I had interrupted sleep with several bathroom visits and I woke up with a headache which felt mostly like a sinus headache. I finally took some neurofen at 8:00am and we went to breakfast once that had kicked in. Andrew’s headache had gone and we enjoyed very nice breakfast with toast, butter and jam, croissants, orange juice, two pieces of cake and I got scrambled eggs and coffee and tea. The group of German riders from Frankfurt on an organised 3 weeks tour on Royal Enfield motorcycles through Chile, Argentina and Bolivia were sitting behind us. We walked outside when they got ready to leave and talked to them – there were three female riders in their group – more than I had met in the past 4 months – one of them had the WRWR app and we did a baton exchange at 3896m 👍🏍🤗. They had battery issues with two of their motorcycles and problems getting them started but eventually took off towards Salta where we came from the other day and we warned them about the bad road condition and gravel sections in corners and the bad potholes and they said it was the same in the other direction we are going and they had come from the day before.

We left at about 11:00 am after Andrew got his electronic SAG declaration for entry into Chile sorted which only worked on my phone and not on his. Our bikes started without issues. And we had all our layers on and felt and looked like Michelin man😂 We headed for the border at Salina de Jama which was 112 km away. The weather was sunny with no cloud in the sky but there was already a bit of wind. The ride was awesome and the otherworldly landscape hard to describe – the contrasting colours of the blue sky, the brown and red colours of the mountains and the yellowish green tusks of grasses interspersed with the white salt flats and bodies of water that came in all shades of cyan and azure blue to pink. It was hard to take it all in while keeping our eyes on the road to look out for potholes and wildlife and cars passing or very slow trucks. The dimensions and vastness are also hard to describe. To our surprise there was a YPF petrol station in Salina de Jama and we fuelled up before parking at the border crossing car park where about 12 Brazilian BMWs were parked outside and they were all in line in front of us. Andrew said it looked like a BMW dealership at 4200m 😂. We went inside and the first 3 counters exiting Argentina and the passport control into Chile were very quick and efficient but then was the long queue at the next window where all those BMW riders needed to get there TIP and the last window for the customs declaration (SAG) which none of the Brazilians had done on line and so they had to fill in a two page manual form. When it was finally our turn things went very quickly and because we had declared our food items we are bringing in, a customs lady came out to the bikes and asked us to open all our panniers – in order for me to do that, I had to take both large dry bags off – she opened one of the dry bags and felt around in it then looked into one of the panniers and then stamped our pieces of paper – we were allowed to keep all our food including cereal, nut mix, milk, jam and chocolate coated chickpeas. Then we had to re-pack the bikes again which took more effort than normal at 4200m, then we had to use the bathroom as we knew there was nothing until San Pedro de Atacama another 170 km away. When we were finally ready to leave, a small Honda 175 with two French riders – son rider and mother pillion pulled up – we had a chat and they also were heading the same way and we joked that we might see each other again somewhere and took off. The border crossing took 90-120 minutes but we were back in Chile and bid farewell to Argentina for the last time on our trip.

The next section of the road was more of high altitude riding across endless salt flats, sand dunes, little streams still covered with ice in the middle of the day and more mountains wherever we looked. We stopped at one lookout (Salar de Quisquiro) and I left one of our stickers there. Most of the 170km riding was above 4000m with the highest altitude we reached at 4831m!!! Both the bikes and us or at least I felt the altitude – the bikes – mostly Andrew’s was not running consistently and spluttering and hesitating above 4300m – so we were doing most of it in 4th gear at a maximum speed of 70km/hr. My bike was not much better but I could maintain 80km/hr in 4th gear. In addition, it was bitterly cold with a very strong headwind and my fingers were so cold that I was worried I would lose them to frostbite. We remained at altitude and in these extreme conditions until 50km before San Pedro de Atacama and it became a real test of endurance. The last 50km was an almost straight road continuously descending into San Pedro de Atacama at 2500m and at a very warm 20 degrees. We fuelled up and had used about 7 litres per 100km (about 2 litres more than at lower altitude). The next surprise was that most of the roads in San Pedro de Atacama are very dusty dirt/sand roads. We finally arrived at our hostel campground at 5:45pm (after having gained an hour crossing into Chile) – we quickly set up the tent in a nice courtyard, got changed and were about to leave for dinner at 7:30pm when the French riders we had met at the border arrived – what a coincidence that they were staying in the same place – the son went to bed – he was shattered – he had suffered badly from altitude sickness and that ride took it out of him. We asked the mother to join us for dinner but she also just wanted to warm up and sleep.

We ended up going to a place closer than recommended by our host as there was live music and the singer had a good voice and the reviews were good on google. We ended up eating a 3 course menu meal which was very nice and included cheese shrimp empanadas, salmon with corn purée and a dessert. And we had the fresh fruit juice again which we missed and I tried a new Pisco Sour called Pisco Sour cactus which was green and really nice 🍸and we enjoyed the open fireplace in the middle of the restaurant.

We were back in our tent by 10:00pm and fell asleep quickly after an epic day even though there was quite a bit of singing and talking going on outside.