We had good breakfast in the hotel and while trying to check our route to Tocopilla to reach the coast, we noticed that there were road closures for major upgrades which included blasting and the road was closed from noon to 5:00pm. We hurried to leave by 10:30am, got petrol and were finally out of town by 11:00am and we rode through roadworks and gravel sections and very bumpy roads with potholes but made it passed the section that gets closed before noon. It was another day of straight roads with large areas of solar panels and riding through a mars like landscape without any vegetation or sign of life. Dirt roads kept leading off to mining plants or solar farms on either side of Ruta 24 with trails of dust visible behind the mining vehicles for kilometres. It was quite warm (ok hot with all our liners in the motorcycle gear) and my phone overheated and the screen was switched off. There was no place to stop and nobody living along the way. We eventually descended into Tocopilla, down a cloud covered mountain and it got noticeable cooler as we descended. We only finally saw the mighty Pacific Ocean as we were on the outskirts of Tocopilla. The houses looked like shacks but were quite colourful. We rode through town, fuelled up and eventually found the hotel (my phone was not quite getting me to the right spot where the hotel was) and asked to check in early. The lady at reception opened the gate and showed us where to park the motorcycles and then allowed us to check into our room 🤗👍 We were very hot and were very happy to get out of our motorcycle gear and cooled down in the room and had a short rest before walking to the nearby beach. We stayed on the wind-protected side behind the breakwater wall which had rainbow coloured rocks and after I assessed the water temperature with my feet, I had decided that I had to immerse myself in the crystal clear water. I waded in and two local guys who watched me decided to also get in the water for a swim. It was so refreshing and rejuvenating to be in the ocean again after days of dry arid and dusty roads. I enjoyed my swim with vultures soaring above me in the sky. I got out and changed into dry clothes and we walked to a beach café and had some empanadas and coffe and hot chocolate and a cheesecake and breathed ocean air 🤗🥰. On the waitress T-shirt it said “Expect nothing – Appreciate everything” and we certainly appreciated being back at the ocean 😍🤗. We took some pictures of the large stadium, of a sculpture in the middle of a roundabout and of the statue of the famous local soccer player, Alexis Sánchez, before returning to our hotel for a hot shower. We then had an afternoon sleep as the internet was so bad that we could not work on our blogs. We went for dinner at the hotel restaurant and they only had sandwiches – so we ordered a steak sandwich and a chicken sandwich. The hotel cat jumped onto the table to join us for dinner 😳 and the waiter could not mix any of the cocktails on the menu, so we only had the raspberry juice and water.

We tried to look up where and how we could get the required insurance for Peru but the internet was too sketchy to use, so we called it another early night. Andrew is still recovering from his stack in the sand and nursing bruised ribs and is toughening it out without taking pain killers but seems to be able to sleep ok lying on his back or his right side and my cold sores in my nose as well as some bites on my finger had gotten infected and I am also a bit scarred and enjoying the extra time of rest and recovery 🤗😉