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: 2011-05-21 2011-05-23 Chile West

2011-05-22:

1
Distance today: 20.0 km (Accumulated: 25745.0 km)
Elapsed time: 01:56:31
Country: Chile West

Start 10:32am., 17c, allmost clear and l.wind, at yellow tarmac-marker "70 000" on hwy.1. Finish 13:08pm., 20c and same, at stone-marker "86.732" on hwy.1 (?).
[Ran wrong way from 4km to 7.88km of todays stage. Had to go back and run from the point where the route mistake was made - see gps track. The total distance is incl. the "mistake distance"].

A rare one !

With the experiense and km's of the world runs little by little atleast some experiense in navigation begins to accumulate - there is afterall more than 50 000km of running across continents in the 'human harddisk' by now ! However apparently not enough knowledge, though ;-)

Today I made my first proper full-scale misnavigation since a similar firm mistake back when running through "Joennkoeping" in Sweden (approx. 23 000km back); by the way the same city where I made a wrong navigation in world run one - so Joennkoeping must be the 'bermuda triangle' of the world runs, I guess... ;-))

However besides the jokes, then both Alex, my american supportdriver and cameraman, and I are a fair bit in doubt wether we actually did take the right way eventually ! The road we chose goes along the coast and is the one which the maps indicate is the right one in order to reach Antofagasta which is the next city with supplies and accomodation, approx. 200km further North. But, the local signs said differently during the run today ! A dilemma.

Our supporcar solved the question temporarely since it couldnt handle the steep hill which I ran up for 4km at my detour today where I tried to follow the signpostings. It overheated and finally the emergency display indicated that we shouldnt push it further. So: The coastal road it is - which also makes sense since its the one our maps point out (just a bit errie that huge new signs at the road says the opposite).

The gamle now is wether the supportcar can handle this road as it immideatly became a narrow track of boulders, gravel and sand, winding its way along the coast, after having been a brand new 2-lane tarmac highway right uptill that point (!!).

The next days will show if we made the right choice. We both hope so as our supplies of food and petrol which we could get in the last village wont last if we have to backtrack when a few days further down this road. Thus I did a very short stage of 20km today in order to think it over minutely before we decide wether to continue on the 'coastal trail' or wether I should run back to the Panamerican Highway and run through the desert instead.