CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
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Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
The stops in between: Segment Río de La Sal - Pampa del Inca, Segment Portal del Inca - Río de La Sal, back through Segment Río de La Sal - Pampa del Inca and back through Segment Portal del Inca - Río de La Sal. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 3,200 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available.
Here the Atacama is not a single desert but a collection of them, and the stretch around Río de la Sal sits in its high, empty heart. The land is a pale expanse of volcanic rock and sand, with salt-crusted basins, dry riverbeds and enormous distances. Nothing grows here without help. The sky is absurdly blue, the air is thin, and at night the stars come out in a density most people have never seen.
Read the complete Segment Río de La Sal - Pampa del Inca write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Segment Río de La Sal - Pampa del Inca is where the day begins. Next is Segment Río de La Sal - Pampa del Inca.
Out here the Atacama stops being a postcard and becomes a working landscape: pale gravel plains, dry washes, and a horizon that stays the same colour for an hour at a time. The Río de la Sal gets its name honestly. Whatever water the Andes send down this way picks up minerals on the trip, and what survives to the surface leaves white crusts along the banks. Pampa del Inca, the broad flat beside it, is the kind of name you only get where travellers have been crossing the same ground for centuries.
Read the complete Segment Río de La Sal - Pampa del Inca write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Segment Río de La Sal - Pampa del Inca comes up 20 km in. Next is Segment Portal del Inca - Río de La Sal.
A long way up in the Atacama, where the desert climbs into the high Andes of northern Chile, a worn path crosses the landscape between a place called the Portal del Inca and the Río de la Sal, the salt river. It is a segment of the Qhapaq Ñan, the great network of Inca roads, which UNESCO listed in 2014 across six countries. In Chile the road went south from the Inca heartland, crossing passes of over four thousand metres to reach the valleys of Copiapó and beyond, and traces of it survive in the dry air with striking clarity: stone markers, small shelters and the line of the trail itself.
Read the complete Segment Portal del Inca - Río de La Sal write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
40 km in you reach Segment Portal del Inca - Río de La Sal. Next is Segment Río de La Sal - Pampa del Inca.
Out here the Incas walked a road through country that most of us would call empty, and they did it without wheels, horses or a single petrol station. The stretch between the Río de la Sal and the Pampa del Inca is one of the Chilean pieces of the Qhapaq Ñan, the great Andean road network that tied Cusco to the far corners of the empire and was listed by UNESCO across six countries in 2014. In the Atacama region it shows up as a faint, dead-straight trace across gravel plains, sometimes edged with stones, sometimes marked by the low ruins of a tambo where runners and caravans once rested.
Read the complete Segment Río de La Sal - Pampa del Inca write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Segment Río de La Sal - Pampa del Inca, about halfway.
Think of this as the same journey seen from the other end of the segment. The label here is Portal del Inca to Río de la Sal, and the first half of that name is the interesting one. Portal suggests a gateway, a place where the trail passes through a narrowing or a pass and the ground begins to change. Without a signed monument underfoot, the useful thing to say is what the surrounding country does: the Atacama's interior basins rise gradually toward the Andean crest, and the Inca engineers used each step in that rise as a staging post.
Read the complete Segment Río de La Sal - Pampa del Inca write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Segment Río de La Sal - Pampa del Inca sits at 79 km, about halfway. Next is back through Segment Río de La Sal - Pampa del Inca.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Segment Río de La Sal - Pampa del Inca write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Segment Río de La Sal - Pampa del Inca comes up 99 km in. Next is back through Segment Portal del Inca - Río de La Sal.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Segment Portal del Inca - Río de La Sal write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
119 km in you reach back through Segment Portal del Inca - Río de La Sal. Next is back through Segment Río de La Sal - Pampa del Inca.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Segment Río de La Sal - Pampa del Inca write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Segment Río de La Sal - Pampa del Inca, late in the day.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Segment Río de La Sal - Pampa del Inca write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 349 km.
Segment Río de La Sal - Pampa del Inca → Segment Río de La Sal - Pampa del Inca is 22 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Segment Río de La Sal - Pampa del Inca → Segment Portal del Inca - Río de La Sal is 17 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Segment Portal del Inca - Río de La Sal → Segment Río de La Sal - Pampa del Inca is 23 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Segment Río de La Sal - Pampa del Inca → back through Segment Portal del Inca - Río de La Sal is 23 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Segment Portal del Inca - Río de La Sal → back through Segment Río de La Sal - Pampa del Inca is 17 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Segment Río de La Sal - Pampa del Inca → Segment Río de La Sal - Pampa del Inca is 22 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.