Day 154
I set off early and I climbed back out of Iqieque and back on to Route 5 South where I refuelled shorty after re-joining it. I was in for yet another 150 mile stretch of empty road before I would get to the next petrol station. It was cold but at least it was sunny and there were no head winds. I had done about 80 miles when I encountered another customs checkpoint in the middle of nowhere. There was a large bus stopped in it and all of the passengers had to disembark and have their bags and documents checked.
I thought that it was only for freight and buses so I went to the exit barrier but I was told to turn around and present my TIP to the customs guy in the office which I then did. He looked at it stamped it on the back with two different stamps and then signed it before giving it back to me. That was it, nothing else, Chilean bureaucracy at its finest.
Then I rode back to the barrier and showed the guy my stamped TIP, he then opened the barrier and I was on my way again. It was then more of the same monotonous desert landscapes and the sheer tedium of it all was only broken by watching the bike odometer turn to 12,000 miles.
After just under three hours of riding since I had left Iqieque I reached a major crossroads junction where the on-line maps indicated that there was a petrol station close by. I rode for about 10 miles to the West before I found the turn off to take me to the small village of Maria Elena in the middle of nowhere that had a petrol station. Eventually I found it and I refuelled.
Now this is where I need to have a rant.
The crossroads junction that I previously mentioned is probably the most important junction in the North of Chile but there is absolutely nothing there, no petrol station, no toilets, and nowhere to buy anything to eat or drink. Now if one did not know about the small village of Maria Elena the closest places to do any of these things are Iquique (100 miles North) Calama close to Bolivia (50 miles East) and Tocopilla on the Pacific coast (50 miles West). Yet they have a tiny petrol station tucked away in a village 10 miles from the main road with no signs on the main road denoting its existence.
Now I know that one of the problems with placing services in remote areas is how to get the staff there but for goodness sake the people who work in the Maria Elena petrol station probably live in the village as there is nothing else around for miles so why not situate the petrol station at the crossroads? Is it just me or am I missing something here? Anyway rant over.
I re-joined the main road and steeled myself for another 100 odd mile ride through nothing until the next petrol station. As It was by now approaching two o’clock in the afternoon the sun was shining strongly and the air started to heat up. This then brought the head winds and the flurries of sand across the road again.
As I reached the end of yet another 100 odd miles of sheer emptiness I saw a toll both and just behind it the petrol station. This toll both charged me 1,300 pesos whilst the 2 previous ones had only charged me 650 Pesos on each occasion. Once refuelled I took a break at the petrol station which had some toilets but nothing else.
I drank one of the two bottles of water that I carry with me and then I saw that I was only about 30 miles or so from the city of Antofagasta so I looked on-line and found a cheapish hostel with a single room and parking for 20,000 Pesos (20 USD) for the night.
Once there I had to go out and find an electrical adapter as the previous evening I had discovered that Chile does not use the same type of electrical sockets that are used in most of the Americas, they use the 2 round pin type like they use in Europe. I bought one at a mobile phone kiosk in a local supermarket but I had to pay 10 USD to buy it.
Then I flagged down a taxi and asked him to take me to the city centre, it was only about a 3 mile journey that took about 5 minutes but it cost me 5 USD. Then I walked about and had a look at the centre of the city but I didn’t like what I saw.
A lot of the shops looked empty and lots of them were available to rent. The place also looked quite grubby and and it had a very down at heel feel to it. I walked back to my accommodation and this just re-enforced my view that the place was a complete dump and I suspected that it was not a safe city to be in.
Since I entered Peru, and subsequently Chile, I have not enjoyed riding my bike in these countries and for me the main problem that I have is the complete and utter boredom of riding through the long stretches of empty desert where there is literally nowhere to stop for a break and I mean absolutely nowhere unless you count a lay by at the side of the road.
I find riding like this very tiring and I do not enjoy it but at the moment all I can do is what I have been doing and that is to get my head down and ride through the large stretches of empty dessert and keep hoping that it will soon come to an end.
Day 155
So I set off at around nine o’clock in the morning from Antofagasta and once I re-joined Rote 5 I rode for about 30 miles to the last petrol station for 120 miles. Another two hours of sheer boredom passed and then as I got near to the petrol station the head winds started again.
I refuelled and set off again but after about only 10 miles the biked dropped out of gear and would not engage any gear. I rolled to a stop but there was nothing that I could do and the bike wasn’t going anywhere. I was literally in the middle of nowhere and I didn’t have a phone signal either.
Fortunately the bike decided to break down beside a water pumping station that had people working in it so I rolled the bike down on to the access road to the pumping station as far as it would go and then I went in to the place and spoke to the men inside.
The place had it’s own Starlink internet connection and men working there were good enough to call a tow truck from the town of Taltal which was about 40 miles away to the South. One of the men then offered a small house that his mother owned to rent whilst I was in Taltal. As I had no other option I accepted. I waited for a couple of hours and then the bike was put on to the back of the tow truck and we all set off for Taltal.
We arrived in Taltal at around 4 o’clock in the afternoon and the bike was deposited at the workshop where the tow truck was based out of. The 40 odd mile trip cost me 150,000 Pesos (150 USD) This worked out at about just over 3 USD per mile whilst flying my bike from Panama to Colombia worked out at 2 USD per mile!
The workshop at which the bike was taken to can only be described as a small yard in which the guy who owned it also lived in. He also used the yard to run a local car repair business from. It was a complete tip and it was full of bits of dismantled cars. I then I took only what I needed to from the bike and dumped most of my gear in a bedroom in the small squalid house attached to the “workshop” in which the owner lived.
The guys in the tow truck then dropped me at the house and it was also a complete tip and the woman who owned it also fleeced me for 140 USD for two nights in the squalid house. As there were no bike shops or bike mechanics in Taltal I was going to have to deal with the problem myself but it would have to wait until the next morning as I was exhausted.
I decided to take a shower in the very grubby bathroom but there were no towels but fortunately for me I carry my own travel towel. The house had a kitchen in which there was a cooker that ran on gas from a bottle under the sink but the gas bottle was empty. I had to use my own small camping stove to boil water in order to make myself some coffee. Great value for 70 USD per night!
I decided to just sit on the small balcony of the house and smoke lots of cigars and drink lots of coffee in order to de-stress. When I went out on to the balcony there was a very sick looking cat lying motionless in the corner which I decided to leave alone. The cat died during the night.
Day 156
I went to the “workshop” and I started to work on the bike. I drained the oil from it before removing the side cover behind which lies the gear selector mechanism and the clutch. As the engine was fine but I had no drive to the back wheel I knew that the problem had to be a gear selection or clutch issue.
I checked but the gear change linkage and the clutch but they were both working fine. The outer part of the clutch was being driven by the engine but the inner part of the clutch was rotating freely which meant that no gear was engaged and the bike gearbox was stuck in neutral.
I then knew that the problem had to be a breakage of the gear selector mechanism inside the gearbox. This meant that I would have to remove the engine from the bike frame and disassemble the whole thing to find out exactly what the problem was.
However another major issue that I had was where I was currently located. Taltal is about 750 miles North of Santiago where the nearest Royal Enfield dealership is located and which is the only place that I could possibly buy whatever spare parts that I might need. I then put the side cover back on to the engine and went I for a beer to consider my options.
Once drinking a beer I realised that I only had two options. To try to repair the bike where I was or to get the bike transported to the Royal Enfield dealership in Santiago and let them do it.
I knew that option one would be problematic for two main reasons.
Firstly, in order to do a complete strip down and rebuild I would not only need to buy at least one special tool from the Royal Enfield dealership before I could do this but I would also need to know exactly what spare parts I would need. Option one was therefore a chicken and the egg situation so that was the main reason that I discounted it.
The second reason was that the people who had “helped” me get the bike to Taltal I didn’t like very much. I felt that they were fleecing me for as much money as they could and I also suspected that a storage fee for the bike would soon be asked for in an attempt to get even more money out of me.
As I then considered option number two I decided to walk to the local bus station, a small shop in the town, to ask about the price of bus tickets to Santiago. As I was doing so I saw a small courier business so I asked them about transporting the bike to Santiago. They told me that they were unable to do it but they would make some inquiries and I should return in a couple of hours. I walked down the sea and along the entire sea front of the town which took me all of thirty minutes so it was time for some more beer.
When I returned to the couriers I got my answer. They were unable to do it but they could arrange to have it done for 3,500 USD! As option two was now off the table I reconsidered option one but when I made the financial calculations I realised that it was going to be around the same price as getting the bike taken to Santiago.
When I bought the bike new in Panama in December 2023 I paid 5,500 USD and now being a year and three months old the bike is probably only worth a maximum 0f 3,000 USD and that is in fully working condition. Either solution, once all of my travel and accommodation costs were added to the cost of going with either option, was going to cost me about what the bike was worth.
I was now at the point where I had do do some serious thinking about what I was going to do.
Although I wanted to repair the bike and continue with my trip I only had till the end of March, some six weeks away, to get down to Patagonia before the bad weather and high winds arrived. The whole reason for this trip was to do just that, visit Patagonia and everything else in between was just a bonus or otherwise for me. I knew that the probability of me getting the bike repaired would take more than six weeks and I also realised that it did not make any financial sense to repair the bike.
I then knew that I had no option other than to abandon the bike in Chile.
Now the only problem with me making that decision was that when I entered Chile, just like every other country, I had to complete a TIP. Therefore legally I could not leave Chile without my bike or if I wanted to I would have to pay vehicle import taxes before I could leave. I know this sounds really stupid but in most countries the vehicle import taxes amount to about about a minimum of 150 percent of the vehicles value and they still need to be paid even if the vehicle can not be used and is basically just scrap metal.
That meant in the best scenario I would have to pay 4.500 USD on the current value of the bike or nearly 8,000 USD on the cost of my bike as stated on my TIP. Now the reason I stated that amount was the customs at the border asked me what the price of my bike was when I bought it new, not what I thought the current value was, silly me for being honest.
I decided that despite this I had no option but to abandon the bike where it was and I would deal with the customs people when I had to. So I bought a bus ticket for the next day and I retired to my squalid abode to suffer one more night, albeit without the company of the dead cat which I had thrown over the balcony in to the street earlier that morning.
To be continued.