The next day we had a sleep in and only had breakfast at 11:30am. We then had a shower and washed our clothes and one of the guys offered to cook a big BBQ for lunch for $5000 Chilean pesos per person – we were happy to eat lunch and we met Angus from Brighton England who had just arrived.

We then booked our tickets for Laguna Cejar for Sunday at 11:00am with the help of the friendly receptionist. After that we headed to the main square and saw the church (Iglesia San Pedro de Atacama) and walked through some artesanal markets. We found a supermarket on our way back and bought more milk, bananas and yoghurts, some Powerade and more water. On our way back, we visited a museum about meteorites which was very informative and had great displays and English explanations through headphones. We returned to the same place for dinner which had different artists performing live music and I got a grande Pisco Sour Cactus 😉🍸👍

We had another wonderful night sleep in our cozy tent and we got up at 8:30am and had breakfast and got ready for our venture into the Atacama desert. Our French friends Brigette and Antoine were leaving and heading East. Andrew helped them check their tire pressure and the back wheel was way too low so he used his pump to pump up their tire. We then had to hurry to pack up and put all our gear on to make it to the Laguna Cejar by 11:00am. We arrived there exactly at 11:00am and they checked our tickets and then directed us where to park the motorcycles. It then took us 20 minutes to get changed and lock the bikes and secure all the gear and the guide came to tell us that we only have 1 hour and we are wasting time – we told him that it takes time to secure everything and once we were ready he explained that we had to follow the path to Laguna Cejar and then make our way to Laguna Piedra which was the one you are allowed to swim in and it has a high salt concentration allowing you to float similar to swimming in the Dead Sea. The water temperature was 12 degrees and the salt content was at 25%

We were the last ones in the 11:00 am time slot to get to the Laguna Piedra and I took my clothes off (already wearing my swimmers underneath) and walked into the freezing water – it was bone aching cold and it took me a while to get in and the buoyancy was amazing – I could not get my shoulders under water and my feet were completely sticking out of the water. One is only allowed to stay a maximum of 20 minutes in the water but I was told after 15 minutes that it was time to leave. I walked back to the showers and change rooms in my swimmers and had a 30s cold shower with fresh water and got changed – we then walked back to the bikes and took our time to get back into our gear. I ate a banana and we headed off to the next section called Ojos del Salar where we paid another entry fee to see the two round fresh water ponds and then the Laguna Tebinquinche where one can sometimes see flamingoes. We took pictures of the Ojos but were told we were not allowed to swim in them 🙁 and then continued to the Laguna Tebinquinche. We parked the bikes and got changed again out of our riding gear and walked the 1.5km trail to the second car park and back again. We saw a number of different birds including a bird with the bill curved upwards – Andean Avocet (Recurvirostra andina), two Chilean flamingos (Phoenicopterus chilensis) and a Puna Plover (Anarhynchus alticola). While we were on the walk a large cloud band moved across and a quite strong and cold wind started blowing. We made it back to our bikes and got back into our gear and rode the more direct, shorter route back to our hostel. We parked the bikes and moved everything back into the tent and had a little lie down before returning to the same restaurant for dinner. The dry air of the desert is taking its toll on our bodies. Andrew’s eczema has flared up for the first time on the trip and my skin on my heels is cracking and bleeding from the dry air. My nose has been bleeding and my cold sores in my nose have spread – so I guess we are not made for this dry climate and I am looking forward to the coast 😉🤗👍

We had decided to stay an extra night in order to see the valley of the moon. We got up reasonably early but it took us a while to get ready and leave and we met Brad and Bianca from Albury Australia who had just arrived and we chatted with them for a while. We rode Ruta 23 out of town past the turn off to the valley of the moon up the hills and past a construction zone to some lookouts. I left one of our stickers there and the view was quite spectacular. We then rode back down the same road and there was water on the road at the construction site and it was very muddy and I was completely covered in mud – including my visor, my windscreen and my pants. When we arrived at the entrance station to the valley of the moon, we bought the tickets there (Andrew got the seniors discount and they did not have different prices for foreigners like most other places we had been to). I had to go and wash my helmet and visor and we continued along the gravel road – it was 7km before the first parking area where a hiking track led to a lookout over the large sand dune. Before we got to this first parking lot there was a steep uphill section and I saw a bicyclist come down and wobbling all over the road. I quickly realised that there was deep soft sand on this section of the road (which was what caused the cyclist trouble) and I knew that I had to just throttle up to get through the sand and not lose too much momentum up the hill – I warned Andrew through the intercom of the deep sand as I let the front wheel find its way through the sand bouncing around – the surface turned back to gravel and when I asked Andrew if he was ok, I only heard – “no I dropped the bike” – I told Andrew that I would find a safe place to stop and come back to help him. The uphill section continued for quite a bit and once I was over the crest, I pulled over to the right and parked the bike, locked my helmet on the bike and took my jacket off and started walking down the road. To my surprise I saw Andrew riding up without a helmet on – I thought he might have hit the ground so hard that the helmet was broken – when we met, Andrew explained that a car had stopped and two people helped him get the bike upright but he could not find a spot to get the side stand down so he decided to ride it up the hill and he had left his helmet and the big yellow dry bag (which he had taken off before picking the bike up) on the side of the road. Andrew also said that he had hurt his ribs in the fall. I told him to keep riding up to where my bike was and have a rest there and I continued walking down to the crash site – took some pictures of the impact zone in the sand and then picked up the dry bag and put it on my shoulders like a backpack and also carried the helmet and made my way back up the hill. I realised that the centre of the road was less sandy and more compacted which was good to know as we needed to ride the same road back down the hill through the sandy section. Andrew came walking towards me and I told him to stay up there but he did not listen and walked until we met half way up the hill. He had only seen me carrying his helmet and thought his dry bag was still on the side of the road and he only saw that I had it on my back when we met. We walked up the hill to where the bikes were and then assessed the damage on Andrew’s chest, ribs and on the bike. Andrew’s left side of his chest was slightly bruised but no sharp pain while taking deep breaths which was a good sign. I made him take some neurofen to reduce any swelling and we had water and Powerade and we walked off the road into a shady area and Andrew sat down for a while. A tour bus drove past and the guide told us off for having left the road – I explained that we had an accident and dropped the bike and they offered to call for help but we told them that we were ok but needed a moment in the shade and they were ok with that. We considered turning around but the first carpark was only less than a kilometer away and we decided to continue to there. We pulled up at the carpark and we met a young guy who had cycled the entire 11 km to the end of the road and back and he had hiked all the trails and this was his last stop – he was pretty tired and out of breaths and not sure if he would make it to the lookout over the large dune. I told him we could walk together and I joked that I would drag him up there if required (he was less than half my age and a lot fitter than me 😂). Andrew stayed at the bottom in the shade to recover and let the neurofen kick in. I changed out of my boots and riding gear and just walked in my tights and sandals. We set off on the trail and the young guy coughed like a smoker and had dizzy spells and I was seriously worried he would not make it – I guess we were still above 2500m altitude and what would be a short stroll can still feel like a strenuous hike 😉😂 The entire trail took us an hour and the views were so amazing and the pictures just can’t capture the colours and the scale of the rock formations and the sand dunes. We arrived back at the car park and the young guy rode his bicycle back to town, Andrew and I decided to continue riding the dirt road to the end where we stopped and took pictures of the 3 Marias formations. There we met riders from Brazil on street bikes and Andrew had a chat with them. We then rode all the way back – the speed limit is 20km/hr for most of the park and there was a ranger with a radar gun checking people’s speed 😂 When we got to the sandy, steep downhill section where Andrew had crashed on the way up, Andrew had decided to play it safe and avoid any further crashes and injury and he turned the engine off in first gear and rolled it down the hill controlling the speed of the descent with the clutch with both feet on the ground. I hate riding sand and had a moment on the way up myself but managed to throttle out of it but on the downhill it is much scarier and I was tempted to go down using the same safe technique as Andrew but decided to just try and ride it down the hill. Having walked the hill earlier, I knew where the firmer section of the road was and I made it without any problems – it was a nice sense of achievement when you overcome your fears and inner demons and just trust that you can do it – most other times I would chicken out and let someone else ride my bike out but it felt good to being able to do it myself 😉👍

We rode back through town and got petrol before returning to our hostel. We chatted with the Australians and asked them to join us for dinner but they had already started cooking so we went one more time to the same restaurant and had the best main dish yet – white fish – Reineta (Brama australis) in prawn sauce with pesto potatoes. We had an early night and treated all our little injuries before one last good night sleep in our cozy tent.