CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
On the way it passes Settlement and Artificial Mummification of, Segment Socoroma Sur and back through Settlement and Artificial Mummification of. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 4,050 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
The coast of northern Chile is a place where almost nothing happens, and that is its character. The Camarones river rises in the high Andes and runs west through one of the driest landscapes on Earth, cutting a narrow green valley through the Atacama before it reaches the Pacific at a small mouth south of Arica. In dry years the water gives out before it reaches the sea, and the final stretch is a mixture of reeds, sand and salt pans, a patch of green on a coast of brown and grey. Birds congregate here: gulls, pelicans, terns and, in the right season, waders that come all the way from the northern hemisphere.
Read the complete Desembocadura de Camarones write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Desembocadura de Camarones is where the day begins. Next is Settlement and Artificial Mummification of.
The Chinchorro were fishers who lived on this coast, and they were doing something extraordinary with their dead at a time when nothing like it existed anywhere else. Around seven thousand years ago, they began to preserve their dead by taking the body apart, drying the skin and bones, reassembling them on sticks, packing the body with clay, plant fibre and ash, and covering the face with a mask of clay. These are the oldest known artificially mummified bodies in the world, older than the better-known Egyptian mummies by some two thousand years. The tradition included children and infants, and no one is quite sure why.
Read the complete Settlement and Artificial Mummification of write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Settlement and Artificial Mummification of comes up about 116 km into the recorded legs. Next is Segment Socoroma Sur.
Socoroma is a village high above the desert, and the road to it is a climb from the coast into another world. Starting from the sea at Arica, the road rises through the arid foothills, past cactus and rocky ridges, and up into the Andean altiplano, passing from sea level to the better part of three thousand metres in a couple of hours. The change is obvious: the air thins, the temperature drops, the light becomes harder and the sky turns a deeper blue. Socoroma sits on the old route between the coast and the high plateau, on terraced slopes cultivated for centuries.
Read the complete Segment Socoroma Sur write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 223 km into the recorded legs you reach Segment Socoroma Sur. Next is back through Settlement and Artificial Mummification of.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Settlement and Artificial Mummification of write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Settlement and Artificial Mummification of, late in the day. Next is Desembocadura de Camarones.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Desembocadura de Camarones write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Desembocadura de Camarones. That is the ride.
Desembocadura de Camarones → Settlement and Artificial Mummification of is 116 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Settlement and Artificial Mummification of → Segment Socoroma Sur is 107 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Segment Socoroma Sur → back through Settlement and Artificial Mummification of is 113 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Settlement and Artificial Mummification of → Desembocadura de Camarones is 116 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.