Up and Out of Iquique
The 12:00 pm departure climbs immediately out of the coastal basin on the road to Alto Hospicio, the same dramatic ascent that drops the other way as the Cuesta El Pampino — a paved highway cut straight up the face of the massive dune that backs the city, gaining the better part of 600 metres in only a few kilometres. Looking back from partway up, the whole of Iquique is laid out below: the curve of Playa Cavancha, the port, the grid of the old nitrate-era centre, and the Pacific beyond it, before the road crests the dune and the view flips entirely to open desert plateau stretching east. Fuel at the Petrobras station and a toll at Peaje Troncal Pampa Perdiz both come on this ascent, before the road joins Ruta 5 at Alto Hospicio and the Panamericana settles into its long northward run.