Death on Ruta 5

North of La Serena there isn't much in Chile except for the Atacama Desert. Ruta 5 is the main route north on the Panamerican. And apart from some stopping at some horrible towns, most people just head straight through onto Arica or into Peru. If you have the time however, there are some wonderful deserted beaches and wild coastline to stop at. So of course that's what we did. Campsites on sandy white beaches became our home for the next few nights. It was a welcome break from the monotony of Ruta 5.

It's a hard life, but cooking isn't too bad with a view like this from the kitchen!

The un-nerving thing about Ruta 5 was the amount of memorials to people who'd lost their lives in road accidents along the way and the remnants of blown tyres. You couldn't go for more than a mile without a memorial and in most cases, it was for more than one person, quite often what would appear to be entire families. This combined with nothing but desert, alternating between stone and sand where not even the smallest blade of grass appeared to exisit, made you feel somewhat sad. It was easy to see how so many accidents could happen though, drivers falling alseep at the wheel on such a straight and boring road, either at night when there were no street lights or in the heat of the day when the sun burned away fiercely, quickly tiring those without airconditioning. All we could do was have our MP3 players blaring to give us some relief. That was until my iPod also died. Great, at least three hours on a dead straight road with no gadgets to look at, my speedometer still not working, no scenery other than what I'd been looking at for the past 3 hours and now no music. Does nothing survive this road.
The one highlight on Ruta 5, apart from taking detours down to the coast to camp for the night, was the giant hand. But even this had a sour stench. You'd think people would walk a few more paces away and take a leak or dump away from the only exciting thing on the road.
After the beachfront campsites, Antofgasta is horrible. It takes at least two hours of being mis-directed by either well-meaning or grumpy locals before heading to the shopping mall for lunch at about 6pm, only to find, by looking in a copy of the Lonely Planet guide book in the book shop, that there is no Tourist Information Office in Antofagasta. Doh! We take a note of a few hotels with parking and hole up for the night. We can't wait to get out of there.
At least on the road to Calama, the following day, after turning off Ruta 5, there are some somewhat creepy ghost towns to look at. These are entire towns of adobe buildings left to ruin after the nitrate era. We also cross the Tropic of Capricorn and pass some moutainside artwork. These are a few images created on the sides of some stone dunes, a la Nazca Lines style. At least someone has taken the initative to try and enterain drivers enroute.
We pull up in San Pedro de Atacama in time to shower and rest before heading out to celebrate New Year's Eve.