Teacher on Two Wheels

Above: The Atacama Desert looks like another world compared to the lush fields of flowers further south

Tuesday 11/11/08 Valparaiso, Chile

One of the most amazing things I’ve been able to witness on the trip has been the fading of Chile’s Atacama Desert into a flower-studded, bird-clouded, wave-battered stretch of coastline.

The Atacama Desert, home to some parched pieces of planet that have never received any recorded rainfall, has no visible boundary line with Chile’s lush midsection, the terrain that surrounds Santiago to the west and immediate south. Over the course of hundreds of kilometers starting in the southern Atacama, across a distance that takes days and days to cover by bicycle, barren sand dunes and rocky desert mountains slowly morph into fields of scrappy, wind-tattered shrubbery and cacti; cacti give way to taller shrubs and plants; lone flowers poke up through the sand looking out of place and, ever so slowly as the road heads south, swell into clusters and healthy tangles. Like a glacier slipping into the sea, the desert’s harshness loses itself in the vitality of spring flowers and morning bird song.

Again, I feel fortunate to have stumbled upon sacred terrain.