We got up early and had breakfast in the hotel. We were getting ready aiming for a 11:00am start but then one of our friends from Australia rang and by the time we had packed up, checked tyre pressure and lubed the chains, we only left by noon. It was a sunny day and very light wind. We rode out through town and had a bit of good sealed roads along the coast before the roadworks started. There were gravel sections and quite a few contra flow sections where we had to wait since all traffic could only use one side of the road. However, waiting was not annoying as the view in either direction was incredible – left of us was the Pacific Ocean with rocky outcrops often covered in birds and once I am sure I saw South American sea lions (Otaria flavescens) on the rocks. To the right were the mountains or sand dunes reaching up high into and up to the top of the mountain ranges at some areas. The Pacific was calm and hardly any waves were visible. I was sure I would get a sore neck from looking over the ocean as much as I could for the 230km lengths of the trip😂🏍 We stopped for a short break along the coast on a dirt track overlooking the rugged ocean – we did not pass any real towns all day – a few shacks on the beach, yet in every bay were people fishing – no idea where they came from as there is really not much between Tocopilla and Iquique 😂. We continued the remaining 70 km to Iquique and when I looked over to my left over the ocean, I missed a really big pot hole and my front wheel hit hard 😳- luckily it seemed to be ok and no puncture. We arrived in Iquique just after 4:30pm and checked into the hotel and parked our bikes on some artificial green grass in the hotel car park. We decided to stay two nights as we wanted to see the replica of the Esmeralda and go for a swim as well.

After a little rest, we went to a Greek restaurant and had really nice dinner and I had one Pisco Sour too many 😂 but I did sleep well.

The next morning we had very nice breakfast on the third floor of the hotel and my daughter rang to ask for the rules of dice poker 😉😂. We contacted a person for our SOAT insurance required for riding in Peru and provided all the details but when I tried to pay it did not work because my bank was undertaking some upgrades 🥺. We then got reception to call us a taxi but she called an Uber instead to drive us to the museum of the replica of the Esmeralda. When we got there and tried to work out where to buy tickets we were told that it was closed for the whole day 🥺 even though it was a holiday to celebrate the day of naval glories, so we took pictures from the outside and started to walk back via the foreshore. We saw many birds, some new ones and identified them with the new bird app Brad and Bianca had told us about. We saw Blackish Oystercatchers (Haematopus ater), Belcher’s gulls (Larus belcheri), Peruvian pelicans (Pelecanus thagus), and a blue-eyed West Peruvian Dove (Zenaida meloda). The stark contrasts of rich and poor were very evident again in this town with many homeless living in parks and along the rocky coasts in makeshift tents. We saw very nice murals of ocean life along the walk. We walked to the recommended swimming beach Playa Cavancha and took turns going for a dip in the Pacific while the other person watched all our belongings. It was the first time on this trip that Andrew braved the Pacific Ocean briefly – it was still a bit too cool for him. I stayed in for a while hoping the salt water would help clean and heal my various infected wounds – I had a nasty infected wound from some insect bites on my index finger, my chin, under my left eye and the nose is still very sore and has infected, scabbing wounds from the cold sores. The dry dusty desert climate is not agreeing with me 😂 but the ocean is wonderful. I also saw more of the South American sea lions swimming around – so cool to watch. After our swim we treated ourselves to a late lunch and cocktails at a restaurant overlooking the beach before walking back the last stretch of the total of 6 km walk to our hotel. We finally sorted our SOAT insurance and started looking at the route to take once we are in Peru taking into account altitude and status of the roads and started to book hotels along the way. We also booked accommodation in Cusco.

We went back to the Greek restaurant Santorini and enjoyed our meals except for one woman who smoked the entire time and really spoiled our dinner with her stinking cigarette smoke that blew straight over to our table 🙁. We returned to our hotel and had an early night to be ready for a long ride to Arica the next day.