The coffee here isn't cheap. In Italy known for cappuccino, you could buy three for the price you pay and get good coffee, not the inferior stuff I've been served in Chile.

However, this morning I was needing a coffee. Me and the others staying at the hostel here in San Pedro de Atacama, decided to buy wine last night and I must've drank too much as I'd an awful sore head this morning. I was for staying put another day to recover and get on the road tomorrow, but then come the news that a big group were coming later, resulting in the hostel being fully booked tonight and so, I've decided that riding the bike is the best cure for a hangover.

Anyhow I'm sitting outside a café in the plaza when along come Dutch touring cyclist, Andries, pushing the heaviest loaded bike I think I've seen. He sees my lesser loaded bike then sees me, so sits down for a coffee too and we talk, he telling me about a secondary road he took to San Pedro via the biggest copper mine in the world, a paved road but with no shoulder and heavy traffic to and from the mine. After the mine though was unpaved, bumpy but ride-able he says. It crossed the white salt flats of Salar de Atacama. And now he is planning to ride on to Uyuni in Bolivia.

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I liked Andries though I couldn't work out why he needed so much baggage.

He did say he's carrying a lot of warm clothes because he feels the cold and eats and drinks a lot. I see half a dozen 2 litre mineral water bottles stacked underneath the big bag on his bike's rear-rack. He says he drinks a litre of water every ten kilometres because he sweats a lot. I tell him I'm only carrying six and a half litres of water, which will do me two days until the next place I can refill. Where I'm going next is up to over 4000m altitude, where its cold, so less drinking water is necessary. I'm also not carrying much food, just pasta and satchels of pasta sauce and ground cheese for the evenings, oats biscuits for morning and midday and of coarse tea.

Andries will remain in San Pedro a few days to rest and it now gone half twelve, I'm anxious to get going.

I had ridden from Salta in Argentina to San Pedro de Atacama via Paso de Jama, in 2009. Then the Chilean migrations was on the edge of town and I thought there is where I go to get my Chilean exit stamp, but the officer at the window in the migrations building says they only handle the nearby border crossing to Bolivia these days and they've built a new migrations complex at Jama, up at the border itself, for the crossings between Chile and Argentina.

That is after I got a bit lost in the grid of streets which all look the same, until finding my way out on the highway where the migration complex is.

The sign leaving town at the left turn for route 27, has "Paso de Jama 160 (km)". Today though I've to tackle a long climb, away from San Pedro, which start at kilometre 11 and continues going up for over thirty kilometre, to over 4000m altitude. The scenery a barren slope all day with a conical volcano dominating the left side. At some point late in the afternoon, as the road become steeper, it gets colder and I stop to put on warm cloths and, I find myself out of breath and have to stop and breathe deeply for a minute before continuing. Then after only a short bit, have to stop again and breathe deeply once again, having a debilitating lack of energy. The effect of increasing altitude.

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Soon the sun is going down. Time to look out for a place to camp. Cristo, the hostel night manager mentioned a house about here where I could pitch the tent in shelter. Well, at this point I come to what looks like a road service depot from the road: a cluster of metal huts two-hundred metres in a track off the road. When I ride in I find close up its more an unoccupied farmstead with a drystone wall animal pen. This I think must be the house Cristo meant. I open the gate to the pen and push the bike inside, then pitch the tent, trembling and gasping for air on the far side, in an east facing lea of the wall in case the wind gets up.

Once I'm in the tent, a what sounds like, an old pickup truck turns up. I suppose this place isn't unoccupied after all. I quickly put off my head torch and wait. The engine is left running while the driver is out doing whatever. I assume if they look in the pen, they can't really object to me camped here. I remain still until hearing a door slam and the pickup truck drive off.

Even though I ate breakfast and nothing else today, I don't feel like cooking any supper. Instead I lay down to sleep.