World Run II / Reports

The map shows the position of which the pictures for the day are taken (if any). The start and finish markers are placed at the first and last valid registered position. This is not nessesary the actual start and finish position, if GSM or GPS signals was not available.

Goto: 2011-05-03 2011-05-05 Chile West

2011-05-04:

14
Distance today: 31.0 km (Accumulated: 25174.0 km)
Elapsed time: 02:45:59
Country: Chile West

Start 10:42am., 21c, clear & l.wind, at small yellow km-marker "584.240" on hwy.5. Finish 14:12pm., 26c & same, at green km-marker "km 615" on hwy.5.

Entering the Atacama Desert !

After the 50km stage yesterday doing most of the climbing up through the 1500m. pass that leads into the desert it was nice to notice that the legs were still fresh.

But as the terrain up here in the worlds dryest desert is pretty extreme I choose a carefull distance to settle into the scorcing sunlight and altitude.

As always deserts are actually amazing places to run: once the eye adjust to the barren scenery there is pleanty of details; the endless shades of brown, grey & yellow; textures constantly changing - fine sand, stones, gravel, pebble, rocks; boulders..
And each with their unique 'ambience', the enormity of running through the sea-of-sand of The Sahara Desert, the icy cold nights running across the Sinai Desert, the endless flat horizon of the Australian Nullabor Desert. I wonder how the Atacama will turn out to be when discovered runningstep by runningstep :-)

Another feature of the Atacama is that beeing so high in altitude and beeing the dryest desert in the world (it has areas with no recorded incidents of rain !) - it makes for Outstanding conditions for star watching. Already yesterday from our tents at 1100m alt. the night sky was almost unreal w. its bright band of stars; sattelites and meteors passing above easy to see in a breathtaking display to enjoy sitting well warm in the sleepingbag in the tent-opening 'just having to see 5more minutes' untill the cold and the sleapiness from the 50km stage caught up with me.

Nb: I am having some problem with the internet connection so it may take a couple of days before I can upload the reports & gpstrack from the last couple of days but somehow I will get it through to the website !