We had breakfast by 8:00am and tried to leave by 11:00am but while checking the tyre pressure on both bikes, we discovered that my rim was quite severely buckled from where I had hit the pothole at speed on the way into Iquique the day prior. The tyre had not lost more air than the other tyres but several spokes were lose too. We decided to use tape to cover the gap between the rim and the tyre to prevent any dust and dirt from getting in and potentially damaging the inner tube and to ride on to Arica and try to find a tyre place in Arica to fix the rim and tighten the spokes before getting into Peru. So we left only by 11:30am and were locked out of the room with our jackets and helmets still inside as check out was apparently 11:00am 🥹😂.

We fuelled up in town and then made our way up the steep mountain of Ruta 16 until we got to highway 5 where we needed to turn left to go North but only the entrance in the Southbound direction was available – so we had to travel South for a few kilometres and we made a U-turn and fuelled up once more at a Copec petrol station after only ~50km but this extra 3 litres was worth having to complete the next 260 km as we did not know what the road conditions were like. We reached 1200m altitude and the road was very good, one lane each direction but plenty of slow lanes on the uphill sections to pass slower vehicles and it was mostly through high sandy desert like plateaus, along sand dunes and up and down into valleys with green river beds. The scale of the valleys and dunes was gigantic and the green vegetation a real refreshing surprise. We rode until we reached the outskirts of Arica and stopped to fuel up – after 250km both bikes needed just under 13 L of fuel. At the Copec, Andrew took pictures of a vintage Copec tanker truck. We charged my phone for a bit and had some empanadas before making our way through town to the hotel. Neither my maps nor booking.com had the correct address but we found it on Google street view and were let into a gated parking spot. We arrived by 4:45pm and unloaded the bikes and had a short rest before we had a video call with Andrew’s grandchildren. We went for dinner at the restaurant next to the hotel which had incredibly nice seafood 🍤 and had another early night.

We had a sleep in until 8:30am and then went for breakfast. Another nice breakfast with scrambled eggs. We then asked at reception if they provided laundry service but were told only during the week and not on Sundays. We found a laundry service in town that was open and took a taxi there and dropped 6kg of clothes off to be washed. We then went to my favourite Chilean supermarket called Jumbo and got some important supplies like Ritter Sport Marzipan chocolates, water, razor blades, conditioner for my hair, and band-aids for my infected finger. I had some bites on my finger, chin and under my eye since San Pedro de Atacama which were super itchy and then got infected and are still not fully healed. We then walked to the beach and walked towards our hotel on the sand. The tide was coming in and the sand was quite coarse. We saw lots of birds including pelicans, boobes and sea gulls. There were also many holes of crabs and I got a picture of one inside the hole and they are not white like the ghost crabs in Australia but grey – which are the juveniles of Ghost Crabs (Ocypode gaudichaudii). We also found several large Patagonian squid (Doryteuthis gahi) washed up on the sand which looked like they had bites taken out of them. At the beach near our hotel, was a kids surf competition and we watched for a little bit and I then went for a swim in the churned up waves. We then went to the beach café and had avocado on toast and fresh passion fruit juice. I was pretty sure I saw a water spout from a whale blowing and looked with the binoculars out at sea. I saw a whale and many dolphins. The Peruvian booby (Sula variegata) were darting into the water, diving from great height and making a big splash – 100s of them at a time – it was quite the spectacle and there must have been lots of fish out there.

We returned to the hotel and had a nice shower and applied the new conditioner to my hair. We then took a taxi to pick up our washed clothes from the laundry and used the rest of the afternoon to finally get some blogs completed. Unfortunately, we noticed that something is wrong with the GoPro and it had not recorded anything for the past few days 😳 we tried a different SD card and tried recording in the room and it worked – we thought the issues started after Andrew came off and landed on the GoPro but we then found that it had already intermittently stopped recording before the crash. Andrew is considering buying a new GoPro since this one is more than 8 years old. We went for another really nice dinner at the hotel restaurant and tried to get more blogs done but the GoPro completely stopped working🥺

I uploaded the completed blogs and downloaded and backed up all the pictures before catching up with my son and his wife at an early morning call 😉 We checked out and made our way to a local mechanic who had good reviews. It was a fair way out of town and we eventually turned into a gated community onto a sand/dirt road and when we arrived at the address there was nothing that looked like a mechanic – so we stood at a T- intersection in the dirt and there were schools around and some parents picked up kids from school. As we were looking on our phones, double-checking the address and looking for any other motorcycle place in town, a SUV Hyundai Santa Fe pulled up and asked if we needed help – we showed the guy (Arturo) that we were looking for a motorcycle mechanic and he said that the business no longer exists. We showed him what the issue was with my front wheel and asked if there was any other mechanic in town and we asked about the other one we had found and Arturo and his girlfriend and his daughter violently shook their heads telling us that it was a bad mechanic. Arturo made some phone calls and told us that he would get his motorcycle and he would take us to another good mechanic. They offered us to go inside his girlfriends house and wait there but we stayed with the bikes on the dusty road in the heat of the day waiting for this guy to come back on his motorcycle – we heard some interesting noises which may have been frogs from the gardens behind large brick walls. At the end of the street was another school and across the road was a large eucalyptus tree in the garden. It took a while and we were wondering if the guy would actually show up or leave us waiting there in the dust 😂 but then two motorcycles arrived – Arturo on his BMW F800 and his mate Patricio on a Honda 750 and they escorted us to a street in the city and a guy came out and we showed him the damage on my front wheel – the mechanic Luis communicated with me about the repair and said it would take at least 24 hours as he would take the wheel and tyre off and give it to a specialist lathe machinist who would straighten the wheel. We already had hotels booked for the next two nights in Peru and we went back and forth whether it would be ok to continue and get it fixed on the way back after Peru – Arturo kept offering us to stay at his “casa grande” for the night and we should get it done – in the end we agreed to have it repaired now for peace of mind as we were expecting bad roads in Peru and I did not want to have any issues at high altitude with the wheel or the tyre. We then also agreed to stay at Arturo’s house for the night – so we took off following Arturo to his house, which was further out than where we had initially met and down some dirt roads. We quickly took all the gear off except for my panniers and Andrew took all his gear off so we could double up on the way back – Arturo showed us our room with private bathroom and large double bed and huge TV screen and introduced us to his “babies” – 3 bull terriers in the front yard. Arturo had to go and pick up one of his daughters from school and we rode with Patricio back to the mechanic to drop my bike off. We got stuck in school traffic and eventually made it to the mechanic and Arturo and his daughter were already there. I gave Luis the mechanic a spare rim tape in case the old one had been damaged and told him that there is also a spare tube in the pannier if required. Arturo meanwhile had organised a spare bike (Honda 400 enduro bike) so we could all 4 still ride. I tried to sit on it but it was way too tall for me and Andrew tried it but felt more comfortable on the BMW and so Arturo took the enduro and Andrew rode Arturo’s BMW and I rode Andrew’s DR. We went for lunch just around the corner of the laundry place we had used the previous day. We had a 2 course menu with salad and fish with rice. After that we rode to the supermarket and Andrew and the guys went to buy food and red wine for the evening while I stayed with the bikes in the car park. We then returned to Arturo’s house and I was really tired by then as I had only a few hours sleep the night before. We saw the rest of the large property including 7 more dogs in the back yard and a number of Macaws. We started drinking red wine and Carla and two of her daughters came over and stayed for a while – all of them smoked in the house – and we kept chatting – later Patricio left to get his son and he later dropped his son back and then came back to Arturo’s house. Meanwhile Arturo had quite a bit of red wine and the dogs had left their droppings inside the house and Patricio cleaned up after them when he had returned. Arturo kept warning us about the traffic in Peru and the altitude and not to travel over the mountains. He gave us prayer beads as gifts and was so nice. We retired before midnight and I had a really good sleep and did not hear the dogs bark at night.