Alpaca's are EVERYWHERE! Except along the road, so not many pictures, sorry! But, there will be a few in here...
I completely forgot to post a link to the article on Canon del Colca, so here it is!
http://www.expeditionportal.com/adv...hort-detour-turns-long-in-canon-de-colca.html
So I left off in Arequipa. From there, Alex and I headed for Tacna, where we spent the night and looked for a new set of tires for Alex. We then crossed into Chile, and spent the day looking for tires in Arica, where we spent another night. The plan, regardless of not finding tires, was to ride up to Parque National Lauca, and head south to Reserva National las Vicunas where we would camp. Well that didn't happen...Alex's bike started having issues, and needed to be worked on before we went into such a remote place, and I didn't feel comfortable riding into such remoteness solo in the rainy season. Back to Arica, we went to find a mechanic. A couple hours or searching turned up nothing, so we spent the night in Arica again. Alex needed to go to Iquique to look for a mechanic there, and I made the to decision to just head south. While I am not going to skip the highlights of this trip, I am admittedly missing things like Ustadza, the Mongrel, and Mom, so I don't want to move slow anymore.
Really really really random chair in the middle of absolutely nowhere on the way to PN Lauca
The area around he chair...
Looking at PN Lauca in the distance
Alex and I split ways, and I made good time headed for San Pedro de Atacama. Enroute I lost my tent, but got lucky and when I turned around to try and find it, a trucker recognized the identical dry bag on the other side of my bike, flagged me down, and returned my tent! That cost me a fair amount of time however, so I wound up camping near SP de Atacama, rather then up on one of the high passes just short of Argentina.
Traffic along the highway to SP de Atacama
Despite not being quite as remote as I had hoped, it was a beautiful night!
Looking into Bolivia the next day climbing towards Paso Jama into Argentina
Loooooooooooooong road to Argentina
Wild life along the way...this is for you Matt and Abby!
After I crossed into Argentina I simply rolled on the throttle along Ruta 40. Two more days and I am now in San Juan staying with some friends. The ride down here was incredibly beautiful, but due to clouds, dust, and a strong right wrist, I only took two photos of the impressively Arizona like landscape.
Tomorrow I'm off to Santiago de Chile and then two days south to Puerto Mont, where I'll start the Carratera Austrel. If things go to plan, I'll be in Ushuaia by the middle of next week, so everyone cross your fingers I don't have any problems! Probably wont be any significant updates until I reach Buenos Ares, but with even a little bit of luck the pictures should be well worth the wait as this is expected to be the best part of this whole trip!
Clark White