Chile – Altiplano

They call it the Land of the Winds. And until the engine gets up to speed, this is the only noise that can be heard on this Chilean high plateau. Passing endless areas of salt desert and volcanic rock, the route follows the dead-straight roads through spectacular nothingness. The driving feeling is like on an aircraft runway where the vehicle grip ensures that only the driver takes off. The route starts 3,000 metres above sea level in Rio Grande de Atacama, where only the narrow canyons are left from where a river previously ran. As soon as the driver's door closes, it is as if you are swallowed up by the ground in this rugged landscape. Following an arc on the first and last real bends of the route, the first stage approaches the Atacama basin in the south. On this high plateau, San Pedro is what comes closest to being an oasis. Even if the green of the bushes and cacti has been won from the land with great effort, there is more than just a luxury hotel hidden behind the whitewashed walls: this is the last opportunity on the route to fill the fuel tank and top up water supplies. From here, the road is just a straight line through the dried-out salt lake of the Atacama Desert. Six thousand metre-high mountains with snow-covered peaks on the horizon, while the flat landscape fades out more and more. The first bend after 20 miles. Then the next straight line, equally long, right through the middle of an empty dust desert. Slowly but surely, the driver's back sinks deeper back into the driver's seat from this point on. That is more than the acceleration: hardly visible to the eye, the route now climbs up the basin until a road then leads up through hairpin bends to an altitude of 4,000 metres just before Socaire. The Porsche easily copes with the extra burden of driving through the mountain air – the pressure is solely on the driver. If you find that you are breathless at the route's final destination, that could also have something to do with the Laguna Miscanti. This azure-blue lake in a snow-white ring of pure salt is almost too much pure colour for eyes that have grown used to the contrast of asphalt and grey rock. A few miles further south, this contrast also disappears: the road simply ends, swallowed up by the desert.