As we were heading for bed last night, Bertha told me that another cyclist was about to arrive to spend the night. Being the people who they are, Alex and Bertha went to meet him on the main road to make sure he could find his way. It was a French guy called Yves who was cycling on a pretty bombed out old bike - his reasoning being it would not be much of a loss if it was stolen or damaged - and was on his way from Santiago to Brazil. It turned out that Yves at been robbed of his handlebar bag in Santiago, so maybe his logic has merit. He has fashioned a replacement out of a large plastic bottle. Quite ingenious. It was almost inevitable that, after experiencing Alex and Bertha's kindness, he decided to spend an extra night to allow him to prepare for the big climb up the Andes tomorrow.

We eventually said our good byes to the whole family (apart from young Fransceca who had already left for school while we were still in bed) at about half past ten. After that it was an easy ride down to San Estaban where we stopped in at the In Situ winery for a great tasting. With the exception of the unique Carmenere grape, their other wines were remarkably similar in style to what we see from the Western Cape and, even more remarkable, almost identical in terms of price vs quality to those of the Cape.

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Then it was a simple downhill ride into San Felipe. There was a headwind but it was hardly noticeable apart from helping us to stay cool. We also enjoyed a lot of shade and very little traffic. All in all a very low stress ride.

Once in San Felipe we checked out the two campsites on the western side of town. Both of them were pretty disgusting so we headed back into town, bought some bananas and bread for lunch and sat in the lovely town square planning our next move. Now that we have an internet connection on the cellphone we were able to check out a few places on Booking.com, none of which were particularly cheap. We settled on a place less than a kilometer away, the Brava Hotel. Way out of our price range but wonderfully luxurious. Sometimes the budget needs to be ignored.