We awoke to a beautiful morning at our little camp next to the pigsty behind the AGVP station. It was a chilly three degrees Celsius but there was no wind and hardly a cloud in the sky. I sat outside the tent spending the first hour or two drinking three cups of coffee, watching the birds in the garden and chatting to Pierre.

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Pierre got going at half past nine and we left about ten minutes later. The road was almost devoid of traffic, unlike the Ruta 40 further north, and the great weather and gentle gradient made the first hour an absolute pleasure. The period was enhanced by good sightings of two Patagonian Foxes all adorned in the warm and woolly summer coats. In winter they sport even warmer and woollier winter coats.

We stopped for a drink after about twenty kilometers but soon after we got going and vicious south westerly wind sprang up. Claudio at the previous AGVP station had said the wind always starts at eleven o'clock and that was the case this morning. After another fifteen kilometers or so we stopped at an unattended AGVP station and took shelter while we snacked on nuts and dried fruit before pushing on into the wind. At about forty kilometers we turned westward onto a ripio road that would lead us to the border. As we approached the Argentinian border control we saw a cyclist coming down a rough road leading from the north. After checking out of Argentina Pierre arrived. It was he who had taken another route, clearly tougher than the one we had used.

We all had lunch together at the Argentinean border post before carrying on along the rough ripio. At the actual border a few kilometers further we were pleasantly surprised to be presented with a brand new sealed road that would lead us to Cerro Castillo. Checking into Chile was a bit more laborious. We had to have all our luggage x-rayed so they could check we weren't smuggling any fresh food into the country. We had polished off most of our fresh food at our lunch stop a little earlier but managed to slip in with a head of garlic, some ginger and turmeric undetected. I think the customs officials were too busy laughing at me struggling with all my panniers to take any notice of what was on their screens. Jose and Victors' bikes were outside the border post but we didn't see any sign of them

After three days in the same clothes and no chance of a wash, we were determined to find a hostel so we could have a good clean up. We were settling into Hospedaje Mate Amargo (twenty thousand pesos per person in a four bed room) when Pierre arrived. He seemed happy with the price as well but when the landlady wanted to put him in the same room as us he decided to go elsewhere. I hope it was because he wanted a room to himself and not because his room mates would have been us.

We spent the rest of the afternoon doing some research on what to do next and chatting to two Polish ladies (who live in Sweden), one of whom kindly gave me a lift to the local mercado to buy something for dinner.