge squares of earth, each of which was dotted with lots of piles of stones, sometimes just clumped together, other times neatly piled up to make what looked like little statues... very odd indeed... but it did break up the monotony of the ride...

Just before the border we caught up with Aaron, who had stopped to fill up with fuel, and Al had caught us back up as we'd passed him when he stopped for photos. So the 4 of us arrived at the border more-or-less together, and met up with Kevin who gave us the run-down on the process we needed to follow... As always, the first step was to get ourselves and our bikes stamped out of Peru. In this instance this also gave us the 4-part form that needed to be stamped 4 times before we'd be allowed to leave the customs complex on the Chilean side. With that done we left Kevin to wait for the others and rode through no-man's land into the Chilean customs area, and I managed to sneak a quick picture whilst riding...





Once there we parked up and went and got our passports stamped (our entry to Chile) which got us the 1st stamp on the 4-part form, then had the bikes inspected by the agricultural inspection team (who were looking for smuggled fruit, veg or other foodstuffs), then to the vehicle importation office to get the bike permit form. Before riding to the exit checkpoint we checked our stamps and I realised the agricultural inspection people hadn't stamped the 4-part form, so went and got it stamped, then to the exit. Where I was told I only had 3 stamps, not the requisite 4. Seems the vehicle importation chap had stamped the permit, but not the 4-part form, so I rode back and got that stamped too, and was then allowed into Chile proper...

Wow... I've now ridden my bike all the way from Alaska to Chile... some 16,000+ miles... how cool is that?

Sadly we only have 1 more country to enter – Argentina, and we'll be doing that in a couple of days – but at least we hop between Chile and Argentina about 7 times, so plenty more border crossings to negotiate before the trip is done!

Once into Chile it was only about 20 miles or so to Arica, and our hotel on the beach. On arriving we discovered we'd passed through yet another time-zone and had lost 2 hours... instead of being 12.30pm it was now 2.30pm... We're staying at a great little resort hotel, although my room was at the back and had twin beds that were only inches apart. Not wanting to feel Jim's hot breath on my neck, I managed to get them separated by a couple of feet before he arrived, and then went to claim my “welcome drink”. I declined the picso sour (memories of Chiclayo still strong) and had a beer...





After a bite to eat I went back to the room and managed to catch Tracy online, so had a lovely chat, then returned to the bar to try the other local beer, just as the sun was starting to set...





Beer... hmmm...

Whilst enjoying the 2nd beer, Jeff handed me a copy of the route-notes for the next section. It was very depressing to discover these actually covered the entire rest of the trip, the last page including the line “today is our last riding day”. I nearly cried... but there's still 6 weeks left, so it's not like it's over yet...

When it was close to 8pm, Nick, Van Al, Aaron and I set off to the restaurant we'd spotted just along the beach from the hotel. It opened at 8.30pm, so we had a little time to kill, but just next door were some interesting old guns, lined up pointing towards our resort hotel, the photo opportunities too good to resist...





When the restaurant finally opened (they had trouble finding the keys!) we went inside and ordered some seafood – in my case corvina with edam cheese and shrimps (it's a kind of sea bass) – and a decent bottle of Chilean Chardonnay. The food was excellent, once again justifying not eating in the hotel. By the time we'd finished gorging ourselves (the ice cream and chocolate sauce to finish was equally good!) and walked back to the hotel it was 10.30pm and so I declined the offer of a nightcap and went to bed (despite it still only being 8.30pm in Peru...). After all, we've a long, 490-mile day tomorrow...