National parks creating interest we headed towards the Bolivian border turning off right at the lineup out into no mans land and it did not let us down, a huge expanse of nothing and no one.
With our volcano luck continuing one was turning it on for us having a small spit
Even with tanking up with 5 liters for a buffer Maya uses more fuel at 4500 meters so I was being quiet on the throttle cruising along the gravel road and negotiating sandpits which had fall off written all over them.
This was the norm for 100s km
The Salar which turned into our turning point
Getting past the Salar we decided to hook out and head coastal as it was looking like our gas would not see us through to the far end and out, being stuck at 4500 meters in no mans land with no petrol didn’t seem an attractive option.
Mrs.Garmin came in handy at this point with indicative mileage until we start pushing and our road taking us through a monster rock garden about 40 km long including the Murphy sandpits hiding the Murphy rocks of which a few tried to steal our front wheel ... entertaining.
The track started resembling a road again rather than a rocky sandpit
Soon enough we hit tarseal again which was nice and unexpected, all roads lead to the 5 which is the main drag, seeing the mileage we had already done we cruised down the main drag only to find the was no gas stations for about 250 km ... oh no.
As darkness decided to turn up we decided to pull off the main drag and went desert a few hundred meters to wild camp again.
Our camp site (in the morning sun)
Now sometimes you find we bonuses unexpectedly, this morning was one,we had talked about a small vestibule footprint using polythene ..... c h e c k i t out b r o
we cut a nice wee triangle out ... fits perfectly 
Iquique, fuel, mission for the day .... not push Maya
,
nearest gas station going to be a squeeze to get there, fast (slow)
forward to gas station with 460 km on the tank the orange light just on
we had 70 km to go, filling up the rear tank and still running on the
main we decide to see just how far we could go if needed, this netted a
total of 560 km with a sniff to spare meaning Maya was running at 5.3
liters per 100 km including 250 km on gravel etc. Mission accomplished by the skin of our teeth, even the 950 can come through by buttoning off if needed ... thankfully.
No comments:
Post a Comment