Day 14, Salta to San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

We set off from Salta early in the morning as we had 563 kms to cover, mostly on unmade roads. As one Mustang made it back into the rally another one had trouble this morning. The driver, an ageing playboy type from Lichtenstein and a complete knob, was revving his car up outside the hotel foyer as is his normal routine when he decided to show off to the small crowd of onlookers, dropped the clutch, smoked the tyres and went straight into a wall! What a plonker!
The first few hours were spent following the Tren de las Nubes, not as interesting as it sounds, it means Train of the Clouds, basically a railway connecting Salta with the Chilean border. 29 bridges, 21 tunnels, 13 viaducts etc etc, the third highest railway in the world. The road was diabolical, no more than a track, more suitable for donkeys or maybe a trials bike.
Our first test this morning was a regularity up a windy mountain road, starting at 4200 metres, we did quite well but along with all the other smaller engined cars we struggled for speed, and missed the time by a few seconds. At this altitude nothing seems to perform as well as it should.
The wildlife was pretty spectacular as we went through some extremely remote areas, we passed flamingo inhabited salt lakes, lots of alpacas and llamas (or were they vicuñas, difficult to tell apart) and have seen desert foxes roaming around. Some of the villages we passed through were about as remote as you can imagine, we thought at one point we had discovered the lost tribe of the where the **** are we Incas. In some of the hilly regions which seem to go on for ever, if you walked up one of the hills you could be pretty sure you would be the first person ever to go up there.
We reached an altitude of 4850 metres (higher than the summit of Mont Blanc) a couple of times and spent most of the day over 4000 m. It doesn't feel that high as the high plains are relatively flat, and we have so far not suffered any altitude sickness. Late in the afternoon we went through the border control to get into Chile, predictably a long paper chase getting our passports and carnets stamped, but it only took an hour which apparently was quite good. that was the Argentinian end, we then had to drive 140 kms to the Chilean border control to do the whole thing all over again. Whilst in no mans land we went down the longest hill you can imagine, losing over two kilometres in height with surreal views over the Atacama Desert in the evening sunshine. Halfway down we were stopped by the police on motorbikes, oh dear here comes our first speeding ticket we thought, but they just said "Buenos Tardes, are you Roy and Peter? Si, señor we replied, and then he welcomed us to Chile hoping we would enjoy our stay...
Tomorrow we have a day off, chance recharge all our batteries, do some personal grooming and service the car, get it cleaned up a bit and relax. I won't bore you with our hotel, but it is very acceptable, miles from anywhere in the middle of the Atacama Desert.
No blog tomorrow.