3/1/23

 Today started  off cold and overcast and the landscape became Las Vegas to Barstow desert with sand dunes and scrub brush but since it was along the coast, beautiful views coming around almost every corner.  Often there is a long beach laid out in front of me with the waves, and going through the canyons, and even though I was on the freeway, because that’s basically the only road right now,  the traffic was so light that it wasn’t bothering me and rarely did a truck pass me and then I usually over took them when they were going up a hill anyway so if the traffic continues to be like this, (which I think it will be in fact, I think it will be even better the further north I go) then going on the freeway isn’t that bad.  When I did the initial bike engine break-in of 500 km down to a big town and back to Santiago, I stopped several times at those freeway gas and restaurant places which were tourist traps of crappy food and nothing to recommend them at all however up here, I pulled into a side place that looked like a little dive, which turned out to be a really nice restaurant and they had a awesome lunch for me with fresh grilled fish,salad fresh squeezed juice  and a decent price plus the waitress spoke a little English and let me into her Wi-Fi so I could check my mail while I was eating lunch. I am now in La Serena, which is a huge city can’t be much smaller than Santiago although I’m sure it is but it’s so spread out over all the hills right down to the beach , speaking of which I had to drive 2 miles on dirt and gravel and sand to get to this hotel but it’s pretty cool hotel because all the hotels buildings (there’s five of them I think) are in the shape of geodesic domes with three rooms on the bottom and three rooms on the top. Very nicely appointed and everything looks new, everything is clean  And according to the owner the best seafood restaurant in town is like a quarter-mile away so I’m heading there right after I finish this 

Street view from last night’s Hostal room

View from my geodesic dome tonight

Passed three of these signs before I finally noticed one in time to stop still I had to back up about 100 feet by paddling the bike

 

If you blow it up, you can see it says Chile, Pan Am highway and the number of kilometers from Santiago and what looks like a yellow splotch if you really blow it up is a yellow map of north and South America

Can’t get much safer parking than right outside my window and those big window openings came in handy because I just took the baggage off the bike and dropped it in through the window so I only had to carry it about 10 feet

Many restaurants have this, it’s Stevia in liquid form which I guess a lot of people put in their drinks although I haven’t seen anybody actually use it and I’m still using straight sugar

This is what that hole in the wall restaurant in the middle of nowhere had for my lunch, impressed me

Another first for me I’ve never seen land sectioned off by using a cactus fence before

I guess they actually took the time to individually plant cactus one at a time side-by-side to form a fence. It was only in 5 mile area so guess just a local custom or something

The crappy dirt, gravel sand road that I had to take to get to the hotel, which is less than a mile away from downtown