I think I might have found my middle of nowhere.
After having been given that fantastically enticing book "Middle of Nowhere" a while back (thank you!), I've been keeping my eyes peeled for my middle of nowhere experience over the course of the last months.
Strangely enough, I've not been disappointed by places that were filled with tourists, nor did I expect to find myself as the first/only person in any of the places I went to.
So suffice it to say that this person has some rather strange ideas about travelling.
On the other hand, today I may just have found a place where the middle of nowhere was within reach:
Renting a bike and cycling out from San Pedro de Atacama to the Valle de la Luna is one of the nice, supposedly relaxing things one can do out here. And if you get going early enough (before noon, that is), you may not find the place swamped with tourists. And if you go in September, and a mean wind is whipping up a sandstorm-like experience for your benefit, you may find that you are indeed the only one there.
I met a nice french bloke called Nicholas on our Uyuni tour; he was biking from Lima all the way down to Patagonia and hitched a ride with our Jeep after having ridden through a large part of the Salar de Uyuni down toward the Bolivian border.
What could be more logical than renting a bike and accepting his offer to ride along to the nearby Valle de la Luna on a slightly overcast day? Turns out we misread the weather, because a bugger of a headwind greeted us just beyond the park entrance. It reminded me of biking down the river Neckar in March, albeit with the slight difference that back THEN, we had the same wind in our backs for some of the way.
When very find sand is mixed in with the wind and you find yourself holding your breath as gusts of sand-laden air blow in your face and sandblast your exposed legs, all the while climbing a steep-ish incline, things get ugly.
Fortunately, side-trips by foot into small gorges carved by rain and wind (what else?) offered some protection from the worst of the sand. We ended up eating our empanadas on a small rise after crawling through small cavernous paths within the eroded gorges.
All we heard whilst we ate our lunch was the cracking of the salt within the cliff faces.
Sure, there were footsteps from previous visitors leading there - it was a marked trail after all. Sure we knew we were less than 10km as the crow flies from bars, restaurants and the usual bustle of San Pedro.
But the point is: if you closed your eyes and just listened to the slight cracks and creaks all around you, while the wind whistled gently by, you could for a while forget about it all and just about believe you'd reached the end of the world.
...provided you could stop munching on your empanadas for a second, that is!
After having been given that fantastically enticing book "Middle of Nowhere" a while back (thank you!), I've been keeping my eyes peeled for my middle of nowhere experience over the course of the last months.
Strangely enough, I've not been disappointed by places that were filled with tourists, nor did I expect to find myself as the first/only person in any of the places I went to.
So suffice it to say that this person has some rather strange ideas about travelling.
On the other hand, today I may just have found a place where the middle of nowhere was within reach:
Renting a bike and cycling out from San Pedro de Atacama to the Valle de la Luna is one of the nice, supposedly relaxing things one can do out here. And if you get going early enough (before noon, that is), you may not find the place swamped with tourists. And if you go in September, and a mean wind is whipping up a sandstorm-like experience for your benefit, you may find that you are indeed the only one there.
I met a nice french bloke called Nicholas on our Uyuni tour; he was biking from Lima all the way down to Patagonia and hitched a ride with our Jeep after having ridden through a large part of the Salar de Uyuni down toward the Bolivian border.
What could be more logical than renting a bike and accepting his offer to ride along to the nearby Valle de la Luna on a slightly overcast day? Turns out we misread the weather, because a bugger of a headwind greeted us just beyond the park entrance. It reminded me of biking down the river Neckar in March, albeit with the slight difference that back THEN, we had the same wind in our backs for some of the way.
When very find sand is mixed in with the wind and you find yourself holding your breath as gusts of sand-laden air blow in your face and sandblast your exposed legs, all the while climbing a steep-ish incline, things get ugly.
Fortunately, side-trips by foot into small gorges carved by rain and wind (what else?) offered some protection from the worst of the sand. We ended up eating our empanadas on a small rise after crawling through small cavernous paths within the eroded gorges.
All we heard whilst we ate our lunch was the cracking of the salt within the cliff faces.
Sure, there were footsteps from previous visitors leading there - it was a marked trail after all. Sure we knew we were less than 10km as the crow flies from bars, restaurants and the usual bustle of San Pedro.
But the point is: if you closed your eyes and just listened to the slight cracks and creaks all around you, while the wind whistled gently by, you could for a while forget about it all and just about believe you'd reached the end of the world.
...provided you could stop munching on your empanadas for a second, that is!
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