Finding Fire Hazards: A High-Altitude Waiting Game
While we had headed up several thousand metres already, we still had a lot more to go. For now, we were on tarmac roads with mountains all around us. It was certainly a remote area of the country; we rarely passed other cars as we steadily climbed. We felt that this was the real start of our journey through the famous Puna de Atacama region. Leaving behind most of civilisation, we’d soon be leaving the surfaced roads, too.
Today we’d camp at our first remote spot: Laguna Blanca. Sitting at an altitude of 3,200m, we planned to spend two nights there to start acclimatising—it was a great place to begin adjusting. At this point, we were still following a good road that slowly climbed up from our starting altitude of 2,128m. The final 12km towards the laguna were on a well-maintained gravel track, and we arrived in the mid-afternoon under bright sunshine.
The laguna is somewhat optimistically named. Right now, it’s more of a salt flat. Perhaps if you walked right to the middle, there might be some water. We left the main track and pulled up right on what would have been the shore—or possibly even in the water, had it been full. Currently, though, the ground was dry and rock-hard. Vicuñas were all around us, and the cats weren’t too sure about that at all.
We hadn’t been parked for long before we decided to reposition Ruby so she faced into the wind. Parking on a vast lake bed gave little protection, although according to our weather apps, the mountain in front of us was serving to block some of the gale. You could have fooled us: Ruby rocked around all over the place, and instead of easing off, the wind persisted all night.
Despite really wanting two days in one place, a poor night's sleep and the promise of higher winds the following evening forced us to move on. In fact, the forecast wasn’t looking good at all. For the majority of the coming week, the area was under wind warnings, with speeds hitting up to 60mph. This is not only horrible for sleeping, but it also meant we couldn’t fly our drone. Visiting the Puna without a drone would be a real shame—there is simply no other way to truly capture the scale of the place.
In the meantime, we headed on towards El Peñón. This tiny village is the nearest civilisation to the stunningly beautiful Campo de Piedra Pómez: an otherworldly desert plain full of pumice rocks whipped into fantastical shapes by the weather. It’s considered a highlight of the region, and we wanted to try getting there, even though we’d been told a 4x4 was necessary.
It was at this point that I acknowledged the mountain may have indeed been sheltering us earlier. We climbed up, nearly touching 4,000m as we crossed the ridge separating us from the village. Ruby crawled along in second gear, buffeted relentlessly by the wind, as the valley on the other side slowly came into view. The expanse was so immense that it’s hard to even describe, but I’ll try.
To the right, the road begins to wind down the mountainside as it heads towards the valley floor. As we clung to the cliff edge, the views out to the side were impressive, to say the least. We thought we could see the pumice field below—a stark white patch on the valley floor. Black, truncated peaks down in the distance looked like the extinct volcanoes and lava fields we’d eventually have to drive across. The backdrop behind this huge expanse of desert was row upon row of pastel-coloured mountains. The brilliant blue sky highlighted each shade of red and grey rock in stunning contrast. Not only is it beautiful, but it’s so unbelievably vast that its scale is somewhat incomprehensible. I had no idea whether the mountains were 10km away or 100km away. There was no detail for reference—no trees, no buildings, no nothing. It was hard to believe there was any life out here at all.
We continued slowly downhill, "ooohing" and "ahhing" at the view. Electricity pylons eventually hinted that we were approaching habitation. The satnav stated three kilometres until our destination. I squinted across the unending grey gravel desert in front of me and wondered if it had lost its mind.
It wasn’t until we were less than a kilometre from the village that we finally spotted trees. The bare bones of poplars jutted up out of nothing, and small adobe houses came into view. We had arrived. For our first night, we drove through and out of town onto the hill behind, hoping the trees ahead would offer a bit of shelter. It’s safe to say that bare poplars don’t offer much, however, and we were in for another sleepless night.
The next day, we walked around town to find the spot that offered the best wind protection. We decided we’d wait out the gales. We could spare the time, and in four days' time, there was supposed to be a five-day window of amazing weather. We tried the marked spots first. The first was behind a local crafts shop, but it was mainly full of diggers and construction equipment; space was limited and it wasn’t very sheltered. It turned out the best spot was either by the plaza or behind the local sports centre. We chose the sports centre: it wasn’t the prettiest, but the huge building blocked nearly all the wind. The cats could roam safely with barely a passing car.
The first couple of days were not the most productive, as I struggled to catch up on sleep and acclimatise to the altitude (which, inconveniently, also prevents me from sleeping). At least now the wind was much better, although you could still hear it howling down the streets and whistling through the trees.
On our second day, we celebrated our seventh year on the road and splashed out by buying fizzy apple juice and a local sweet from the village shop.
The next day, Lee set fire to the curtains. Our Wallas cooker wasn’t particularly enjoying the thin air and had overheated, as it sometimes does when operating so far beyond its rated specifications. Lee decided to make some toast using our alcohol stove instead, opting to do it inside because it was too windy outdoors. It was all going smoothly until he knocked the pan, which tipped over the stove full of lit spirit.
The curtain went up instantly. I grabbed the fire extinguisher and wrestled with the safety pin for what felt like an eternity before giving the flames a quick blast. Even though I’d been quite restrained, the entire camper filled with dry powder. Choking, we clawed at the windows and doors, half-blind in the whiteout storm. The fire was out, at least!
I had planned to spend that day sorting out Ruby’s starter battery, but instead, I spent it mending burnt curtains. Never a dull moment, eh?
Sunday was supposed to be our last day waiting in the village, as the wind was forecast to drop the following day. However, as the week progressed, Monday was looking windier and windier. In the end, I still didn’t sort the battery problem because we spent a massive chunk of Sunday catching up with an old friend on a video call.
That meant on Monday I really had to tackle the issue so we could leave on Tuesday. The fundamental problem was that our starter battery was dead. I planned to move our emergency start switch from inside the rear tailgate into the engine bay so we could easily isolate it. As I leant over the battery to disconnect the wiring, I soon discovered—via a nasty burning sensation on my arm—that it was leaking acid. That being a distinct fire hazard (and having had quite enough fire recently), I opted to disconnect it entirely. Moving the switch down into the engine bay was a good move anyway, so I finished that off.
Then I disconnected the alternator, as running the alternator without being connected to a lead-acid battery would cause damage to our lithium system. This meant that from now on, we would run everything off our house batteries, and we had also lost the ability to charge either system while driving. Hopefully, the high-altitude sun would provide enough solar power to run not only our living quarters but our engine ignition, too. We’d find out soon enough: after five days of waiting, we were finally ready to begin properly.
Thank goodness the fire was caught in time! That wind would have been awful!